Work starts on IC3 data centre

Macquarie Telecom’s $80m state-of-the-art data centre in Sydney has begun construction after earlier delays.

Macquarie Telecom’s $80m state-of-the-art data centre in Sydney has begun construction after earlier delays.

The new Intellicentre 3 (IC3) data centre broke ground on Thursday in the Macquarie Park Innovation District.

At 13,400sq m, the site is being positioned towards hyperscale companies, software-as-a-service providers and global enterprises looking to be close to Sydney.

Macquarie Telecom chief executive David Tudehope said the development was taking advantage of Sydney’s emerging position in the Asia-Pacific for regional data centre hubs.

“We’re building IC3 on our existing ideally located data centre campus, which provides for faster construction, power and diversity of telecom services for carrier neutrality,” Mr Tudehope said.

“The sharp rise in data centre construction in Sydney and other parts of Australia is being driven by the cloud megatrends such as companies realise it no longer makes sense for them to manage their own in-house server room. Data centres are where the cloud lives.

“Sydney in particular has become one of the four regional data centre hubs in Asia-Pacific outside of China, alongside Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore.

The site was initially expected to be completed by the end of this calendar year but a June shareholder announcement revealed the timeline would be extended. It is now expected in 2020.