Credit: Supplied
Canberra Data Centres (CDC) has been awarded a $15.7 million contract with CSIRO, to provide technical floor space for the government agency's ICT infrastructure.
Based in Canberra, CSIRO Information Management and Technology provides ICT services and support to 5,500 employees and approximately 3,000 affiliates across Australia.
Technical floor space is the name given by CSIRO to its layer 1 supporting infrastructure for ICT services, otherwise known as specialised floor areas used to house and support computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications, network, security, server and digital storage systems.
The technical floor space will support CSIRO-owned enterprise ICT equipment and services including corporate applications, CSIRO’s large scale scientific computing clusters and research data storage.
CDC was the previous provider for the services, being awarded a contract in December 2013, described at the time as data centre services. The contract total value was $27.3 million for three years.
Fast forward four years and CDC won the new three-year contract after a competitive open tender procurement launched in July 2017.
According to CSIRO, CDC will provide floor space "equal to the space under our previous contract".
CSIRO operates data centre spaces in several locations across Australia, some of which are managed by CSIRO, and others externally, depending on its organisational requirements.
"CSIRO’s expertise in handling big data allows us to develop insights and solutions to tackle the biggest challenges Australia is facing – from modelling climate change and developing innovative health solutions to meeting the needs of a growing domestic space industry,” CSIRO chief information officer, Brendan Dalton, told ARN. “We invest in the infrastructure to make science possible.”
CSIRO has large scale scientific computing clusters and high performance storage assets, which are key to its success.
Some of CSIRO’s current works include processing complex data from its radio astronomy installations, providing a deep learning platform for its researchers.
CSIRO delivers data-intensive research and computational modelling for bioinformatics, fluid dynamics and materials science, the underpinning infrastructure for CSIRO’s data access portal, as well as, current works with its partners on earth observation data processing.
In August 2017, CDC announced plans to build its fifth data centre to be located in Fyshwick, Australian Capital Territory, with an investment of approximately $150 million.
Fyshwick 2 is set to generate 20 megawatts and it will sit on approximately 20,000 square metres area, making this CDC’s largest data centre to date. CDC did not give a specific date but the new facility is expected to be live sometime in 2018.
