Gov opens data centre panel to new providers

Data centre providers wanting to cash in on $100 million in yearly business with the federal government have five weeks to apply to join the new whole-of-government data centre panel.

The Digital Transformation Agency issued a request for tender to populate the new panel on Monday ahead of the mid-2023 expiry of the data centre facilities supplies panel, progressing work that began last year.

The current panel, which was introduced in 2014, consists of 15 providers, including Canberra Data Centres, NEXTDC, Macquarie Telecom, Equinix, Fujitsu and Australian Data Centres.

Only around half of the panellists, however, have been accredited under the government’s hosting certification framework (HCF) to date, with a number of applications still pending with the DTA.

As of July 1, agencies are required to host sensitive government data, whole-of-government systems and systems rated to protected levels with an accredited data centre provider under new contracts.

According to tender documents, the new panel will be broadly similar to the existing panel, but will include a second category for prefabricated all-in-one data centres and modular data centres.

Category one (data centre facilities), meanwhile, will cover “secure physical data centre facility space” and "facility-related components”, including power supplies, cooling systems and security.

In addition to HCF approval, providers looking to join this category will need to have registered their critical infrastructure asset with the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Centre.

Data storage or processing is one of the asset classes now covered by the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act.

The DTA has also not ruled out adding extra categories in the future, as it has done with other panel arrangements such as software licensing and services.

“We may conduct separate approaches to market in the future for offerings in other categories. There is no limit on the number of categories that we may decide to add,” tender documents state.

The DTA estimates the average annual spend by non-corporate Commonwealth entities, for which the panel is mandatory, will be “approximately $100m per annum”.

Other “Commonwealth entities, statutory bodies, state, territory and local government jurisdictions” will also be able to access the panel, though this use is not covered in the pricing estimate.

The DTA will take applications from data centre providers until September 19, before issuing head agreements in the early 2023.

Pricing will remain current for a minimum of 12 months, with panellists to be given the opportunity to review prices annually.

As if anticipating the tender, DCI Data Centres last week revealed plans for a 20MW data centre in Canberra, having secured agreement with Essential Energy for a 132kV power supply.