BankWest anchors Fujitsu data centre

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 24 November 2010 15:22

IT Industry - Deals

BankWest has been confirmed as the anchor tenant for Fujitsu's Perth based Tier III data centre - one of a network of Australian and global data centres which underpin the Japanese company's cloud computing initiatives.

The Perth based financial institution, which is owned by Commonwealth Bank, will migrate its critical systems into the Fujitsu operated data centre over the next 12-18 months according to BankWest CIO Andy Weir. It is one of about half a dozen clients which are signed up for the new centre.

Fujitsu unveiled its infrastructure as a service cloud computing service in March this year, with BankWest tipped as the likely first tenant of the Perth facility which was still then under construction. Although the Perth data centre began operations last month, the official opening was delayed until this week.

Fujitsu's long term strategy has been to have anchor tenants when it opens new data centres. At the beginning of the year it opened its Melbourne centre with RMIT, Melbourne and Monash universities as foundation clients in a ten year $60 million shared data centre deal.

The value or duration of the BankWest deal has not been revealed.

Fujitsu is trumpeting the green credentials of the Perth centre which it claims will consume 30 per cent less energy than standard facilities and use 80 per cent less water in its cooling system, thanks to free air cooling being used for eight months of the year.  At present however it is not exploring the use of renewable energy sources to power the facility according to data centre hosting manager Lisa Macdonald.

'We have installed diesel rotary UPS,' said Ms Macdonald, although she said that Fujitsu may consider co-generation, or the use of gas to generate electricity in the future.