Aussies to join AFCOM advisory board

Angus Kidman
Monday, 22 February 2010 12:35

Business IT - Technology

Two Australians will join the advisory board for the world's major data centre user organisation as it looks to expand its activities down under.

AFCOM, which has 4,000 members worldwide and operates in 32 countries, plans to be running five local chapters in 2010. It already has 100 members in chapters in Melbourne and Brisbane, with Canberra and Sydney currently establishing chapters and Adelaide the next likely target after that.

AFCOM CEO Jill Eckhaus also wants to expand the Australian presence within the Data Center Institute, the 15-member advisory board for the organisation. "We're going to be inviting a couple of Australian folks onto the board," she told iTWire. Eckhaus visited Australia in late 2009 to meet with local data centre managers.

Further down the track, Eckhaus hopes to organise educational visits by data centre managers from the US to discuss their experiences with the Australian chapters. While most data centre staff across the world have to tackle similar issues, there are some regional differences, she said.

"Where I see one difference is out here in the states a large majority of our members run corporate and government DCs, and don't use co-location facilities as much, and it seems in Australia co-location facilities are much more viable and people are using them more for their entire data centre space." There's also a notable difference when it comes to issues of terrorism, Eckhaus revealed.