International tech giant Microsoft has set its sights on Canberra's public service cloud, creating two new regions for highly-secured government data in a deal with local provider Canberra Data Centres.
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Offering "hyperscale" cloud services for the first time in the ACT, the plan will see a growing number of public service departments and agencies migrate their data to systems secure enough to handle APS unclassified and protected records, across the entire federal government.
With 40 regions globally, Microsoft believes the creation of two new regions in Canberra from the first half of 2018 will make a statement, helping it win a bigger share of federal and state government business with state-of-the-art data repositories against competitors including Amazon Web Services.
Using the Microsoft Azure suite, the two new regions will add to cloud services currently delivered from Melbourne and Sydney. Intelligence agency Australian Signals Directorate formally certified Microsoft for hyperscale cloud services in June.
Partner Canberra Data Centres already services more than 40 federal departments and agencies from its two highly secure Canberra campuses, as well as servicing the ACT government.
The company is the only private provider with Department of Defence security controls and accreditations appropriate for the handling of top secret government data. It relies on secure connectivity from the Intra Government Communications Network and has strict security and back-up systems in place to guarantee service in every event from power outages to natural disasters.
Canberra Data Centres chief executive Greg Boorer said the deal would allow public service departments and other customers to access scale computing for machine learning, artificial intelligence, research and provision of everyday services.
"Those big data assets combined with this platform just open up a world of possibilities that never existed before, which will mean an acceleration of transformation, a huge improvement to the volume, breadth and types of services that can be delivered to the citizen," he said.
"All of our facilities have been built to meet top secret security standards. The functions of government are so big and they have to do so much with so little resources these days, and the demand from government are ever increasing, so these trusted foundations are just a key to how the government continues to meet the expectations of the citizen."
The company is majority Australian owned, including a 48 per cent share held by the federal government's Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation.
Assistant Minister for Digital Transformation, Angus Taylor, said the plan would benefit the Turnbull government's digital transformation agenda.
"The Australian government has embarked on a sweeping program of change, bringing digital innovation to the transformation of the Australian public sector.
"Global innovation in areas such as cloud technology is an essential foundation for this transformation and will ensure we can meet the expectations and needs of all Australians. So too the local software ecosystem can build its skills and innovate rapidly to first serve our local needs, then expand into global markets," he said.
Microsoft Azure Australian boss, James Kavanagh, said Canberra's business and IT community would also benefit.
"There's lots of partners that we have, there's small businesses, there's software developers here in Canberra that are building on this kind of technology, and right now it's a little hard for them to do it because it's elsewhere.
"Now they can do it right here, they can build their skills here and apply them to their work," he said.
