The NSW's data centre reform project, aimed at injecting A$200 million-plus and hundreds of jobs into the state economy, continues to unravel, with another prospective builder dropping out. Global Switch has become the latest to quit the tender process, which has turned into a two-horse race between consortium leaders Leighton Contractors and Macquarie Capital. It is news that should have Leighton and Macquarie rejoicing, but they are now waiting on tenterhooks as the new Barry O'Farrell-led Coalition government decides on the tender's fate.

Virgin Blue has reached a financial settlement with its IT service provider Navitaire, following the devastating computer system failure the airline endured in September, which left thousands of passengers delayed or stranded and battered the airline’s reputation.

New Zealand can expect more data centres to be built in-country despite the earthquake-prone landscape and rising insurance costs, according to the CEO of a local data centre provider. "Why do we need a data centre in Christchurch?" asked Gael Hargreaves, CEO of Revera. "Because we've got a valid business proposition and that's why we're still there. We're generating more business from Christchurch because we have local people there too. It's all about local demand," she said.

21Vianet Group, which is the largest carrier-neutral Internet data centre services provider in China, has announced terms for its IPO. The Beijing, China-based company plans to raise US$127 million by offering 11.5 million shares at a price range of US$10.00 to US$12.00.

21Vianet Group, which was founded in 1999 and booked $80 million in sales over the last 12 months, plans to list on the NASDAQ under the symbol VNET. Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital, and J.P. Morgan are the lead underwriters on the deal, which is expected to price during the week of April 18.

Hosting company Servers Australia has entered into negotiations with Rittal and APC to expand its 800 sq m disaster recovery facility on the New South Wales Central Coast. The 12-month-old facility currently housed eight racks of equipment from public and private sector customers, 13 racks of Servers Australia’s own gear, and two empty racks.

Inspur Group, China's leading server manufacturer, has unveiled its container data centre "Smart Cloud" in both Beijing and Jinan. The "Smart Cloud" is the first cloud data centre product in China, which outperforms traditional data centres in terms of energy consumption, manageability and configuration. It is laying the foundation for China's future cloud computing era.

Chinese internet service portal Tencent has started construction on a 90,000 sq m data centre north of Tianjin. The report puts the initial investment in the project at US$91.76 million.

Tencent’s new data centre is scheduled to be finished in 2013, and will be used for data storage and backup. It should help drive the company’s ventures into cloud computing too.

Source: Penn Olson

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Unisys NZ has won a three-year renewal of its longstanding IT services contract with the financial services cooperative PSIS.

The services delivered under the contract include ClearPath and ES7000 servers and other data centre hardware support, disaster recovery hosting and services, and security monitoring of PSIS’ internet banking channel.

Source: Computerworld

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Chi-X Australia and Equinix, a provider of global data centre services, have announced that Chi-X Australia has selected Equinix’s facility as the primary data centre for its matching engine. The announcement comes as Chi-X Australia continues to work with industry groups and market participants in preparation for its fourth quarter launch, subject to final government approval.

Orange Business Services, a leading global integrator of communications solutions for multinational corporations, today announced it has won a new contract to deliver global networking services for New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, adding to the many public sector organizations and more than 10 foreign ministries that it already supports.

Interchange, a Vanuatu based company, and Alcatel-Lucent have signed a landmark agreement to deploy Vanuatu’s first international submarine cable system linking Port Vila, Vanuatu, to Suva, Fiji. Scheduled for completion in mid 2012, this new system will deliver faster, more efficient and cost-effective Internet connectivity to the pacific island nation.

Interchange will construct, own, and operate the 1230 kilometre submarine cable system, which will link directly into the high capacity Southern Cross Cable between Sydney and Hawaii.

Source: IEWY

NextDC founder Bevan Slattery has confirmed that its data centre will be located in the major northern Sydney technology hub Macquarie Park, following a preliminary non-binding heads-of-agreement last month.

"This morning [NextDC] notified the vendors that it is satisfied with those [due diligence] inquiries, making the contract for the purchase of the site unconditional," the company said in a release. The site, likely to hold between 4000 and 6000 sq m of floor space, is expected to be operational by quarter three of 2011.

Source: ZDNet

Victoria’s economy will receive a A$200 million boost with the development of a green data centre in Melbourne's west. The Polaris Victoria data centre will be built on a 1.2ha greenfield site in the booming suburb of Derrimut, about18km from the central business district. The investment decision was driven by strong demand from the corporate sector, especially financial institutions, Springfield Data Centre director Chris Schroor said.

Toshiba (Australia) found that running out of physical server space in its data centres was restricting its growth plans. The company's operations were supported by 100 servers distributed more than 12 to 14 racks. With numbers increasing, the task of configuring and installing new servers and decommissioning existing machines required a full-time technician. The company lacked a standard build and scripted or automated deployment process to streamline server provisioning.

AIMS Group, which is being aquired by TIME dotcom,, will invest RM80mil to expand its existing data centre and build a new centre. Chief executive officer Chiew Kok Hin said the company, one of South-East Asia’s leading carrier-neutral data centre operators, wanted to add two more floors at its current data centre in KL. “Currently we have six floors here in KL and work is in progress to (add) two more floors.

The department of information technology has mooted a third party audit of the state data centres for overseeing the SDCs' operations and management control processes besides auditing their security processes. The SDCs are one of the core infrastructure pillars of the National e-Governance Programme and are envisaged as state level digital nervous system housing all applications and databases.

IBM has been chosen to supply a high density cooling solution at the University of Melbourne’s new data centre, Data Hall 2, which goes live late this year. The facility was built for the university’s new IT initiatives including cloud and research computing.

The three-year service contract entails IBM Global Technology Services installing a cooling solution with rear door heat exchange to Data Hall 2 along with a number of third-party racks and data centre management tools. Support and maintenance will also be provided.

Source: ARN

Remember Steven Bradbury – the ice skater who won gold when he was the last man standing? Well there’s a sense of the Steven Bradburys about the race to supply the NSW Government with its data centres as a key bid member in the Leighton camp has now pulled the plug.

The India Data Center Services market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 23% over the three years to 2012 to touch Rs11,800 crore, according to findings of a CyberMedia Research study titled ‘India Data Center Services Market Review 2011’.

The Third Party Data Center Services market, that makes up for 20% of the market, are slated to grow at a CAGR of 34% to touch Rs 2,800 crore in the three years up to 2012. The Captive Data Centres that make up for four-fifths of the market will record slower growth compared to the overall Data Centre Services market.

Source: EFY Times

KVH and Singapore Telecommunications, market experts in low latency services in Japan and Singapore, respectively, have announced that they have established an ultra low latency network between Tokyo and Singapore for the new location of the Singapore Exchange that opens in August, guaranteeing a latency of 67 ms, making it the fastest network between the two locations.

The Malaysian government's ambition to transform the country into a world-class data centre hub is a promising move, but several challenges will need to be ironed out to ensure success, say industry watchers.