The Department has also exercised a five-year extension option to secure a long-term solution to Defence's data centre needs.
The new Sydney data centre is seen as the key to Defence's data centre consolidation strategy under the ICT Reform Program and follows concerns that Defence's current primary data centre at Deakin in Canberra is no longer fit for purpose and has reached capacity for power and cooling.
According to Defence, Global Switch had been selected for providing the best value for money for the data centre facilities required by Defence for its future Primary Data Centre.
The lease of the new Global Switch data centre facility in Sydney will ensure that Defence has the capability to support its future ICT requirements with state-of-the-art data centre infrastructure.
Defence has commenced planning to migrate the Deakin data centre and associated ICT infrastructure to the new Global Switch facility in Sydney by March 2012, when the current lease at Deakin expires.