Vocus plans third, fourth Sydney data centres

Vocus has revealed plans to open three new co-location facilities in Sydney and Melbourne over the next year to meet increased demand for data centre space.

CEO James Spenceley said the company would build a third Sydney facility, S3, behind its existing centres in Alexandria, which it bought from E3 Networks alongside a Melbourne-based centre for $5.9 million in 2010.

At 425 square metres, S3 will provide an additional 50 percent extra space on the 800 square metres Vocus offers in Sydney. The space is expected to come online within three months.

A fourth Sydney location, S4, is expected to provide an additional 1000 square metres of floor space and is likely to be built later this year, once capacity for S3 had been exhausted.

Though it took a year to fill the current Sydney facilities, Spenceley said he expected S3 to sell out more quickly.

"I think we've got a bit more momentum behind this," he said.

"When we first built S2, we didn't have the experience in data centre and data centre sales.

"Our goal is just to stagger [future builds] so we don't have too long a period where we don't have any space.

"We don't want to find there's an over-supply of data centre space in Sydney and have space available. We're pretty conservative in our build [plans]."

A site for a second location in Melbourne is also currently being scoped.

Spenceley said it was currently under due diligence, but Vocus would explore the purchase of existing space from other facilities in the city to boost its capacity in the interim.

Vocus' existing facilities, built on 32-kilowatt capacities per rack, have sold at an average of seven to 12 kilowatts.

Spenceley said he expected similar densities for S3 but would look to use the larger S4 facility to increase average rack density by 25 percent, with a view to contracting business from heavier users in future.

The company reported a 57 percent increase in first half revenues for 2011-2012 on the previous corresponding period to $21.9 million but 15 percent drop in profits before tax due to higher costs in network and service delivery.

Spenceley said the company had begun looking at potential acquisitions again after finalising deals to purchase the E3 facilities and a dark fibre network from Digital River last year.