The Tasmanian government has announced a strategy to attract digital infrastructure and services industries such as data centres to the state.
The Data Centre Industry Development Strategy aims to identify and promote Tasmania’s competitive advantages for data centre attraction and will include policies and programs to support the development of innovative industries, products and services.
It also aims to identify the barriers and constraints for attracting data centres to Tasmania and the best way to overcome them, including identifying the workforce and skill requirements to support long term data centre investment.
“Data centres and ‘server farms’ will allow the establishment of new industries and thousands more jobs over the next decade,” Tasmanian Premier, David Bartlett, said during an event to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Hobart’s Qantas Call Centre.
“The development of a data centre industry development strategy is the next step to ensure Tasmania continues its stellar economic performance as the tiger economy of the nation.”
Premier Bartlett described data centres as the “export industry” of the information age, saying Tasmania’s NBN rollout and renewable energy made the state an attractive location for the industry.
“They are also a vital infrastructure component for the development of any industry participating in the emerging digital economy.
“High speed optic fibre along with our abundance of renewable energy and secure environment makes Tasmania a very attractive location for new data centres,” Bartlett said.