The federal government has added three more suppliers to its Data Centre Facilities Supplies Panel. iiNet, Digital Sense Hosting and Pacnet have been added to the panel, finance department assistant secretary Mundi Tomlinson announced in a blog entry.
The initial members of the panel were announced earlier this month and included Canberra Data Centres, Australian Data Centres, Datapod, and NextDC.
In the original announcement Tomlinson wrote that the "updated panel augments our existing arrangements and offers agencies a more scalable and flexible method to meet a wide range of requirements. This panel demonstrates a significant move forward in our approach to simplifying and streamlining Government’s procurement of ICT.
"Under the new data centre procurement arrangements we will be entering service contracts rather than leases to procure supplies from facilities located in Australia."
The appointments to the panel are the latest phase of implementing the Australian Government Data Centre Strategy 2010-2025, which was published in March 2010. The strategy was developed in light of recommendations from the Gershon review into government ICT for a whole-of-government approach to data centres.
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