The NSW Government’s long-running plan to consolidate its datacentre facilities from 130 to just two has finally advanced. The five shortlisted candidates can now bid on the tender.
The consolidation tender, which began in October 2009, saw 17 initial bidders reduced to five short listed candidates in July 2010 – seven months after the expressions of interest period closed.
“The successful bidder will have the choice of using established data centres, or building new facilities providing they meet the high standards demanded by the NSW government,” NSW Minister for Commerce, Paul Lynch, said in a statement. “Tenders for the data centres close with the State Contracts Control Board on 31 January 2011.”
One of the datacentres will be located in Sydney while the other will be placed in Illawarra. The five final candidates are Global Switch, Gresham, Leighton, Macquarie Capital and the Plenary Group.
The shortlisting of tenderers saw major companies miss out including CSC, Oracle, Datacom, Fujitsu and Canberra Data Centres. The deal will include provisioning, operation and maintenance of two Tier 2 or Tier 3 level datacentres to cater to up to 3MW of the Government’s initial ICT load.
It will be designed to provide coverage for the Central West, Far West, Hunter, Illawarra, Mid North Coast, Murray, Murrumbidgee, Northern, North Western, Richmond Tweed, South Eastern and Sydney.
The plan followed a review of 55 datacentre facilities across 32 agencies in 2008.
