Macquarie Telecom call on government over data centre strategy

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 25 March 2009 16:54

IT Industry - Deals

Macquarie Telecom has called on the Australian Government to ensure its data centre strategy, planned in response to the Gershon data centre recommendations, includes clear, environmental standards for individual data centres to be measured against.

Speaking today in response to the federal Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner’s speech to an Australian Computer Society (ACS) conference last week, Aidan Tudehope, managing director hosting at Macquarie Telecom, welcomed plans for a focus on energy use in the whole of government ICT sustainability plan being developed in conjunction with the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, but said he wanted to see the plans go far enough to ensure genuine energy savings.

“Only a clear and, most importantly, a standardised approach to measuring data centre green credentials will bring an end to the current spate of ‘green cloaking’ by certain players in our industry,” Tudehope cautioned.

“This is a worrying trend whereby vendors are dressing their solutions up as environmentally friendly with claims such as being 50 per cent more energy efficient than any other data centre, without credible evidence to substantiate these claims.”
 
According to Tudehope, the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) data centre strategy should consider an energy rating system similar to the star rating system used in the consumer electronics industry to ensure government data centres meet minimum criteria for energy efficiency. In addition, such systems should mandate continual improvement to foster ongoing investment in the most energy efficient equipment and operational practices, Tudehope urged.

Tudehope said there were strict security standards and operational standards demanded by government agencies such as ISO27001, that ensured vendor claims were matched by reality. He questioned why energy efficiency standards should be any different and said, with similar initiatives getting underway in Europe and the United States, Australia had the opportunity to “take another environmental leadership position with this strategy.”