The third annual International Data Centre Day, was on this week, March 24. 

Frost & Sullivan shared that total investment in the data centre industry is "expected to reach $26.15 billion by 2025 from $16.73 billion in 2019, demonstrating the continuous growth in the sector."

Equinix reminds us that it opened its first data centre near Washington D.C. in 1998, when the Internet was just beginning to scale.

Now, virtually every aspect of our daily lives is enabled through digital connectivity, and Equinix is obviously proud to state that it "supports the connections and data that allow us to connect to each other, services and our favourite sources of entertainment."

Equinix now has 17 data centres in Australia, with an 18th facility due to go live in Perth later this year, making it the country’s largest provider of data centres.

The company notes that International Data Centre day "also motivates planning for the future to help support the growing demand for connectivity."

To enable this, Data Center Dynamics found that the industry will need 300,000 more hires by 2025, but the skills gap is making it difficult to find candidates.

To encourage more female engineers to join the industry, Equinix reports signing a "three-year agreement to become a Sustainability partner of University Technology Sydney’s (UTS) Lucy Mentoring Program, which aims to connect women, including cis- and trans-women, studying engineering or technology at UTS to industry professionals for one-on-one mentoring."

Equinix has shared more about the evolution of data centres in a blog post here, as well as sharing info on other programs Equinix supports to encourage people to pursue a career in the data centre industry.