Datacom, New Zealand’s largest IT service provider, today announced that its subsidiary, Datacom Data Centres, has begun an aggressive NZ$45m expansion to be completed in the 2017/2018 financial year.
The upgrade programme will increase rack capacity by 40 per cent across its four sites in Gloucester (Christchurch), Abel (Wellington), Orbit (Auckland) and Kapua (Hamilton), also adding more than 2MW of power capacity nationally. All four of Datacom’s data centres will deliver Tier-3 aligned business outcomes.
Datacom Data Centres Director, Tom Jacob said, “This is the most significant upgrade of Datacom’s data centres since they were built, and a direct response to insatiable demand from our customers. This is a massive project that will see our already world-class, earthquake resilient sites expanded and enhanced.
“Data centres are the backbone of our economy, and we are looking forward to further enabling our customers’ digital transformational opportunities through the Cloud, so they can best take advantage of a range of core emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Internet of Things and hybrid cloud solutions,” said Jacob.
“It’s also about ensuring cost effectiveness and high performance for existing workloads.”
Demand across New Zealand is growing for high quality data centres with premium accreditation. As New Zealand businesses of all sizes seek to become ever more competitive, to reach new markets, to transform their operations, and to reduce their costs for technology overall, they are turning increasingly to the cloud to help enable all of these necessary and ongoing changes.
Datacom’s world-class data centres are helping to bring the benefits of the cloud to a rapidly growing number of New Zealand organisations. By providing cloud services directly from Datacom’s NZ-based data centres low latency and high performance can be assured for businesses, and hosting of key customer data can remain, where required, within New Zealand’s borders. Such considerations are top priorities for many enterprises, including those in the banking, telecommunications, health care and critical infrastructure sectors.
This rising demand for data centre rack space has also been accompanied by a rapid adoption of public cloud services, with nearly every enterprise and government customer now using a combination of the two. In such a hybrid cloud environment Datacom’s data centres ensure that the local cloud workload components can be hosted and delivered with world-class standards of performance and reliability, ensuring a highly efficient overall deployment.
Datacom Data Centres is an independently operated subsidiary of Datacom Group. It operates its data centre business across Australia and New Zealand on behalf of the Group. A 35-year customer, Fletcher Construction is the builder for all four projects, providing building works and services.
Christchurch, where Datacom was first founded 52 years ago, will see its Gloucester Data Centre nearly triple in rack capacity to cater to local market demand. Already fully earthquake strengthened, it will also be upgraded to be fully fault tolerant and concurrently maintainable. Beyond this initial build, Gloucester will see ongoing upgrades across the next 15 years to support the South Island business community.
Wellington’s Abel Data Centre is already half-way through its upgrade. The already earthquake protected CBD site will be fully fault tolerant and concurrently maintainable, while simultaneously adding 25 per cent in rack capacity for Datacom’s key public and private sector customers.
Hamilton’s Kapua Data Centre has seen phenomenal growth since it was constructed in 2013. Datacom’s newest facility will have a fourth data floor fitted out to deliver a 33 per cent increase in rack capacity.
Finally, Auckland’s Orbit Data Centre will get a significant 310 rack boost to cater to overwhelming market demand. Once completed, it will be New Zealand’s largest data centre, with 1,100 racks.
As part of Datacom’s 2016 Uptime Institute Management and Operations re-certifications, Orbit and Kapua were awarded top marks, 97.0 per cent and 94.0 per cent respectively, making them among the best in the world. No other data centres in New Zealand have this certification.
“These are already state-of-the-art, world-class facilities, and our ongoing investment means that Datacom can continue to provide the superior experience that our customers demand well into the future. It remains a key competitive differentiator for us in the market, especially in the age of cloud. We’re proud to be supporting New Zealand business from the tip of the North Island to the bottom of the South,” said Jonathan Ladd, CEO, Datacom Group.
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