Equinix today said it’s acquiring Metronode, an Australian data center company, for $792 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2018.

Metronode operates data centers throughout Australia and hosts Internet and infrastructure for corporations, government agencies, and telecommunications and IT service providers. The company generated about $46 million in revenues in the 12 months ending September 30, 2017.

The acquisition is meant to strengthen Equinix’s position in the Asia-Pacific region. Equinix currently has five data centers in Australia. It will gain 10 data centers, contributing to Equinix’s national footprint in both Sydney and Melbourne while adding the new metros Perth, Canberra, Adelaide, and Brisbane.

The acquired sites would add 20,000 square meters of gross colocation space to its footprint. The new campuses in Sydney and Melbourne are hyperscale-ready, allowing Equinix to support requirements for global cloud service providers.

The purchase further extends Platform Equinix to directly and securely interconnect clouds, networks, business ecosystems, and data at the edge, adding virtual control and transparency for the data centers.

With the acquisition, Equinix will be able to build on Metronode’s government agency relationships, including supporting the new South Wales Government with the provision of capacity in two data centers for the GovDC program.

Upon closing the deal with Metronode, Equinix would own 40 data centers in the Asia-Pacific region and 200 data centers in 52 global markets overall.

Equinix recently launched a cloud service, Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric, that connects its data center customers directly to any other customer on Equinix’s global platform. Currently, customers in the U.S. can interconnect to any other U.S. customer across ECX. Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) customers can interconnect to any other EMEA customers. Equinix plans to offer these connections across regions by the end of 2018.