NSW unveils data centre reform plans

The Departments of Health and Education will act as anchor tenants, with facilities to be fully operational in 2011 at either new or existing sites.

The request for tender is slated for the first quarter of 2010.

The data centre contract will last up to 20 years -- 10 years initially then two blocks of five-year extensions -- for the design, construction and maintenance of the facilities.

If the site is to be built from scratch, the successful company or consortium would have to finance the project.

Space leased will be paid for on the basis of availability and performance, including meeting energy efficiency targets. Payment arrangement details will be released in tender documents.

Data centre reform is a critical part of the government's ICT strategy to cut operational costs and capital investment and achieve environmental leadership goals.

The Rees government hopes to minimise the "ongoing environmental impact of its data centre operations" and improve reliability and security for applications and data integration across the public sector.

NSW Commerce Minister Jodi McKay said consolidating data storage and processing requirements would provide significant cost savings and reduce carbon footprint.

Industry watchers and data centre developers have been waiting with bated breath for NSW's next move on data centre reform a year after the rationalisation plan was first mooted.

As NSW government chief information officer Emmanuel Rodriguez told The Australian in October 2008, there are about 130 large and small data centres in use by government departments and agencies.

His vision to ultimately run only two data centres, with Health and Education as key tenants, has come to fruition.

The government is inviting interested parties to participate in the project after detailed expression of interest (EOI) documents were released yesterday.

"The facilities will be purpose-designed with approximately Tier II and Tier III levels of resilience available as defined by Uptime Institute," the documents say. "They should be able to dissipate heat and cool ICT equipment."

Respondents to the EOI are free to propose locations for both sites.

Although there is a preference for one or both data centres to be located in NSW, the government is open to using private land or NSW government land in other states or territories, the documents say.

However, the Hunter Valley, Illawarra, Goulburn/ACT border and Bathurst/Orange/Blue Mountains were noted as possible choices.

"Preliminary investigation shows (these) regional locations may be suitable locations offering regional development or environmental advantages (such as low ambient air temperatures) alongside access to reliable power and communications infrastructure," the documents say.

Ms McKay said the government would consider putting one or both centres in regional areas and "we are looking for the market to indicate whether this can be done effectively”.

For the EOI, PricewaterhouseCoopers was the financial and commercial adviser, Commtech Asia provided technical advice, legal help came from Gilbert + Tobin, WalterTurnbull was the probity adviser and EMF Griffiths/CS Technology handled sustainability aspects.

At the federal level, the Australian Government Information Management Office is working on a whole-of-government data centre strategy to be presented to government by the end of the year.
[Read More at the Australian IT site]