Minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, Senator Stephen Conroy was in attendance to officially open the new facility with Equinix Australia's managing director, Tony Simonsen.

SY3-II is located south of Sydney and provides approximately 1,000 cabinets across 22,927 square feet. Once the third and final phase of SY3 is completed, the IBX will provide 72,850 square feet and capacity for 3,000 cabinets. The facility was opened six months ahead of schedule due to customer demand as a result of increased data usage and a rise in the number of companies transitioning to cloud.

A recent Forrester report states that 36 percent of Australian organizations are currently leveraging cloud-based services, an increase in 22 percent from 2010 and 14 percent in 2009.

"We have seen significant growth in cloud adoption in Australia and we expect this trend to continue. Equinix Sydney has a well-developed and diverse business ecosystem of partners and service providers. Our IBXs provide the optimum place for customers including cloud, digital content, enterprise, financial services and network providers to connect with their customers and partners," said Tony Simonsen, managing director, Equinix Australia.

The Equinix Sydney IBX is the most densely connected data center in Australia with over 100 networks including a direct link to the Southern Cross Cables Network and PIPE Pacific Cable (PPC-1). It is the only location where access to the two largest peering points is available.

Senator Conroy said, "Australian companies increasingly need to consider and adopt cloud services in an effort to move at least part of their IT into a data center. On an international scale, companies wanting to do business in Australia can experience latency issues so we are seeing many of those making the decision to deploy at onshore data centers in Australia. SY3-II demonstrates Equinix's commitment to fostering data center development in Australia and Asia Pacific."

According to Citi Research the National Broadband Network (NBN) is seen as a demand driver for cloud services within Australia and, by extension, for Australian data centers. With the rollout of the NBN, Australia is expected to have one of the best nation-wide infrastructures for fast onshore data transfer, which is hoped to promote business and consumer confidence in cloud solutions. The NBN will make possible new ways of delivering essential business services, including smart infrastructure and high-tech services such as IPTV, and online gaming services. Investment and growth of this proportion will need to be supported by more robust and modern data centers.

Forrester Research's report, "Sizing the Cloud Markets in Asia Pacific" issued in February 2012 states that Australia is the most mature cloud market in Asia Pacific by most measures. The report also states that the public cloud market in Australia will grow from $732 million in 2011 to $3.2 billion in 2020 and that the three segments of the virtual private cloud market analyzed will grow from $157 million in 2011 to $2.4 billion in 2020.

Box, an Equinix customer that provides a secure content-sharing platform for more than 14 million individuals and 140,000 businesses, welcomes the opening of SY3. Stefan Apitz, vice president of operations, Box said, "As a long-term partner of Equinix, the SY3-II expansion will help us deliver great performance for our users and support future growth. The strong network and ecosystems available to us as an Equinix customer means that we are able to provide the best possible service for our customers."

Box is leveraging Platform Equinix™ as a key part of its growing enterprise-grade infrastructure and worked with the company to develop a comprehensive strategy for distributing its growing global network, enabling Box to achieve a 60 percent increase in performance and make its service faster and easier to access for more users worldwide. For more information on how Box is leveraging Platform Equinix, please see "Box Chooses Platform Equinix as Key Element in Growing Global Infrastructure."

APAC is Equinix's fastest growing region and one in high demand by customers. The expansion of Equinix's footprint in Australia and other APAC markets such as Jakarta in October this year will enable Equinix to assist multi-national customers looking to expand into the market.