Seventeen providers from a range of industries have lined up with expressions of interest to manage the NSW Government’s whole-of-government datacentre requirements.
The Expressions of Interest process, which was announced in October 2009 and closed on December 1, will see the NSW Government consolidate it datacentre facilities from 130 to just two.
The list of prospective tenderers includes outsourcing and integration agencies, CSC, Fujitsu and Datacom, along with specialised datacentre providers, Equinix, Canberra Data Centres, Enterprise Data Corporation and Global Switch Property. Several telecom operators, property groups and IT vendors feature in the mix including Oracle, Sun, Macquarie Telecom, Tier 5 and Leighton Contractors. Financial agencies, Macquarie Capital and Gresham Rabo Management, have also applied.
According to tender documents, the state government aims to reduce operational costs while improving datacentre security, utilisation, reliability and environmental efficiency. Lead agencies for the tender are the Department of Education and the Department of Health.
The project includes provisioning, operation and maintenance of two robust and scaleable datacentres (Tier 2 and Tier 3 level) to cater to up to 3MW of the Government’s initial ICT load. It covers Central West, Far West, Hunter, Illawarra, Mid North Coast, Murray, Murrumbidgee, Northern, North Western, Richmond Tweed, South Eastern and Sydney.
The tender has been applauded by industry pundits, who claim it demonstrates the Government’s clear and strategic long-term ICT agenda. It follows a review of 55 datacentre facilities across 32 agencies back in 2008.
A shortlist of providers is expected to be compiled this quarter, followed by a formal request for tender. The datacentre facilities are due to be operational by 2011.
