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NSW announces datacentre shortlist

New South Wales Minister for Commerce Paul Lynch today announced the companies that will be invited to tender for the state's datacentre requirements.
Written by Luke Hopewell, Contributor

New South Wales Minister for Commerce Paul Lynch today announced the companies that will be invited to tender for the state's datacentre requirements.

Data cables

The NSW State Government has announced its shortlist for future datacentres. (Netapp FAS3170 Controller image by Simon Picken, CC2.0)

Five vendors were selected for the shortlist: Global Switch Property, Gresham Rabo Management, Leighton Contractors, Macquarie Capital Group and the Plenary Group Unit Trust. Seventeen companies had originally responded to the State Government's initial expression of interest request.

The announcement of the shortlisted candidates comes several months after the original announcement deadline of 10 March. The AustralianIT has previously reported that the government had needed to develop a new business case to justify the project.

Companies will tender to provide capacity in two datacentres situated in Sydney and the Illawarra. The contract spans over a 10-year period with two five-year extension options attached. The plan is to consolidate the government's 130 smaller datacentres into two, eco-friendly centres provided by 2011.

The drive to consolidate datacentres has come in response to a 2008 review of 55 datacentre installations across 32 NSW government agencies, according to the original expressions of interest document. The review found that agency datacentre demand was significantly higher than levels of installed datacentre infrastructure. In particular, the Department of Health and Education had "pressing needs" for more datacentre capacity.

The hope was that the two new, consolidated and more efficient facilities could reduce the cost of datacentre operation, as well as going green and improving reliability, security and capacity.

Lynch said that the government would release a comprehensive request-for-tender to the shortlisted candidates in the near future.

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