Joe Demase (5G Networks)
Hot on the heels of acquiring Melbourne Data Centre (MDC), carrier 5G Networks has made another play for rack space with the purchase of Sydney’s Australian Pacific Data Centres (APDC).
The deal will give Melbourne-based 5GN access to APDC’s Sydney-based Tier 3 data centre, known as the ‘Pyrmont Data Centre’, which has capacity of more than 150 racks.
The $3.5 million will be paid in cash and represents seven times APDC’s annual EBITDA of $500,000.
In addition, the deal comes with APDC’s annualised contracted revenue of $1.7 million, plus the potential to expand utilisation of the Sydney data centre, which currently stands at 30 per cent.
5GN’s combined capacity now exceeds 600 racks and 6.5MW across its owned and operated data centres in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. More than half of the racks came from the company’s $5.7-million purchase of MDC in April.
According to 5GN MD Joe Demase, the acquisition will allow the carrier to “kick-start” its new channel strategy, which includes wholesale data centre services plus fibre network and cloud services to other carriers, hardware vendors and managed service providers.
“This is also welcome news for our customers, where 5GN can now offer dedicated and secure access from our connected data centres all the way through to cloud and managed network services in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide,” Demase said.
New offerings in the pipeline include the ‘5GN Cloud Port’, which claims to offer “seamless” access to the cloud plus connectivity into all “relevant” data centres in Australia. This will include both private cloud and public from providers including AWS, Azure and with further exploration of Alibaba on the horizon.
In addition, 5GN said the purchase of APDC “lays out the basis” for Sydney central business district and inner fibre network expansion to key clients who require data centre access.
The carrier also claimed it intended to explore offering dark, essentially unused, fibre to its larger corporate customers and wholesale partners “when available”.
Earlier this year, 5GN launched its managed data network known as MPLS, which runs across Australian capital cities and offers speeds of up to 10Gb.
