Technical staff at technology services company Dimension Data designed and built an entire functioning enterprise data network for its annual conference in Queensland.

Paul Wilkinson, solutions architect at Dimension Data, said 15 technical staff had been setting up the network at the conference centre for the past four days.

One of the major differences this year, Wilkinson said, was that Dimension Data had approached it as an architectural solutions design, rather than just setting up the network to showcase point demonstrations. "In a real organisational network you want the components to support each other," Wilkinson said. "The challenge was to put it in a business setting."

The network--which is made up of AU$7 million worth of equipment loaned from suppliers--was initially built in Sydney, Wilkinson said. Four to five weeks of work went into this before it was disassembled and then trucked to Coolum, Queensland for the conference.

Wilkinson said it was managed like any other project it would carry out for one of its customers, using its internal project management team.

It's running on a multimode fibre gigabit ethernet backbone, and has portal applications, interactive telephony and natural data amongst the functionality. The IP telephony is integrated with the hotel's PABX and PSTN.

The idea was to provide a showcase for the new technologies at the conference, and Wilkinson said one of the benefits for staff working on the project was getting to play with all the latest technology.

After the conference the network would be dismantled and trucked back to Dimension Data's logistics centre in Sydney, where the equipment will be deconfigured before being returned to suppliers.

Vivienne Fisher travelled to Coolum as a guest of Dimension Data

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