The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) has all but finalised vendors for its data centre migration and facilities panels following an extensive selection process which began in November 2010.
In-depth: Data centre migration guide.
The panels were formed as part of the Australian Government’s data centre strategy which was designed to guide its procurement and management of data centre services until 2025. The strategy includes consolidating data centre sites and increasing the utilisation of servers and storage.
A Department of Finance and Deregulation spokesperson told Computerworld Australia that while the data centre migration services panel vendor list had now been filled, following the appointment of a number of data centre vendors including APC and IBM, a "small number" of companies would be added to the data centre facilities panel in late 2011.
"In June 2011, vendor NEC was added to the facilities panel while more data centre facilities will be added to the greenfield category of the panel," the spokesperson said. “The [facilities] panel consists of three categories: existing, fit-out and greenfield. The first two categories of the panel have been established." Existing data centre facilities on the panel include Enterprise Data Centre’s building in Mitcham, Victoria,, Equinix’s facility in Alexandria, New South Wales and Australian Data Centres in Mitchell, ACT. The facilities panel provides a whole of government arrangement for agencies to procure data centre space while the migration services panel was established to help agencies move to new data centres.
The spokesperson added that outcomes being pursued by the facilities panel include:
• Reducing agency procurement costs by a simplified procurement process;
• Leveraging whole of government purchasing power;
• Improving environmental sustainability;
• Meeting the business needs of agencies; and,
• Supporting competition in the data centre industry.
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