Macquarie Telecom plans secure Canberra data centre

Macquarie Telecom has committed to building a secure data centre in Canberra to support a federal internet gateway consolidation project while addressing wider public sector demand for managed hosting, storage and cloud services.

The facility, dubbed the Intellicentre 4 Bunker, is scheduled to open for business in mid-2013.

It forms part of Macquarie Telecom’s $14 million commitment to boost network, hosting and security capabilities to support the Australian Government’s gateway consolidation program.

Under the consolidation program, the Federal Government will ink five contracts for the provision of internet gateways to a total of 76 agencies.

Macquarie Telecom snared the first of the five outsourcing contracts in October, in a deal with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF).

The company’s government and security executive, Glen Noble, said the gateway consolidation program was one of a number of developments that highlighted a “rapid growth in public sector demand for secure and resilient hosted services”.

“We see growth in ICT investments for government as a core opportunity for Macquarie Telecom to build on its longstanding reputation for delivering hosting environments which meet rigorous public-sector standards for security and reliability, as well as increasing concerns around user privacy and data sovereignty.”

Macquarie Telecom currently operates two data centres in Sydney – Intellicentre 1 in the CBD and Intellicentre 2 in North Ryde.

It launched Intellicentre 2 in September, on a plot of land that could also host a separate data centre, tentatively dubbed Intellicentre 3.

Macquarie Telecom said this week that it would deploy additional infrastructure in the $60 million Intellicentre 2 to support its Government business.

Intellicentre 2 was built to ASIO T4 intruder resistant, PCI (Payment Card Industry), ISO 27001 and the Uptime Institute Tier III design standards.

Macquarie Telecom said it would deploy best-of-breed security and networking technology in Intellicentre 4, which would “exceed ISO, DSD and ASIO specifications”.