The Pulse Data Centre will be located in the Great Dividing Range on the outskirts of Toowoomba, over 130kms west of Brisbane, Queensland.
FKG Group has announced that construction has begun on its AU$40 million datacentre, located approximately 130 kilometres west of Brisbane, Queensland.
The Pulse Data Centre is being built in the outskirts of Toowoomba, sitting in the Great Dividing Range, an area comprising a series of plateaus and low mountain ranges covering 3,700 kilometres of land.
It will be the first regional tier III datacentre of its kind in Australia, FKG said, expecting the centre to provide a major boost to business innovation in the region and give some of the biggest names in the tech world a reason to set up shop in regional Australia.
“We are seeing major international companies making significant commitments to co-location and hyperscale datacentre capacity in Australia right now, which is why we are excited to be developing a datacentre that meets that brief, ” Gary Gardner, FKG executive chairman said.
Telstra and Schneider Electric have partnered with FKG for the new datacentre, with the telco helping with connectivity by way of its regional network. The partnership comes as Telstra makes a recent push to invest in regional Australia, and to provide jobs in construction and operation to local businesses and Indigenous communities.
Schneider Electric will bring its energy management and automation expertise to the datacentre project, FKG said, bringing also its experience in datacentre solutions, the IoT, and industrial technologies.
“The likes of these companies will bring investment in infrastructure, jobs, skills, knowledge, and commercial horsepower, which will help grow businesses in the area, ” Gardner added, noting the new datacentre will also have wholesale capacity.
The datacentre will be situated on 30 hectares of land, providing immediate access for future expansion, FKG explained.
The centre is also expected to benefit from accessing multiple power supplies in the region and options for alternative power supplies, with its position 500 metres above sea level expected to significantly reduce the facility’s energy consumption and costs.
University of Southern Queensland’s Institute for Agriculture and the Environment executive director Steven Raine, said the university was already researching and developing the data platforms and cloud services that will assist the agricultural sector, in particular, in making the digital transformation.
“We are currently exploring how innovations in the fields of precision control, sensor technology and robotic solutions can be best applied within the agricultural industry to automate production processes and bring greater efficiency and innovation to all areas of a business, ” he explained, adding he was excited by the capabilities the new datacentre will offer the region.
The centre is planned to open in early 2018.
