WorkCover outsources datacentre work

WorkCover Queensland has made the decision to stop managing its own core IT infrastructure, and has instead moved it to two externally provided datacentres that it believes will help cater for the organisation's future growth.

The organisation realised that running its own datacentre services in-house was no longer part of its core business activities, and, as a result, moved its network, storage and servers to Queensland Government provider CITEC, to be housed in its Brisbane CBD datacentre and the Polaris datacentre where it rents space. It aired its plans last year, when searching for suitable equipment to fill the new datacentres.

"This is a step in the direction of making greater use of managed or cloud-based infrastructure. We are trialling SaaS [software as a service] and IaaS [infrastructure as a service] for some noncritical applications, and are investigating further opportunities with infrastructure services," said WorkCover Queensland business solutions general manager Trevor Barrenger.

"Running a datacentre has its challenges, and by removing the datacentre from WorkCover's CBD office, we were able to remove complex building infrastructure, such as specialised air conditioning, fire management and power supply."

Although WorkCover is no longer responsible for power-supply management, it was still mindful of its choice of equipment.

"We have considered green computing in the project, and have ensured that both the equipment and datacentres have provided power efficiency."

The move has also allowed the organisation to free up building space, providing secondary benefits for such as being able to better plan office accommodation.

According to the organisation, WorkCover's customers and employees experienced no disruption to their normal business operations during the seamless changeover period, which was achieved on time and on budget.