NBN and the data centre: Time to update Gershon?

James Riley
Wednesday, 09 September 2009 16:39

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Just one year after UK efficiency expert Sir Peter Gershon handed the Commonwealth his report on government ICT procurement and use, experts are already saying in the case of the data centre it might be time for another look.

Global tech services giant CSC says the fat pipes of the National Broadband Network and the much matured market for virtualisation software meant the savings anticipated by Gershon through data consolidation measures may have been understated.

And the environmental and sustainability improvements delivered by combination of the NBN and virtualisation technologies should give government good reason to take another look at medium-term data centre plans, according to CSC Australia chief innovation and technology officer Bob Hayward.

As the bandwidth of the NBN becomes a reality, the broadband network will start to accelerate the shift to cloud model, and the Commonwealth should think now about Government Cloud models, he said.

Power consumption issues are non-trivial. Hayward says data centres around the world consume more energy than Argentina, and doubles every 5 – 7 years. And 6 to 8 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are directly attributable to ICT use.

Consolidated data centres and virtualised environments, coupled with the ability to shift processing loads and data more easily across the NBN, created opportunity for government to pursue cloud models.

"Gershon (conducted the review) really just before Cloud took hold," Hayward told iTWire. "It talked a lot about consolidated data centres and virtualisation, but how you then move beyond virtualisation into these flexible, self-provisioning, really agile computing environments with pay-as-you-go models – that is something I don’t think was quite there when (Sir Peter) did his reviews in the UK and in Australia."

"These are things you need to look at the medium term … certainly it needs to be on the planning horizon," he said. "If organisations in Government are looking at consolidating their data centres in 12 to 18 months then why not do that with some view to private government cloud-type infrastructure."

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