Edith Cowan mulls hybrid cloud strategy

Western Australia’s Edith Cowan University is looking to outsource its data centres as part of a wider move to establish a “hybrid cloud” strategy.

Procurement documents this month revealed plans to move Edith Cowan’s in-house primary and disaster recovery data centres to an external provider.

It sought expressions of interest from suppliers until February 4, in advance of issuing a formal request for proposals on March 4, for a five-year contract.

Chief information officer Elizabeth Wilson declined to disclose details of Edith Cowan’s data centre strategy, which will be shaped by advice received in the expressions of interest phase.

The university expected to weigh up co-location, managed services and cloud provisioning models.

The latter model would require “a contractor with virtual cloud data centre capabilities to provide and manage the infrastructure and platforms on which the applications run”.

“End users will access cloud-based applications through a web browser or a local device, while the business software and user’s data are stored on servers at a remote location,” tender documents noted.

Edith Cowan staff currently maintain data centres at its Bunbury and Joondalup campuses, and a disaster recovery facility in Mount Lawley.

Last year, Melbourne-based Victoria University revealed plans to shed more than half of its internal IT staff over three years as it transitioned onto a hybrid cloud platform.

The University of Western Sydney and University of Technology, Sydney have also kicked off projects to outsource their primary data centres to meet growing IT requirements.