HP to build $100m+ data centre in Sydney's West

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 03 February 2011 11:06

IT Industry - Strategy

HP has announced a multimillion-dollar investment in a new data centre to be built at Eastern Creek in Western Sydney, one that will form part of its global data centre network.

HP has declined to provide many financial details of the new centre other than to say it will be a "multimillion dollar investment." However it refers to documents filed with local government that cite a figure of $119m for the first stage of the project, and said that this figure did not include the cost of any HP IT infrastructure.

HP said "The Sydney data centre investment is part of HP's $US1 billion transformation [announced in June 2010] to retire legacy assets and build new, modernised facilities. HP is expanding its commitment to Australia, home to one of the world's top 10 financial centres and a growing base for multinational companies."

However David Caspari, VP enterprise services for HP Asia Pacific declined to provide any information on the timeframe for this investment, how much would be spent in Australia, or of any plans to retire legacy assets in Australia.

He told ExchangeDaily "We have a very broad and sophisticated data centre ecosystem and we are constantly evolving that'¦We are constantly assessing our infrastructure to respond to client needs."

Nor would he say how much of an increase in Australian capacity the new centre would represent, other than to say "This represents a 12 fold increase in our computing capacity in the Sydney basin."

He added: "Even though Australia is not the biggest market HP has made a vote of confidence in the Australian economy, Australia's ability to attract IT talent, and Australia as a platform for HP's global aspirations."
Nor would he provide any information on the choice of carriers available to customers of the new centre, except to say: "When we chose the location we looked at access to telecoms infrastructure and I don't see any constraints in being able to deliver a suite of communications options."


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