OREANDA-NEWS. September 14, 2015. If you thought that data centres were a recent development, think again. They’ve been around since the first programmable, electronic, digital computer – known as Colossus – rumbled into life in 1944 and helped the WWII allies crack the previously unbreakable Enigma code.

What’s more, Colossus wasn’t built in a shed by Benedict Cumberbatch – who played computing genius Alan Turing in the 2014 movie “The Imitation Game.” It was actually designed and built by a gifted engineer by the name of Tommy Flowers. He worked for the General Post Office, which at the time ran Britain’s national telecommunication network.

Providing much of the funds for the project himself, Flowers and his team designed and built the first Colossus in a few months. Eventually there were some 10 Colossi working at breaking enemy codes – not in sheds, but in stable environments looking recognizably like data centres – and their work undoubtedly shortened the war and saved millions of lives.

Counting The Cost of Stability

Since WWII, computers have become an integral part of business and permeated virtually every aspect of daily life. And the cost of building and operating data centres to provide the requisite technical and environmental stability has climbed to staggering heights.

In fact, according to the independent technology research firm, Gartner, Australian technology and communications companies need to brace for the impact of even more financial pressure to keep these data centres running. Last year alone Australian enterprises are estimated to have spent over AU\\$2.3 billion on data centre services.

By the end of 2015, that will have grown to over AU\\$2.5 billion, especially in key areas such as enterprise communications applications, network equipment, servers, and controller based external storage.

The dilemma that Australian businesses face is simple – finding a way to get more out of their data centre budgets.

Unlocking the secrets of data centre success

As always, Equinix is committed to helping to meet growing Australian demand. We are doing so partly through the recent expansion into Melbourne and partly with the announcement of a fourth data centre in Sydney (SY4), which is due to be completed in Q2 2016.

However, like the Colossus conundrum over 70 years ago, we have also enlisted assistance from the telecommunications sector in the form of an agreement with Telstra. It enables Telstra customers to colocate within Equinix’s five data centers in Sydney and Melbourne, SY1, SY2, SY3, SY4 and ME1.

As Australia’s largest telecommunications company, Telstra, provides cloud and network services across its network to thousands of Australian enterprises. In 2014, Telstra added two new Points-of-Presence (PoP) in Equinix’s SY3 data center in Sydney, and in its ME1 data center in Melbourne. These PoPs are in addition to Telstra PoPs in Equinix’s other Sydney data centers, and those in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo.

The expansion of data center connectivity between Equinix and Telstra has followed the continued demand for low-latency, high-throughput content delivery and telecommunications services in Australia.

This agreement enables Telstra to provide its customers direct access to Equinix’s world-class Australian facilities, ME1, SY1, SY2, SY3 and SY4, which is under construction. These facilities help enterprises to safeguard mission-critical data with the highest levels of security and operational reliability.

By deploying in Equinix, Telstra customers can utilize Equinix’s comprehensive IT services, infrastructure and expertise, as well as leverage its robust ecosystems to interconnect with over 6,300 global enterprises, networks and business partners across more than 100 data centers worldwide.

And, that’s not a secret!