Hosting services company Rackspace, have just added their latest datacentre, the first in Australia. Located in Erskine Park, Sydney this is their 9th data centres which now spread across America, Europe, Asia and now in Australia.
The new multi-million dollar investment will support local offerings of dedicated hosting and managed virtualisation solutions to larger IT contracts looking to deploy enterprise grade private cloud solutions. While others like Microsoft have said an Australian-based datacentre was unviable financially, Rackspace have made it work.
Enterprise, Government or any other customer who prefers to (or legally has to) keep their data onshore can now consider Rackspace as an option. While providing VMWare-based virtualisation solutions, Rackspace will also offer their own OpenStack-based Open Cloud platform.
Some of you may be interested to learn that Rackspace started selling into Australian and New Zealand in 2009. The NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Trade & Investment, Andrew Stoner welcomed the investment as another positive step for Sydney’s global profile as a leader for Australia’s ICT sector.
“This is another Australian first for Sydney and New South Wales and fantastic news for our State’s reputation globally as the nation’s ICT and digital hub. Sydney and New South Wales are well-positioned for growth in the expanding global digital economy and Rackspace’s investment is another significant vote of confidence in our capacity for innovation and collaboration across the ICT sector,” Mr Stoner said.
Mark Randall, The.Hon. Andrew John Stoner, Jim Fagan
Some of Rackspace’s Australian customers include: News Ltd, Webjet, Pacific Brands, Kogan, Lonely Planet, and Treasury Wine Estates.
The Australian data centre adds to its international data centre footprint, which includes existing facilities in Dallas, Chicago, Virginia, London, and Hong Kong. Since the company launched in 1998 Rackspace has grown its global base to over 190,000 customers and currently hosts more than 60 per cent of the Fortune 100 companies.
In response to customer requests, Rackspace has recently begun offering customers agreements under New South Wales law, which are compliant with Australia’s National Privacy Principals. This arrangement will be extended to customers hosting at the Sydney data centre.
Alan Schoenbaum, General Counsel of Rackspace said: “Rackspace will not transfer customer owned data from our Australia data centre to a law enforcement agency of another country (including the United States) without a customer’s consent unless it is compelled to do so by Australian law. Data hosted in Australia by Rackspace is subject to the same laws as cloud services operated by wholly owned Australian companies.”
The Datacentre is in the late stages of construction and the first customers are expected to go live in late 2012.
More info @ http://datacentre.rackspace.com.au/
