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Innovation

Australian government announces first datacentre panel suppliers

Four Australian companies have been named for the Department of Finance's new Datacentre Facilities Supplies Panel.
Written by Josh Taylor, Contributor

The Australian government has announced the first four companies to be added to its Australian Government Datacentre Facilities Supplies Panel to offer hosting services to Australian government agencies.

The government sought requests for tender back in August last year for companies to apply for the panel for scalable and flexible datacentre facilities supplies located in Australia. The aim of the panel is to make it easier for government agencies to procure datacentre services, with better pricing and pre-determined contract terms.

This panel is in addition to the government's existing datacentre as a service multi-use list, which currently has 104 suppliers offering over 1,500 services.

In a short blog post yesterday, the Department of Finance announced that the four suppliers named for the new panel were Canberra Data Centres, Australian Data Centres, Datapod, and NextDC.

NextDC said yesterday that Australia Post was already utilising the company's M1 datacentre in Melbourne as part of its Building Future Ready IT project, and the C1 Canberra datacentre was built to the specifications required by the government for the Australian Taxation Office.

"“These facilities have all been recognised by the Commonwealth as having the efficiency and scalability needed to power their shift to cloud-based operations. I am especially pleased that an Australian company, boasting Australian innovation will be a lead partner in this," NextDC CEO Craig Scroggie said in a statement.

The government has increased its use of panels, and the datacentre as a service panel has already resulted in 30 contracts signed in 21 months worth a total of AU$1.5 million.

Speaking to ZDNet last month, Australian government chief technology officer John Sheridan said that the government will look to establish a cloud services panel by the end of 2014.

"We can maintain the sort of competition that tends to drive prices down. We hope to have that panel in place by the end of this calendar year," he said.

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