Digital Realty snags Melbourne space

Datacentre provider Digital Realty Trust has this morning taken the covers off of its latest land purchase in Melbourne, while announcing plans for a new datacentre on the 30,000-square-metre plot.

The Melbourne industrial park that Digital Realty bought into
(Screenshot by Luke Hopewell/ZDNet Australia)

The 30,250-square-metre acquisition is Digital Realty's second purchase in Australia at a value of around $4.1 million. The company's first purchase is located right next door to the new site in the Paramount Industrial Park, 19 kilometres west of the Melbourne CBD.

The new datacentre developments are to be built on a pod design, with the first centre set to support four 1440-kilowatt Turn-Key PODs, while the latest will support only two.

Kris Kumar, chief executive officer of Digital Realty Trust, said in a statement that Melbourne was a logical choice for the company as it was one of Australia's largest metro areas. However, he added that space for new datacentres on the east coast is becoming increasingly limited.

"Like Sydney, Melbourne has a limited supply of datacentre space available to meet customer demand for highly reliable, flexible and secure facilities," Kumar said, echoing comments from the head of NextDC Bevan Slattery, who said that Sydney in particular is rapidly running out of power for new facilities.

"There is a real lack of power in Sydney and you can't get power upgrades in the CBD at all," Slattery said, adding that the suburb of Alexandria is of particular concern.

"Getting power anywhere around Alexandria is very difficult," he said.

The Digital Realty facilities are set to follow a 12-month build timetable for the first of the two to become available.