Customers of the National Australia Bank were left without access to money and no way of making payments on the weekend as what it says was a computer glitch brought its payment systems down.

Thousands of people were left out of cash as a result of the incident, which gave rise to concerns yet again about the bank's aging mainframe and computing systems.

The problem occurred during an upgrade to its mainframe system but those who know the banks IT systems have for some time cast assertions that its back end needs some serious work.

The National Australia Bank is part of the new Open Data Center Alliance, which hopes to promote the use of open standards in data center deployments and design.

Sydney 2 plans approved

Global Switch said it has received the green light to go ahead with a A$300m data center in Sydney it says will help meet increasing demand from businesses in the region.

Contracts have already been signed with NBN Co (the company tasked to carry out the operations of the country's National Broadband Network) and the Australian Department of Defence, and Global Switch said the New South Wales government is also in need of new data center space.

Sydney 2 will sit adjacent to Global Switch's Sydney 1 data center. It will be 34,000 sq m and will use rainwater and recycled water for its cooling, leading to a saving of 220,000 Megalitres of water a year ÔÇô a positive in the drought-prone nation.

Government plans further consolidation meetings with industry

The Australian Government Information Management Office said it will soon shed light on its Data Center Strategy implementation to help bring the industry up to speed on its current plans according to a report by Australia's Techworld.

It said discussions with the industry will focus on its implementation plans, offering information beyond the original request for tender sent out at the National Press Club on 2 December.

We recently reported that the Australian Government had called for tenders as part of its new data center purchasing initiative for service providers to help it work on data center relocation activities.

The Data Center Facilities Request for Tender, released by AusTender (the government tender site which was closed for maintenance at the time of writing), will focus on the removal of equipment with "highly specialized infrastructure work".