NSW govt makes it easier to cross-sell to agencies

IT solutions providers will be better positioned to win new government accounts though a new "marketplace" launched as part of the state's move to consolidate its data centres.

The NSW government IT strategy unveiled last week will see 130 data centres consolidated into two newly built facilities.

The data centres in Silverwater and Unanderra will host industry marketplaces, where IT companies, especially SMEs, can host solutions and service government agency needs.

William Murphy, executive director strategic policy of the Department of Finance and Services, told CRN that the data centres would provide opportunities for solution providers to acquire new agency business.

"The benefit to being in the marketplace is [solution providers] will have access to more agencies through a single service backbone.

"If you're a third-party provider selling to one agency and other agencies want to purchase that service as well, it'll be easier demonstrate your offering and conduct business."

Solution providers can also benefit from lower infrastructure overheads as they can service multiple government agencies from a single pool of resources.

He said that "60 or 70" organisations have expressed interest in being a part of the marketplace so far.

"There's no fee participating in the marketplace other than what they would normally pay to be in a data centre environment. They'll benefit from government negotiated rent rates too."

The data centres are privately owned with three main government agencies acting as anchor tenants: the Department of Health, the Department of Education and Communities and the Department of Finance and Services.

Additional agencies will transition into the new data centres over the next five years, depending on the refresh cycle.

"Moving from current locations into a new data centre provides a good point in time for agencies to look at their service environment and see if the new model would be better for them."

The new data centre in Silverwater opened last month, while Unanderra is expected to open within the next month. 

Broadening State IT framework 

The NSW government it is currently developing a broader IT sourcing framework to accompany the push for agencies to move towards cloud services.

Over the next year it will also develop virtualisation guidelines, guidance for optimum use of data centres, guidelines to assist agencies with the transition of legacy information and data, and identify opportunities for software rationalisation across whole of government.

Any wider adoption of cloud-based services would require the state government to take a closer look at the shape and characteristics of its future IT workforce, it said today.

Gaps would need to be identified and dealt with by an IT workforce management strategy, developed in collaboration with NICTA, CSIRO and universities.

The strategy is expected to allow IT and HR managers to recruit, manage, train and plot career paths “in a consistent manner”. It will be piloted across a small number of agencies this year before being more widely rolled out pending an evaluation of the pilots in Q2 next year.