Equinix has completed a $5 million expansion of its Sydney Internet Business Exchange (IBX) centre, adding new cooling and power infrastructure to the 3000sqm facility.

Prior to the expansion, Equinix was only able to use two-thirds of its datacentre due to insufficient power and cooling, managing director, Doug Oates, said. With the new infrastructure in place, it could now take full advantage of its floorspace, pushing cabinet capacity past the 1165 mark, an increase of about 50 per cent, he said.

"This expansion was really fuelled by increased demand for datacentre services," he said. "Over the past five years, we've seen a significant increase in the use of Web-based applications. Everything is done over the Web now and online applications have to be online 24 hours a day, so we had to ramp up our facilities to match that need from our customers."

Among the first customers to move into the newly expanded IBX are Melbourne IT, an Australian Web and application hosting company; and voice and data provider, Telarus. Melbourne IT will use the facility to supplement the company's existing datacentre facilities, while Telarus is using the new facilities to provide delegate, unescorted access to clients when bundling co-location space into solutions.

Equinix's market segmentation falls into four distinct categories: enterprise customers, content providers, system integrators and telcos. While the company enjoys an even customer split among the four segments, Oates said Equinix wasn't looking to drive growth in any one particular area.

"At the moment we're just happy to take the customers as they come. We have an even board charging system so we aren't looking to drive growth in any particular area," Oates said.