2 October 2007

Canberra a data hub target

| norvan
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Source: The Australian ITNews

Andrew Colley | October 02, 2007

A CONSORTIUM led by property developer CB Richard Ellis has hatched a billion-dollar plan to make Australia, and more specifically Canberra, the Asia-Pacific region’s leading data centre hub. The consortium, which includes ActewAGL and hi-tech property developer Technical Real Estate, plans to build about 130,000sqm of data centre space at two sites in the suburbs of Hume and Belconnen. The company said it expected to complete the first data centre by September 2008 with the remaining sites to become operational over the next five to 10 years. On completion the combined facility will comprise about 30 data centre units. Mr McEwen said the centres would produce about 40 per cent less greenhouse gas per unit of computing output than current data centres by using a mix of environmental technologies, including some that would take advantage of Canberra’s cool climate. Utility provider ActewAGL has also agreed to build facilities to power the site using gas piped from Bass Strait if power loads at the facility reach 40MW.

just wondering what everyone thought? is this good for Canberra?

Norvan Vogt
ACT Democrats

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I expect that the proposed data centres would consolidate a number of govt data centres from around Canberra, which would sit quite nicely with the Whole of Govt initiatives.

I dont know about you but there is couple data centres around town that are government focused. Including Transact/ACTtewAGL datacentre on northbourne. Data centres in this town are covered with government ether providing there own space or outsoursing it out(Transact & Cybertrust). Unless alot of companies like your BHP’s and ING’s of the world decide to host alot of services off site in the ACT this is stupid. Mind you transact’s datacentre from what I have heard is sooo disorganised……

This would be awesome for Canberra, it would continue to build us as a smart city instead of say a international-freight-24×7-airport city. The flow on effects of internet speed & services for Canberrans would be good too. I expect the Belconnen data centre might be located where one of the old Cameron Offices, or Benjamin Offices buildings (or their carparks) currently stand. Also I wouldn’t mind seeing increased demand for IT staff, and the corresponding increase in salaries.

Oh, just to clarify, I probably shouldn’t have used “we” in my last post – I’m not a member of any political party.

@JR,

ne can only assume that the “Democrat” way of working out whether this proposal is good for Canberra is to take it to a deliberative vote of all your party members (all 52, as of the last count you gave us) and then based on the numbers decide and further debate amongst yourselves as to whether this may be good for the Territory or not.

We call this “Democracy”. It’s pretty neat, huh?

another location, elsewhere in the country that sees the potential for development, employment and investment for their local area, grabs the opportunity by the horns and runs with it.

We call this a short-sighted cash/vote grab.

I don’t know where your concept of governance comes from, but I know who I’m voting for.

Ari – appreciate you took the time to notice, but this isn’t the thread for that.

Unfortunately I was edited, it was intended to read ‘must be dispensable’, rather than simply ‘dispensable’.

Maelinar, did ya get the balloon?

Jonathon Reynolds11:29 pm 02 Oct 07

@Maelinar

I can categorically say that my vote will not be going to support any party that advocates, under false pretenses, the holding the balance of power. Such parties promote the concept of the balance of power in order to be able hold the country ransom and enable the execution of their own extremist agenda.

adeptacheese11:15 pm 02 Oct 07

hopefully this’ll bring some pimp internets down here with it 🙂

@ JR
52 members is more than the 19 registered members of ACT Light Rail.

And the poll on your choo choo web site is a crock of shite.

Who are you voting for JR ?

I’m not inclined to follow parties that engage in making rash decisions that they will regret later *cough* selling water rights to cotton farmers in a drought *cough*

Jonathon Reynolds2:25 pm 02 Oct 07

@Norvan,

One can only assume that the “Democrat” way of working out whether this proposal is good for Canberra is to take it to a deliberative vote of all your party members (all 52, as of the last count you gave us) and then based on the numbers decide and further debate amongst yourselves as to whether this may be good for the Territory or not.

In the mean time this opportunity, whilst you procrastinate, is lost to another location, elsewhere in the country that sees the potential for development, employment and investment for their local area, grabs the opportunity by the horns and runs with it.

If this is an example of how you intend to wield “the balance of power” in the Senate… I’m definitely not voting for you!

oh yea just down the road from the stadium..

dawndrifter, there’s also a very large one in bruce..

Snahons_scv6_berlina1:54 pm 02 Oct 07

And what is your thought Norvan ?

hmm fantastic cool weather for 5 months of the year, and then f**king hot. Any savings in winter will be offset by the cooling requirements in summer.

obviously this is very good for the IT industry.. So far we have one on Northbourne and others scattered around in the basements of government agencies…

This facility will provide space for Government and private enterprise to house their IT shops in canberra instead of Sydney or Melb – and i would suggest at a lower cost too..

only problem i see is we currently are short hundreds if not thousands of IT people here. if we have a big ramp up in IT infrastructure with no one to fill the void we will have problems attracting the people we are targeting with the initiative…… for the current old hands in the industry… your rates will again be going up.. hard life driving a keyboard isnt it

Gungahlin Al11:31 am 02 Oct 07

Was surprised to see Belconnen nominated as one of the sites. I would have thought that sort of large-scale land requirement would be prohibitively expensive except in an industrial area like Mitchell.

But new jobs anywhere outside Civic and Woden would be welcome. From a disaster prevention facility perspective Canberra is stable politically, geologically and meteorologically. And it might just help drive us to improved internet connectivity.

barking toad11:00 am 02 Oct 07

Does this mean all those callers with Indian accents pretending to be in Sydney with fantastic Optus offers will be calling from Canberra?

“the Asia-Pacific region’s leading data centre hub”

Australia doesn’t exactly have the best connection to the rest of the world, especially compared to other Asian countries. Hope it doesn’t hurt our Internet connections even more…

I can’t see any harm in this proposal.

Fine, as long as it doesn’t receive any public money.

personally, i’d rather my department moved our data centres (and associated IT SERvices teams) to melbourne..

May get us on the map on an international scale – I mean everyone knows Sydney is our capital city right…?

Good for the IT industry in Canberra, if the customers are there, of course. Depends on whether their “green” datacentre costs any more to run than a non-green one.

I’m all for it, but I’m possibly overwhelmed by the geek cool factor. 🙂

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