Communications moves data centre offsite in $18m deal

The Department of Communications has awarded a five-year contract with ASG worth $18 million to migrate the agency's services out of its existing on-site data centre.

The deal includes the intial migration of the department's hosted environment, and infrastructure-as-a-service functions.

Communications previously owned its on-premise infrastructure assets, according to a statement, with some functions such as disaster recovery hosted offsite.

The department signed a ten-year contract for disaster recovery services with Canberra Data Centres in 2012, worth $1.35 million.

ASG confirmed the department's infrastructure would be located in CDC.

ASG is already the primary outsourced services provider to the department, under a deal that includes end user support, midrange, voice and network services.

The company has recently won contracts with a number of other federal government departments, including the Tax Practitioners Board, Australian Transport and Safety Bureau, Australian Maritime Safety Authority and Department of Defence.

The announcement comes seven months after Communications Minister Malcom Turnbull handed down the governments ‘cloud first’ ultimatum, demanding agencies “must adopt cloud where it is fit for purpose, provides adequate protection of data and delivers value for money".