The Australian Government has called for tenders as part of its new data center purchasing initiative for service providers to help it work on data center relocation activities.

 

According to a report by ZDNet Australia, 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".

 

Australia is undertaking a massive effort to consolidate it data centers –shortlisted companies are expected to play a major part in this. The Australian Government creates preferred supplier panels for all its IT needs, winning a spot on one of these is often the only way suppliers can work on public sector projects.

 

The federal government says consolidation could help it shave US$1 billion a year off of its data center bill over 15 years.

 

The project is expected to take up until 2025 to complete, and will kick off with the tenders and work that will be carried out to determine its need for data center space and define data center standards for purchasing equipment and floor space. The project will to cover every aspect of the data center, regardless of size.

 

Australia’s Minister for Finance and Deregulation Lindsay Tanner said a lot of government data centers were aging and reaching their limit for electricity supply and floor space.

 

"These are primarily older data centers that are reaching the limits of their electricity supply and floor space," Tanner said.

 

"With government demand for data center ICT equipment rising by more than 30 percent each year, it was clear that we needed to reassess how the government handled its data-center activities.

 

It’s spread across Australia, located in not just large enterprise data centers but also cupboaords, converted offices, computer and server rooms and in commercial and in-sourced data centers."

 

Australia’s government currently spends US$850 million a year on data centers across 30,000 sq m of floorspace. It hopes to get this down to 12,000 sq m in the first five years of its strategy.

 

Last week the government launched its tender for the migration of i6ts data center services.

 

It is expected that an outcome on these current tenders will be reached by the end of January 2011.

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