Innovative and forward thinking is a skill that doesn’t fall short within our Engineering and Design team. Our customer-focused team of engineering experts have created a game-changing solution for our WA customers as they eagerly await the opening of our P2 Perth data centre.
The challenge
Whilst our new 20MW P2 Perth data centre is under construction over the next 18 months, that doesn’t mean the growing demand for connectivity requirements for WA businesses grinds to a halt, in fact it’s far from slowing down. New national & international networks are already in the process of being built with Perth as the focus, so we had to ask ourselves, how could we build WA’s most powerful, connected and resilient data centre and still provide our clients & local partners with immediate access to new connectivity services directly from P2’s East Perth location?
The solution
Innovation is something we are driven to achieve every day. If we aren’t moving forward, we may as well be going backwards. The nature of our business and the demands of our customers, and their customers alike means we can never stand still. After careful deliberation we had a lightbulb moment – we would build a P2 microsite, delivered to NEXTDC’s current reliability standards that would enable immediate critical communications infrastructure. This new addition to the NEXTDC footprint will be a place for partners to colocate and run their services from now, not 18 months from now. Additionally, we will do this without distracting the P2 main build project team.
What exactly is the P2 microsite?
The P2 microsite is the first of its kind, something that has never been done before. It is a prefabricated standalone site that is built to UTI Tier III standards. The P2 Microsite will act as a self-sufficient interconnect and telco room combined that will enable connectivity to critical cloud services, metro, national and international links, and can immediately be connected to our P1 site creating its own exciting and important ecosystem.
The P2 microsite is a custom-built room engineered by NEXTDC’s Engineering and Design team in cooperation with Flexenclosure, built off-site in Sweden and shipped direct to the P2 location. The unit is custom fitted into its own permanent part of the P2 facility with the help of our construction partner Multiplexand will operate as a micro data centre that will run at the same worl-class standards as the rest of our footprint, for the duration of the main P2 build. It is a fully functioning interconnect location, pre-fitted with racks (full and quarter) for our telco and service provider partners to move right in to. More to the point, fibre access infrastructure is already built and ready to connect our Partners to Perth’s metro fibre network. The new P2 microsite is an exciting and innovative piece of infrastructure for Perth, which partners are already signed up to colocate in and deliver their services from. P2 will become central Perth’s most important IT, cloud and connectivity investment and the NEXTDC P2 microsite is set to give it an incredible head start.
As the P2 microsite’s first customer, Superloop will be offering Singapore-to-Perth, and Perth to Sydney INDIGO subsea cable network services directly from the P2 site. Alongside that we will have NEXTDC’s Data Centre Interconnect (DCI) and AXON connectivity services deployed, meaning partners can take rack space in the P2 microsite now and connect back into the full Perth ecosystem at P1 (via DCI) or to the entire NEXTDC ecosystem via AXON, including our huge array of Partners and leading cloud onramps – amazing!
Enabling these rapid access connectivity hubs is an exciting new approach to planning and building our hyperscale data centres. The P2 microsite will operate adjacent to the P2 building and will be seamlessly absorbed, becoming an integral part of P2 over time as one of its many interconnect rooms.
This is another extraordinary journey we embark on as our second-generation data centres continue to evolve and reinvent themselves. As a data centre leader, we will continue to push the boundaries, constantly striving to find new and innovative solutions to help power, secure and connect our customers.
For further information, contact Claire Sangster on 0428 525 700 or claire.sangster@nextdc.com
