TEX Blog

On Friday the brand new BICSI 002 - Data Centre Design and Implementation Best Practice Standard was released. The document is the result of more than 2 years work from a team of global professionals. The standard covers a lot of ground and reflects many of the new approaches and best practices being applied in the Data Centre design industry. I was sitting on the sub-committee responsible for this standard. To findout more about the standard and its scope and impact, register for one of our TEX NET Breakfasts and After5 winter series seminars starting this month.

BICSI have released their BICSI_002 Data Centre Standard today. I have been working on the sub-committee for this standard for the past 18 months and it a relief to finally have a standard that the industry can use to design a modern Data Centre. TEX will be running seminars to let the industry know how this standard will impact the design industry.

I thought I was having a busy day, seems the nation has been in hyper drive today. With the historic changes at the lodge and the 1st female Prime Minister in power, you'd think that would be enough for 1 day. But wait, there's more! NBN today announced the 21 companies that will be the major providers of the construction phase of the NBN. And the winners are....Baulderstone Pty Ltd; Bovis Lend Lease; Communications & Fibre; Connect X (AbiGroup/UGL Joint Venture); Downer EDI; Ergon Energy; ETSA Utilities; Jemena Asset Management; John Holland / Bilfinger Berger Services; Laing O’Rourke; McConnell Dowell; Monadelphous Inabensa Joint Venture; Powercor Network Services; Service Stream; Silcar; SP AusNet; Telstra; Tenix; Transfield Services; Visionstream Australia; and Western Power.. Between them, they need to rollout 200,000 kilometres of fibre cable to 10million premises in 8 years. That makes 5000 connections and more than 68 kilometers of fibre laid per day, every day, for 8 years ! So I guess this is just the 1st of many more busy days ahead. 

Telstra and NBN Co. have formed a financial heads of agreement to exchange significant fibre and fixed infrastructure valued at $11 billion. Yesterday's announcement by the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) provides a sound platform for the ongoing support of the NBN. The Government's implementation study highlighted that the NBN would be financially viable even without Telstra, so this should really help the numbers to stack up. How about the political situation? The sign up of Telstra as a key contributor to the NBN will make it very difficult for any new government to completely block the program. It might be a good time to look at the long languishing Telstra shares as well.

For the full announcement go to the following sites; 

     http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2010/060

http://www.pm.gov.au/node/6832

http://www.nbnco.com.au/publications-and-announcements/latest-announcements/doc/nbn-co-and-telstra-reach-heads-of-agreement

The Rudd Government seems to be under fire from all directions these days. The latest is the NBN and the absence of a clear cost benefit analysis. So do Australians see any value in the NBN? Recent flak from the opposition suggests that they will scrap the NBN if they are voted in at the next election. So what is the alternative? What would the opposition do to provide us with a broadband strategy that would support the growth of importance of online business to the Australian economy? With all of the growth in the Data Centre industry, you've got to ask the question what's the point of investing in lots of data centres if the connection speeds available are working at a trickle. We need to attract the interest of international business as a savvy, well serviced place to do business. One thing is certain, if we don't have a strategy for developing high speed broadband, Australia will become just another holiday destination. For more information, checkout the article in today's IT News 

At a Data Centre conference that I spoke at in Sydney yesterday, one of the major underlying themes with government agencies and major corporates who presented, was the shortfall of skilled people in the Australian Data Centre market. There were countless references to major outages in Data Centres being directly related to either under skilled or underperforming people. The main cause seems to be awareness, process control and adequate training. So according to at least 2 of the big 4 banks, without the right people in the right places, your IT investment is at serious risk of downtime.