Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard opened Macquarie Telecom’s new data center in North Ryde, Sydney today.

The telecommunications and managed hosting provider is just one company certified to supply the National Broadband Network (NBN), Australia’s next-generation high-speed broadband network, to customers in Australia.

Macquarie Telecom’s Intellicentre 2 facility - built at a cost of AU$60m - is one of Australia’s most highly certified facilities, making it ideal for providing cloud services and shared infrastructure and services.

The Australian Government is currently considering its own roadmap regarding cloud as it looks to streamline services and reduce its data center footprint.

The Tier III, 20,000 sq m Intellicentre 2 facility, which sits on a two-hectare site close to Sydney’s CBD, has a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.3 and this week achieved ISO 27001, which covers it for security.

Macquarie Telecom MD for Hosting Aidan Tudehope said its certifications are aimed at government and enterprise clients.

“ISO 27001 is an indicator or our on-going investment in ensuring the highest levels of cyber-security and anti-intrusion capabilities for Intellicentre 2, in order to meet and exceed the rigorous standards of our government and enterprise clients.”

It has also achieved ASIO T4 which is sent by ASIO and the Defence Signals Directorate certification and meets requirements for PSPF, the Australian government’s Protective Security Policy Framework. It has also achieved Payment Card Industry (PCI) certification.

“In recognizing the mission-critical nature of our clients’ applications and data, we’ve sought to implement an extensible security framework at Intellicentre 2 that goes above and beyond any other Australian data center,” Tuppe said.

The data center construction was managed by Australian industrial infrastructure contractor the John Holland Group, and hurleypalmerflatt acted as services consultants and Greenbox Architecture designed the facility.

News Limited has already signed up as an anchor tenant at the site.