Australia could be a leading country in data centres: Datacom director of data centres

Matt Neil discusses at the Data Centre Exchange in Sydney why Australia is a mature data centre market.

Australia has several factors such as maturity and location that could make it one of the leading countries in data centres, according to Matt Neil, director of data centres at Datacom.

Speaking on a panel at the Data Centre Exchange Australia in Sydney, Neil said Australia has “all the advantages” of a location that you want to build out.

"State government, strong rule of law, and people want to come here. The thing that's holding us back is the regulatory compliance framework to get improvements,” he said.

“If we can get those in place, we think we're strong now, we'll be even stronger, or be one of the leading economies [globally].”

Neil said that Australia’s data centre market is very mature, with close to 20 years under its belt.

“It was a market that most people didn't know about, and so we grew quite successfully,” he said.

However, because data centres are on the world stage, everyone knows about AI, according to Neil. He said this now brings the challenge that demand doesn't beat supply.

"We're trying to build faster, and unfortunately, because of our regulatory environments, local councils, governments, they're not all in sync. They haven't kept pace, and we are now seeing the challenges and the bottlenecks coming through,” he explained.

“Utilities haven't been deploying because the capital hasn't been there, we've been very successful, but now we're reaching this point where we are starting to deal with constraints, and we're not keeping up.”

Being a part of the data centre industry, Neil understands how “powerful” data centres are, and called them “key” and “critical” drivers.

“But everyone else doesn't, and the backlash from the community is getting louder,” he said.

He goes as far to predict at future data centre events there will be picketing outside due to a lack of education about the infrastructure.

Neil is also noticing that as data centres become more of a “consumer” topic, they are having an impacting whether or not data centres get built.

“We're seeing it with some people recently in WA, went through the consenting process, WA is very pro, but then the market or the consumer got involved and effectively [killed] it,” he said.

Because of this, Neil said this is where education comes into play.

“We need to stop just talking amongst ourselves, but creating an industry body, getting out there,” he explained.

“It really is about educating and informing the market that we're not just building data centres for the sake of it. It's mobile phones, digital technology, which is driving it, and connecting that to the end user and getting them on board.”