Data centres Q&A: Harbour IT

Tell us about your data centre offering.

Evans: Our data centre offering is a private cloud. It is hosted at Equinix in Mascot, in Sydney, and NextDC in Melbourne. We are running a FlexPod Cisco private cloud and we also have a Pure Storage flash option.

What managed services are being provided from these data centres?

Evans: We provide infrastructure-as-a-service to our customers in a highly secure, tier-3 data centre. The primary offering is around IaaS, backup-as-a-service and DR-as-a-service. Then we wrap a full service desk and managed offering around that with Sydney-based, Australian support.

What technology is essential to your managed services and data centre mix?

Evans: Ours is built on the renowned FlexPod design, which combines the world-leading power of VMware, Cisco and NetApp. We also have a Pure Storage flash option, which has much higher IOPS.

When did your company first get involved in this area?

Evans: We’re now on version three of our cloud. Version one was in 2010. We are now renewing three- and four-year-old contracts and continuing to invest heavily to stay ahead of the curve.

Heard about any cool data centre technology lately?

Evans: The data centre providers are starting to come under threat just offering data-centre space, so they are starting to offer ecosystem connectivity with cross-connect or high speed connections. Companies like Megaport are offering high-speed 10G connectivity between their data centres.

Can you tell us about a recent customer project?

Evans: Disability-support charity Scope has just migrated to our cloud. There are 1800 staff across 97 sites and they have about 60 servers. They are going live with a full IaaS piece, and we are providing  full managed services and the service desk. As of the first day, 1800 people turned on their computer running off our cloud.

What is driving customers towards data centre services?

Evans: Customers are realising it is no longer a simple process to get funding for non-core activities.  Running a data centre, providing power, real estate and environmentals are a non-core activity for the majority of businesses.

Data centres are…?

Evans: The informational heart of an organisation.