AirTrunk, a hyperscale data centre specialist, today announced plans to build a new Western Sydney data centre, named AirTrunk SYD3 (SYD3) which it says will be the largest single campus in the Asia-Pacific region outside of China at 320+ megawatts (MW) of capacity.
Global commercial property business CBRE says data centre capacity is growing in four key countries in the Asia Pacific in particular and identifies the core Tier 1 regional markets as Tokyo (Japan), Singapore, Sydney (Australia) and Hong Kong SAR.
Indeed, internationally, hyperscalers, in particular, are on something of a tear of late.
Typically, these are massive companies like, Facebook, Amazon, Google and Alibaba that want to stake out dominant positions in the public cloud and cloud services industries, while also extending their business into adjacent sectors.
According to North Ridge Partners, an investment advisory business that assists technology companies in the Asia Pacific with strategic financial advice, M&As and capital raisings, there are about 600 hyperscale data centres globally.
In their August Tech Round Up newsletter, they noted, “Significantly, almost a hundred of those were built in 2020 alone. There are believed to be another 200 under construction around the world. And while approximately 40 per cent of those are in the US, demographic trends will see the region’s share shrink in the coming year.”
SYD3 is AirTrunk’s third Sydney data centre, joins SYD1 (130+ MW) in Western Sydney and SYD2 (110+ MW) in the city’s north.
In a statement, the company said the "AirTrunk Western Sydney Region’ expands to 450+ MW with the SYD1 and SYD3 connected campuses allowing new and existing customers to grow seamlessly within the strategic cloud availability zone."
According to Airtrunk founder and chief executive officer, Robin Khuda, “With SYD1 nearing full capacity, SYD3’s location less than one kilometre away, will help our major technology customers scale with ease and creates synergies and efficiencies between the connected campuses.”
With the carbon impact of data centres becoming more a matter of debate, the company was keen to play up its sustainability credentials. It said "SYD3 is designed to an industry-low power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15 and will utilise approximately 80 per cent less water than a traditional data centre. It will feature a range of innovations during design, construction, and operation to deliver efficiencies and minimise carbon impact for customers and communities."
Globally, data centres are already responsible for approximately two per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, on par with the aviation industry. Regulation is increasing in the space, adding to the pressure to reduce the huge level of emissions for which data centres are responsible.
Those emissions are set to grow dramatically as the sector scales aggressively in response to accelerating digitalisation.
The new data centre will include nine phases set across 8.3 hectares (20.5 acres) delivering 320+ MW of IT load and will be powered by a 132KV onsite substation.
SYD3 brings AirTrunk’s Asia-Pacific platform to a total of seven hyperscale data centres (including four in Australia) with a total capacity of more than a gigawatt (GW), providing a connected, secure, efficient, and sustainable home for the cloud across the region.
AirTrunk launched its first data centres in Sydney and Melbourne in late 2017 and has since expanded into Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Earlier this year, it launched a new region in Sydney’s north to enable further cloud growth for customers in Sydney, one of the top 10 cloud markets globally.
According to the company, each data centre has been anchored by major cloud service provider (CSP) customers.
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