Leading Edge DC names Matt Holden as COO

Leading Edge Data Centres (LEDC) has appointed Matt Holden as chief operating officer.

Based in Sydney, Holden will be responsible for growing the edge data centre ecosystem with channel partners and customers, and elevating the critical infrastructure operations team.

Holden moves to LEDC from CBRE Data Centres where he held the position of business unit director, data centre solutions ANZ from 2021 to 2023.

The move aims to support the growth of LEDC, where customers are needing more help from LEDC’s local partners.

LEDC said that its operations in regional Australia has created new jobs in the region, and that the company is working with global organisations to deliver pilots in NSW that will assist their Edge use cases in North America and Europe.

Prior to CBRE Data Centres, Holden worked for Chef Software as regional sales director APJ and ANZ from 2020 to 2021

He also spent four years with Canberra Data Centres (CDC) as chief operating officer and director of partnerships from 2016 to 2020.

Holden worked for 17 years at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in various director positions where his focus was to improve sales and operations during times of data centre expansion. He has also held managerial positions at Telstra and IBM from 1995 to 1999.

LEDC has invested in additional edge deployments in Victoria and Queensland after completing six key regions in NSW, while executing on an aggressive customer and partner ecosystem plan.

“I’m looking forward to growing the pipeline of opportunity and outlook for the business so we can assist more regional businesses to accelerate their growth," Holden said, 

“LEDC’s customers already benefit from the same level of digital infrastructure to regional locations that those in capital city-based locations, and the outcomes have already driven out cost and improved connectivity services.

Earlier this month, LEDC launched new regional cloud services which provide public and private cloud access within all of their locations, partnering with global cloud provider RackCorp.

In May last year, LEDC secured a $30 million equity investment in its regional edge network from an affiliate of US-based DigitalBridge Group for the expansion of its edge data centre network.

LEDC appointed Seán O’Halloran as chief commercial officer in February 2022.

In April 2021, the company secured land across regional Victoria with plans to build a network of Tier III data centres across the state.

During August 2020, LEDC started construction on its new facility in Mayfield West in Newcastle, NSW, the first of eight planned for the state.

In May 2020, LEDC secured a $20 million investment to help fund its plans to build new regional data centres, and partnered with Cisco in December 2020 to construct and deploy them.