Digital Realty Trust Enters Australian Data Center Market

Company to provide its customer-driven data center solutions to meet strong local demand.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc., a wholesale data center provider, yesterday announced that it has entered the Australian data center market with the acquisition of a 3.48 hectare development site in Sydney, Australia for a purchase price of approximately USD 10.7 million. This represents the first acquisition in Australia for the company.

The company articulates that the site, located in Erskine Park, an industrial precinct located in the Western Sydney Employment Hub, is capable of supporting approximately 18,600 square meters of data center development with over 11.5MW of IT capacity. It has secured permitting for the development and plans to commence construction on the first phase of 9,300 square meters in the fall of 2011, which will consist of building out the first of two data center facilities. The building is designed to support four 1440 kW Turn-Key Data center PODs.

According to it, each of the company's Turn-Key Data center facility is physically secure and features a state-of-the-art power and cooling architecture that has been optimized for green operation. Every Turn-Key Data center is built using the company's proprietary POD Architecture and uses metered power to ensure that clients pay only for the power that they use. The facility also comes standard with its PowerVU software, which enables centralized monitoring and management of data center power consumption, energy efficiency and load analysis.

"The acquisition of this site adds a very important market to our portfolio and is key to our expansion in the Asia Pacific region," said Michael F. Foust, Chief Executive Officer for Digital Realty Trust. "The Sydney market is characterized by a robust business environment, yet has a limited supply of data center space available to meet customer demand for highly reliable, flexible and secure facilities."

"In the Sydney market, the availability of data center space has long been the domain of colocation, managed services and regional telecommunications providers," said Kris Kumar, Regional Head, Asia Pacific, Digital Realty Trust. "We believe that our ability to deliver secure, reliable and cost effective data center solutions will be a significant benefit to customers that are expanding their IT operations in the region. Utilizing our operating expertise and global resources, we expect a twelve month construction period to complete the building's shell and core and the first two 1440 kW Turn-Key Data center PODs."