The Australian state of Victoria is home to at least 11 “unicorns” (privately held start-up companies valued at $1Bn or greater) with a combined market capitalization of more than $30 billion.[1] These include A Cloud Guru, Culture Amp and Airwallex, amongst others. Victoria’s capital city, Melbourne, is the regional headquarters for many global technology leaders, including Zendesk, Amazon, and Square, and is also home to some of the world’s largest companies in banking, healthcare, and professional services.
According to the State’s government, Victoria is regarded as Australia’s technology hub, while digital technology and innovation is a driving force for economic growth, productivity, and competitiveness. Melbourne is home to one of the largest research and development clusters in the southern hemisphere including four of the top 20 Australian universities, which regularly collaborate with industry.[2]
Offering access to a diverse local economy that includes advanced manufacturing, global financial and multinational firms, professional and scientific services as well as technology companies, Melbourne is building a reputation as a dynamic and fast-growing destination to accelerate digital growth.
Equinix Melbourne metro IBX data centers
Home to Australia’s second-largest economy, Melbourne offers access to a diverse local economy. An integral part of Australia’s largest data center provider, Equinix Melbourne is part of a global interconnection platform that spans all 6 of Australia's top markets.
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Hyperscaler’s Extending Cloud Infrastructure
Melbourne’s growing reputation as a strategic location for digital infrastructure was recently strengthened by Google, which announced its first cloud region in Melbourne, joining other public cloud titans like Microsoft and Oracle.
These investments by major hyperscalers further position Melbourne as an important destination for digital business, ready to support the rising demand from the State’s data-centric digital leaders who are continuing to make digital transformation a top priority for their organizations. By securely connecting to the cloud locally, they can accelerate their digital infrastructure capability, be confident in the knowledge of enhanced application performance and minimized latency.
A secure and robust digital infrastructure is vital in sectors like financial services, where the deployment of next-generation technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence will be key to unlocking new digital services. With some of Australia’s largest banks headquartered in Melbourne, they are strategically investing across all layers of their technology stack, interconnecting physical and virtual building blocks with a growing ecosystem of partners.
In financial services, the Australian Government’s Open Banking regulation is set to drive new technology investments in business intelligence, analytics, and automation. With the dense concentration of global financial services firms based in Melbourne, proximity to Sydney for disaster recovery and multi-site deployments is essential.
Accelerating Digital Transformation
As Australia emerges from lockdowns, the need to adapt with agility remains critical and despite the many challenges organizations have faced over the past 20 months, it has been encouraging to see so many enterprises transform their operating models and accelerate their digital transformation plans.
According to our annual Global Tech Trends Survey 2021, which captures insights from 2,600 digital leaders across 26 countries, including Australia, more than half (57%) are planning to expand despite the disruptions in the past year.[3]
The accelerated pace of digital transformation is predicted to fuel rapid growth in interconnection. This is illustrated in the Global Interconnection Index Volume 5, an annual study published by Equinix, which forecasts the pandemic has forced economies into digital overdrive. Particularly in Melbourne, the metro is expected to see the largest per cent of enterprises of any metro in the Asia-Pacific region, with nearly half of connections to business partners and growing digital ecosystems.
Network Edge Creating New Opportunities
Network Edge service is now available in the Melbourne metro and provides new opportunities for a growing number of multinational organizations looking to establish a presence in Australia. Network Edge makes it easy for organizations to set up digital infrastructure and consume all the necessary virtual network services necessary to support their business needs. Importantly, it removes the need for physical networking equipment and gives our customers and partners fast and easy access to virtual network functions (VNF) devices from a broad ecosystem of industry-leading network functions virtualization infrastructure vendors such as Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and VMware.
Network Edge service also connects in an instance to and between cloud services leveraging SD-WAN and virtual routing VNF devices plus provides firewall and VPN security services. This means digital leaders no longer need to spend time and money operating and maintaining their own hardware. In addition, close physical proximity to all the major cloud on-ramps enables direct connectivity with lower latency, better performance and a great end user experience. Furthermore, customers can access cloud providers via Equinix Fabric SD interconnection, which makes it less expensive to do business in the cloud.
Most Connected Data Center Campus in Melbourne
Not only operating the most connected data center campus in the city, Equinix Melbourne is part of a global interconnection platform that spans all six of Australia’s top markets and 65 metros globally. Equinix customers in Melbourne have fast access to a growing economic base and geographic advantages that support superior connectivity and digital business expansions.
Our Melbourne campus also offers direct access to over 50 networks including the largest domestic and international providers. All the major cloud onramps are available on our campus, plus key service providers such as Webex, Zoom and ServiceNow. Enterprises can realize their hybrid and multicloud strategies by localizing applications and services through our interconnected ecosystems. This makes Equinix Melbourne the ideal location for organizations to architect the digital infrastructure building blocks they need to keep pace with new services required to outpace and out-innovate the competition.
[1] Victoria State Government Australia, YourStory, August 30, 2021
[2] Global Victoria, Victoria’s Capabilities, Industry Sectors, Digital Technologies
[3] Equinix Global Tech Trends Survey 2021
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