BY MICHAEL FOREMAN
Hitachi Data Systems has opened a $5 million data centre offering what the company describes as a unique blend of services.
The HDS general manager of services, Wayne Norrie, said the Takapuna-based Alternative Processing Centre (APC) would satisfy a demand for "new wave" outsourcing services including application service provision and data vaulting, as well as disaster recovery.
"We don't just host the application, we guarantee that it will remain in operation," Mr Norrie said.
The Takapuna centre will complement the Auckland CBD facility Hitachi shares with ASB Bank in Airedale St.
"If you are based in the CBD its not a good idea to have your disaster-recovery centre also in the CBD. That's where Takapuna comes in," said sales director Roger Cockayne.
However, while the Airedale St centre is a "lights out" facility that is largely unmanned, the Takapuna APC will have 35 IT staff to handle applications.
"We are partnering with application service providers (ASPs) who will be offering e-procurement and electronic point of sale systems available round the clock anywhere in New Zealand via thin clients," said Mr Cockayne.
HDS already provides outsourced computing infrastructure to large corporate clients including National Bank, Westpac Trust, Tower Insurance and Air New Zealand, but HDS expects its ASP services will appeal to a much broader customer base.
"We have got more prospects than we could shake a stick at but we can't talk about them because of the magical `e' word," said Mr Cockayne.
"We will be offering both an incubator and a production line for ASPs. An ASP can join us with three clients and grow to 3000."
Mr Norrie said the data centre could cope with about 1000 thin client applications running simultaneously but the 460msup2 facility, which currently provided 700 gigabytes of storage, could easily be scaled up.
He said the company's flagship storage system, the Freedom 7700E, now provided more than 10 terabytes of storage but took up only the floor space equivalent to two household refrigerators. A new version would become available later this year that offered 20 terabytes of storage in the same housing.
"We could put in hundreds of terabytes if we needed to. Most data centres are three-quarters empty because the size of the technology is shrinking."
Hitachi's APC is protected by an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) which would keep the data centre running for 25 minutes in the event of power failure. "The UPS is only there for surprises and to cope with spikes [sudden fluctuations in voltage]," said Mr Cockayne.
"The main backup is the diesel generator which has enough fuel to run for a day and a half. After that we would have to nip down to the garage to top it up."
Mr Cockayne said the new data centre would allow HDS to offer a wider range of facilities than its competitors such as Datacom, CSE and Wang. While HDS was not trying to be "an IBM or an EDS" it could offer some services at greatly reduced cost compared with those companies.
HDS hopes the APC will allow it to exploit a worldwide trend towards IT outsourcing.
"In the early days everything was outsourced to bureaus but then it all came in-house," said Mr Norrie.
"It's only with the drop in line costs that people have realised that they don't have to do IT internally -it's all swinging back."
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