UTS, UWS in data centre co-location deal

The University of Technology (UTS) and the University of Western Sydney (UWS) expect to save millions of dollars and achieve economies of scale for their business units by using data centre co-location services provided by Macquarie Telecom.

UTS CIO Christine Burns said the university will be able to quickly access computing power and storage, eliminating the need to spend more than $10 million on a purpose-built facility.

“We can focus less time on commoditised facilities management and hardware management,” Burns said in a statement. “We can leverage service-based infrastructure allowing for smaller, more nimble systems and solutions to be deployed faster and crucially, the new data centre will greatly improve UTS disaster recovery capabilities.”

Meanwhile, UWS is rolling out an IT reform program to support a shift towards a “blended learning strategy” that takes advantage of face-to-face and online methods.

“We need to ensure that our learning and teaching, research and administration systems can handle these demands, and we now have the surety needed to support growth and the deployment of new services,” UWS director of information technology services, Kerry Holling, said in a statement.