Equinix, Inc. has announced that its first International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) in Melbourne is fully operational. This newest data center, called ME1, supports the strong demand for a premium data center facility in the Melbourne metropolitan area.

"By opening ME1, our first International Business Exchange in Melbourne, this city's businesses can now choose more than just state-of-the-art carrier-neutral colocation space and carrier-dense interconnections. ME1 provides our customers with access to Platform Equinix, where major networks, enterprises and business partners interconnect to each other at global scale," said Jeremy Deutsch, managing director, Equinix Australia.

In a recent survey, Dimensional Research found that 85% of Australian enterprises are planning to deploy to multiple clouds within the next 12 months, 77% of which will use clouds operating in more than one country¹. The opening of ME1 addresses this high demand for cloud services in Australia and allows businesses to leverage Equinix's network, content and cloud business ecosystems to rapidly accelerate the benefits of their cloud strategies.

The opening of ME1 will further extend Platform Equinix™ to meet strong demand for premium interconnection and data center services in Melbourne and the region. This expansion is in line with the steady growth of the company's leading global interconnection platform, in which Equinix has invested more than US$7.5 billion over the last 15 years.

With an initial investment of $60M², which includes the cost of the land, the ME1 data center opens with 375 cabinets, with future expansion phases accommodating an additional 1,125 cabinets and a total of over 105,000 square feet of floor space. The facility is Equinix's fourth data center in Australia, adding to the three facilities already operating in Sydney. This dual Sydney/Melbourne market presence further ensures high-performance, network reliability, redundancy, and low-latency.

The ME1 IBX data center enables Melbourne businesses to connect with Equinix's network-dense ecosystem of more than 1,000 networks globally, 130 of which are available in Australia. It provides customers with access to a large marketplace of over 4,800 potential customers and partners across more than 100 data centers worldwide, generating revenue opportunities and reducing time-to-market.

ME1 opens with more than 40 new customers deployed, reflecting the strong demand for Equinix's data center and interconnection services. Customers include Bulletproof, CacheFly, Entrust ICT, Exigent, First Path, GCOMM, Micron21 Telecommunications, Telstra, Vocus, and Western Australian Internet Association (WAIA).

Cloud and IT service providers account for a quarter of Equinix's business and are the fastest growing segment for the company. By housing IT infrastructure in ME1, businesses are able to expand their cloud and data capabilities rapidly as data consumption and content volume continue to increase.

ME1 meets the LEED^® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System^™, a framework developed by the U.S. Green Building Council for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions. ME1 includes evaporative coolers to support low power usage effectiveness (PUE).

ME1 is one of five new IBX data centers being opened by Equinix in early 2015. Other locations include Singapore, London, Toronto and New York. Through these expansions, Equinix is playing a major role in advancing the digital economy's interconnected era, in which businesses are demanding increasing levels of interconnection to accelerate business performance.

¹Cloud Adoption Study: Australia
² AU$66M as at 13 Jan 2014