[LINK] Federal CIO rules out super data centre

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

<brd>
Remember TomW's prediction made back in January:

  The 10,000 m2 ... of large government data centre space the Gershon
  Report found in Canberra, will be reduced to about 100m2.

I don't see evidence of any reduction so far, never mind to 100m2.
But what the heck, it's only May, there's plenty of time for a miracle.
</brd>


CeBIT09: Federal CIO rules out super data centre
By Brett Winterford
13 May 2009 10:15AM

Australian Government CIO Ann Steward has ruled out the possibility of 
the Federal Government building its own supersized data centre to 
support all its agencies to meet recommendations in the Gershon Review.

Speaking at the CeBIT conference in Sydney this morning, Steward threw 
cold water on the prospect of consolidating all of the Federal 
Government's data centre needs in Canberra.

"It is not a predisposed position from the Government that it will build 
its own data centre facility, that there will only be one or that it 
will only be in one location," Steward said. "We are looking at a 
variety of environments."

Steward said a centralised approach might not deliver the Government the 
redundancy agencies require.

A centralised approach to data centres, she said, is unlikely to meet 
the needs of the Government's biggest consumers of data, the Australian 
Taxation Office and Centrelink - both of whom have facilities spread 
around the nation.

Steward also said she does not expect all agencies to require the same 
level of service from their data centre.

"There are different tolerance levels for service provision across 
agencies," she said. "Most want support 24x7, but within an acceptable 
cost envelope. We don't expect Tier 4 to be our general need. We have a 
range of need from tiers one through to four.

"What we will want to do is to ensure we can apply the flexibility to 
expand and contract our needs, but also look more at the processes we 
have in place - examining the data needs, how much data has to be always 
available, how much of our data we archive, response times that are 
critical, and also what business continuity implications apply."

Steward said the meetings the Government held with the ICT industry in 
March and April to discuss its future data centre needs were "very well 
received", so much so the Government had to book extra meetings.

"We've had very good engagement with industry," Steward said, "and it 
has helped validate our own thinking."

Steward's staff have visited data centres around the nation to become 
more familiar with design models for new data centres, layouts of data 
centres and new methods of reducing power consumption.

-- 
 
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au