NSW finalises colossal datacentre consolidation

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news The New South Wales State Government this week announced the Leighton subsidiary Metronode as the winner of its long-running and wide-ranging datacentre overhaul project, with the company to construct two new substantial facilities which will allow the state to consolidate its IT operations drastically.

A number of the state’s departments and agencies are currently believed to be 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 two centres will provide up to 9MW each of IT load allowing the NSW Government to consolidate Government datacentres and reduce unnecessary technologies used in its daily operations, with the decommissioning of existing data capacity to begin once the new facilities are complete,” said NSW Minister for Finance & Services Greg Pearce in a statement issued yesterday. “Much of the Government’s existing capacity is out-dated, inefficient and does not deliver a viable, cost-effective service for government agencies. These will be gradually closed and data migrated to the new centres as they open, enabling significant cost savings.”

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.

The news comes as the NSW Government a little over a week ago revealed a new wide-ranging ICT strategy, which it said was slated to make it “the leader in ICT” when it came to public sector service delivery and the development of the state’s technology sector as a whole.

“We are committed to making it easier for NSW citizens to interact with Government, to harness the opportunities provided by ICT to improve Government operations and to develop the ICT industry in NSW,” said Pearce. “The NSW Liberals & Nationals are committed to improving service delivery for residents in NSW, who expect fast, efficient and timely services. The NSW Government is committed to driving growth and investment in Western Sydney and the Illawarra and this news reaffirms our commitment to providing the necessary infrastructure and growth in ICT.”

opinion/analysis
To be honest, the NSW Government’s datacentre strategy confuses me a little.

While I understand that the state needs a stack of datacentre infrastructure, does it really need to build new physical datacentres to gain access to this level of infrastructure? When we’ve got HP rolling out a new colossal facility in Western Sydney (check out the photos; I think you’ll agree it’s going to be large), Bevan Slattery’s NextDC rolling out a new facility every minute or so (I’m exaggerating, but you get the point), and others such as Fujitsu constantly investing in this area, does it really make sense for the Government to build its own massive facilities like this? I’m unsure at the moment. It seems like there’s the potential for overbuild … especially when you consider the facilities which companies like Global Switch and Equinix already operate locally.

What I do know is that it’s overwhelmingly positive that the NSW Government is going to shift its IT infrastructure out of back-office mini-computer rooms and into dedicated, modern, datacentre facilities. To be honest, this kind of activity is more or less basic IT hygiene in 2012 (as is the state’s plan to virtualise everything it can), but often that’s too much to expect from state governments in Australia. I expect a number of departmental CIOs in other states are currently looking at NSW’s political mandate for positive IT change with envy.

10 COMMENTS

  1. Hopefully the satellite images for that HP datacentre are a bit out of date.. it was meant to be finished 6 months ago, but all I see is dirt and puddles on Google and Bing: http://bit.ly/JLrSze

  2. A joke

    Finance for DCs is tough to come by, even harder are anchor tenants to help share the risk. The government could have anchored numerous facilities through the private sector and seen a boom in construction across the state off the back of this. Instead, they throw money at one corporate who will use a product that is imported from the UK, and in the process we continue to see IT hamstrung by a lack of investment in DC infrastructure.

  3. A confused opinion/analysis leads to a confused comment by Bob – who would be partially right if the opinion was correct….. however the contract for space and services anchor tennanted the builds into a pair that may not have happened otherwise. The government certainly aren’t building themselves. Anyway who wants to “consolidate” into 100 data centres that fly by nights build (other than the feds of course)?

      • Yes, that is inaccurate.
        Metronode will build/operate the DCs. NSW Govt are anchor tenants. Albeit tenants who have:
        -Committed to a certain amount of floor space, AS WELL AS reserving power and cooling, which is very rare.
        -First right of refusal to who else Metronode can offer space to.

        Seems like a great deal for the government, IMHO.

        • FFS. Yes, I KNOW Metronode will be building the datacentres, not the Govt. The Govt is contracting/supporting them to do so. Of course the Govt is then acting as the major tenant in those datacentres. That much is obvious, or should be.

          • Charming.

            Renai wrote:
            “does it really make sense for the Government to build its own massive facilities like this?”

            Answer:
            Yes it does (not that they are actually building it, or contracting someone to build it for them, but lets not get bogged down in semantics).

            The facts are:
            Metronode take the risk of the build, upfront costs (things like DRUPS and gensets aren’t cheap!) and ongoing costs of providing power, cooling and floorspace for which the Government doesn’t pay for until it needs it (if it doesn’t take it, it doesn’t pay for it).
            Government has first right of refusal over all of the above, as well as being able to veto any other tennants, and Metronode MUST reserve 50% of the power for Govt for up to 20 years (which govt don’t pay for until they use it), and have agreed per KW pricing set in stone.

            Government has got a really good deal here.

            Regards,
            Douglas

  4. Extracting from your own article “Metronode will also be able to use the facilities to provide data storage capacity for other, non-NSW Government clients” …. not sure what “data storage capacity” is but my understanding is that the Government is merely a tenant in a pair of Data Centres with some extra rights that come along with being an anchor. The Tender didn’t appear to be released to build government owned data centres.

    • Yes, I KNOW Metronode will be building the datacentres, not the Govt. The Govt is contracting/supporting them to do so. Of course the Govt is then acting as the major tenant in those datacentres. That much is obvious, or should be.

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