Confirmed: IBM announces $80 million Auckland datacentre

IBM has confirmed it is building a large datacentre in Auckland, with the signing of a lease for an East Tamaki site to house the $80 million facility.

Computerworld reported the project in September.

IBM said today it has signed a lease with developer Highbrook Development to build an IBM Reliability Level 3+ datacentre in Highbrook Business Park in East Tamaki, Auckland.

"This more than $80 million investment is the result of long term strategic planning by IBM and marks a significant investment in New Zealand's ICT infrastructure," a statement from the company says.

An IBM Reliability Level 3+ Data Centre has two levels of redundancy from mains power, two levels of redundancy from UPS power and multiple levels of redundancy from generator power.

IBM existing redundancy was recently exposed through a failure that brought Air New Zealand's systems down for several hours, disrupting services.

The new datacentre is being built to support clients' mission-critical applications and operations.

The $80 million will be invested over the next 10 years, the company says.

The 5,200 square metre Highbrook facility will be built to IBM global specifications and will include a 1,500 square metre datacentre and is expected to become fully operational by late 2010.

Expansion options allow for further stages to be developed as demand rises.

IBM's says the new facility will be the only commercially available datacentre of its calibre in New Zealand. It will also be "cloud computing" enabled, highly resilient and have environmental protection advantages of energy efficiency, green technologies, scalability and the latest power and cooling technologies, the company says.

"This is a highly significant investment in New Zealand's future technological infrastructure," said Jennifer Moxon, managing director of IBM New Zealand in a statement.

"It is the result of long term strategic planning and signals IBM's commitment to enable New Zealand to become a world class technology centre and advances the growth of the digital economy."