One unhappy Datacom customer is determined to file a lawsuit against the company for gross negligence, claiming the provider’s Melbourne datacentre was flooded and experienced a major service outage.
A freak storm hit Melbourne over the weekend, unleashing torrential rain and causing massive damage to property in the city. ARN contacted Datacom CEO, Michael Browne, regarding speculation that the integrator’s Melbourne datacentre, which trades as GlobalCentre, was flooded. He vehemently denied the claims.
“We weren’t flooded. It was a minor event,” he said. “Anyone saying its flooded is erroneous."
This afternoon, ARN received an anonymous email under the name Datacom Lawsuit, which refuted Browne’s insistence that the datacentre was not flooded. The email contained a string of SMSes allegedly from Datacom’s network operation centre (NOC), which stated there was indeed flooding on the datacentre floor.
Judging from the times the SMSes were sent, the reported flooding impacted the facility for more than 12 hours.
“The flooding is almost a secondary issue but an outage of 12 hours for a major Australian datacentre [is] completely ridiculous and negligent on their behalf,” the email said.
Datacom Lawsuit’s sender purported to be a Datacom customer. The sender also claimed to be a managed service provider in Melbourne and Sydney and said the effects of the outage were “devastating” to the business.
“We’ve had equipment that has been fried by the apparent power surge. We’ve suffered more than 17 hours of downtime, more downtime than we have had in the history of the company,” an email to ARN detailed. “Water damage, loss of power, equipment damage. What else could have gone wrong?
“We pay Datacom thousands of dollars every month to do two basic things: Keep our equipment safe and keep power running and it has failed on all levels.”
Despite the email, Browne continued to deny the facility was flooded but admitted "there might have been some leakage intrusion".
Optus is one of many customers of GlobalCentre. An Optus spokesperson confirmed the hail storm in Melbourne caused damaged to a part of the facility’s roof with subsequent water effecting one of the power sources causing a hardware failure. Services were restored on March 7 at 2am.
In a forum on webhostingtalk.com.au, one poster also claimed to have lost all of their service into GlobalCentre and had been informed the facility was flooded. Datacom Lawsuit’s sender was looking for fellow Datacom clients affected by the outage to rally together for a class action lawsuit against the provider.
"I won't give out a number at this stage but I can tell you [customers joining the cause] is growing fast," the email said. "There are many very unhappy Datacom customers right now."
Are you a Datacom client that has experienced similar datacentre issues from the storms? Please contact spandas_lui@idg.com.au.
