Three more Australian government departments have left Global Switch’s data center in Sydney.
Since Chinese investors took control of London-based data center company Global Switch over a three-year period beginning in 2016, the Australian government has been on a migration journey, moving data and applications out of the company’s data center in Ultimo, Sydney, and into facilities owned by other providers. Global Switch is reportedly looking for new owners, with multiple parties interested.
iTnews now reports the Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), and the Australian Communications Media Authority (ACMA) exited Global Switch Ultimo (GSU) facility by the previously reported July 2022 deadline.
In January 2021, the Australian Securities commission said it would leave and move to Canberra Data Centres, joining many of the other fleeing agencies including Home Affairs, the Australian Tax Office, and the Defence Department.
The Australian Government set a new target date of July 2022 for federal agencies to leave Global Switch’s Sydney data center on grounds of national security, having missed the previous goal of September 2020.
A Home Affairs spokesperson told iTnews the “ACMA, ASIC and Home Affairs... migrated all their sensitive data and exited the GSU data center ahead of the June 30, 2022, deadline," without elaborating on the exit date.
ASIC and Home Affairs have signed hosting deals with Canberra Data Centres, but whether ACMA has also moved into a CDC facility is unclear.
The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), the fourth member of the Home Affairs-led group, was also slated to leave the facility by July 2022, but its departure has been hindered by supply chain issues. Innovation Aus reports that ADHA completed a migration of sensitive data to hosting services earlier this month, moving to the government-certified Microsoft Azure Cloud in Australia with the final exit due imminently.
“Due to unexpected supply chain issues, ADHA’s exit was slightly delayed. ADHA migrated its sensitive data on July 7 2022 and is scheduled to exit the GSU data center on July 21, 2022,” the spokesperson said.
Documents released under freedom of information laws put the total cost of the exit activities at $115 million, though this is understood not to include the cost of migrating other agencies that still use GSU.
The Defence department’s migration has been delayed to 2025.
Going all-in on Australian cloud
Meanwhile, the Australian Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts is set to exit its on-premises data centers by early 2023 and migrate everything to the cloud.
As also reported by iTnews, the department has issued a request for tender to find a new infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform provider.
Google Cloud recently became the latest cloud provider to join the Certified Strategic list under the government's renewed hosting certification framework. Certified strategic is the highest level of assurance under the framework, and requires data centers and managed services providers to allow the government to specify ownership and control conditions. Google joins AWS, AUCloud, Sliced Tech, Vault Cloud, Microsoft, Kyndryl, Oracle, and IBM.
Data center providers Certified Strategic include AirTrunk, Australian Data Centres, Canberra Data Centres, DCI, Equinix, Fujitsu, Macquarie Telecom, and NextDC.
Another Australian company looking to go all-in on the cloud is the Bank of Queensland. In a recent ASX update, the firm said it plans to "migrate all apps to the public cloud and exit traditional data centers."
