Enterprise IT, Featured, News - Thursday, April 11, 2013 14:46 - 2 Comments

NSW Govt opens datacentres to SaaS vendors

news The New South Wales State Government has invited technology vendors to register their interest in providing cloud computing-based services from its two new datacentres being constructed to consolidate the IT infrastructure needs of its departments and agencies state-wide.

A number of the state’s departments and agencies are currently hosting datacentre infrastructure in dilapidated facilities across Sydney and the rest of the state, often in back-office environments which are not consistent with modern datacentre practice. The state’s datacentre consolidation strategy — which has been under way for a number of years — will see it shift that IT infrastructure into two new, purpose-build datacentre facilities to be built by Metronode in Silverwater in Sydney and Unanderra (on the South Coast).

The state estimates that 250 new jobs will be created across the construction sites on a short-term basis, as well as additional network and ICT-related jobs once the facilities are operational.
New South Wales will maintain exclusive rights to the ICT equipment and exclusive access to the data stored within the facilities, but Metronode will also be able to use the facilities to provide data storage capacity for other, non-NSW Government clients.

Late last month the state issued a memorandum to IT suppliers noting that it was planning to create what it described as a government private marketplace for ICT service provision to be created within the new datacentre capability. “This will include one of the opportunities to provide Government with infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service,” the state said.

The mechanism which the state will use to allow external IT suppliers to set up shop within its datacentres is that they will need to be registered in its existing ICT Services Scheme of arrangement. In addition to being registered under an appropriate scheme, the state said, parties interested in providing these services from within the State’s data centrecapacity were invited to register details of their commitment to the NSW Government by 15 April 2013.

“Parties will need to sign a sub-licence agreement, which contains key terms and conditions. Permission will be granted to provide services from the facilities subject to the availability of capacity. Applicant entries received prior to 15 April 2013 will be processed before the data centre facilities open but this sub-license process is expected to remain available beyond the opening of the facilities,” the state noted in its document announcing the scheme. Continue…