AI Ready Checklist for Neoclouds & Hyperscale Platforms

For Hyperscalers & Neocloud Platforms Launching in Australia

The AI Ready Checklist is designed to support and complement your existing evaluation frameworks as you assess data centre partners and infrastructure readiness for AI and cloud expansion into the Australian market.

Whether you're a global hyperscaler or an emerging Neocloud provider, this guide helps validate that your deployment environment is built to support high-performance AI workloads, meets critical compliance and sovereignty requirements, and aligns with your long-term growth strategy.

From AI-ready infrastructure and interconnectivity to sustainability and security, the AI Ready Checklist serves as a practical, quick-reference tool for identifying the core essentials that enable fast, scalable, and compliant launches across Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific region, and prepare your platform for the ultra-high-density future of AI.

Use this checklist during partner evaluations, RFPs, or site selection to ensure your infrastructure is built for where AI thrives.

1. AI-Ready Infrastructure

• Has the organisation obtained NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Centre certification?

• Supports high-density racks (up to 600kW per rack)?
• Offers liquid cooling options (rear-door heat exchangers, direct-to-chip, immersion)?
• Provides modular power provisioning and thermal zoning for efficient scaling?
• Enables custom-built or design-to-suit data halls tailored to GPU platforms?
• Supports multi-megawatt deployments with future-proof capacity?
• Equipped with multiple Points of Entry (POEs) for diverse fibre and power routes?

2. Interconnectivity & Network Performance

• Provides interconnect speeds up to 100Gbps for ultra-low latency workloads?
• Direct access to all major cloud on-ramps (AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle)?
• Proximity to international subsea cable landing stations for regional and global routing?
• Built to support federated AI models and distributed GPU clusters?

3. Security, Compliance & Sovereignty

• Uptime Institute Tier IV certified data centre with 100% Uptime SLA commitment?
• Certified for ISO, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, and defence-grade compliance frameworks?
• Implements zero-trust architecture, biometric security, and multi-layered access controls?
• Delivers full data sovereignty and residency under Australian law?
• Complies with the Australian Privacy Act and Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) Scheme?
• Approved as a Tier 1 country by the US government for NVIDIA chip supply chain distribution?

4. Location, Market Access & Sustainability

• Strategically located across Australia’s capital cities including Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Darwin, to deliver national reach and low-latency coverage?

• Serves as a gateway to Southeast Asia, with proximity to Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and key subsea cable routes for regional connectivity?

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  Positioned for scalable growth across metro, regional, and edge locations, with direct access to subsea infrastructure and cloud on-ramps?

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  Does the organisation operate edge data centres in high-growth regional areas to support decentralised AI workloads and smart infrastructure?

• Supports hyperscaler, and government ESG goals through certified sustainability programs and enterprise active industry collaboration aligned with national and international climate policy framework.  

5. Ecosystem & Support

• Enables direct, secure interconnection with industry-leading organisations — including financial services, government, healthcare, mining, and enterprise co-located within the data centre ecosystem.
• Embedded in a diverse, multi-industry data centre ecosystem, connecting AI workloads across finance, government, healthcare, mining, and enterprise sectors?
• Offers carrier-neutral and cloud-neutral connectivity to maximise flexibility, performance, and provider choice?
• Backed by local support teams to enable rapid provisioning, troubleshooting, and operational continuity?

• Provides access to AI infrastructure specialists for deployment, tuning, and optimisation of GPU and high-performance workloads?

Next Step: Design Your AI-Ready Future

NEXTDC is Australia’s strategic digital infrastructure partner, the place where the cloud lives and AI thrives.

Our facilities are NVIDIA DGX-certified, purpose-built to support high-density, GPU-intensive workloads with advanced liquid cooling, multi-megawatt scalability, and direct cloud on-ramp access. Whether you're launching a new platform or scaling an AI-powered service, we help you deploy faster, scale smarter, and stay in control.

Explore More

• SharonAI Case Study: How a Neocloud Provider Launched at Scale with NEXTDC
• Neoclouds vs Hyperscalers: The Rise of AI-First Infrastructure
• Australia: The Strategic Launchpad for Hyperscale and Neocloud Expansion

Connect with us to start designing your infrastructure for the next era of cloud and AI.