THE ‘donga’ has long been ubiquitous at most Western Australian mine sites as a relatively cheap and effective form of on-site accommodation that can deployed rapidly and then re-used at the end of a project’s life.
THE ‘donga’ has long been ubiquitous at most Western Australian mine sites as a relatively cheap and effective form of on-site accommodation that can deployed rapidly and then re-used at the end of a project’s life.
Multi-national computing giant IBM has now turned the concept of the humble donga on its head in a bid to further cash in on the booming global resources sector.
IBM last week chose Perth for the Australian launch of an innovative portable modular data centre aimed at providing rapidly deployable, head-office style IT capability at remote operations.
The unit is effectively a standard 20-foot sea-container, decked out with all the IT and computing infrastructure requested by the customer. IBM claims the average deployment time from point of order is just 12-14 weeks.
Akin to the engine control module in modern cars, the portable data centre can be taken to site and essentially plugged in to provide all the computing needs of the operation.
The housing is built overseas and fitted out locally by electrical contractor Nilsen – Australia’s oldest family owned electrical contracting group – according to the customer’s specifications.
IBM maintains the container based construction provides an extremely durable housing for the valuable computing hardware inside that is well-suited to the extreme weather conditions associated with remote mine sites, and can even be bullet-proofed with Kevlar.
Its modular design means the user can expand and modify its requirements by adding units as required.
IBM site and facilities services leader David Yip said the system’s portability, security and durability made it ideally suited to the Australian mining industry.
Though the system has only just been launched in Australia, IBM global offering manager Michael Hogan said more than a dozen had already been deployed internationally, including by the military.
He said it had also been embraced by companies in a wide range of industries with diverse needs, such as those needing to expand their IT capacity but lacking the space within their existing office facilities.
Mr Hogan said it was for that very reason that Kerry Stokes’ WesTrac mining equipment business was the first Australian company to use the system to cater for its growing IT needs while its new Perth headquarters is being developed.
Prices start at $US700,000 for a standard 20 foot unit and $US1 million for a bigger 40 foot container, but Mr Hogan said IBM was also evaluating possible leasing arrangements to make the system more affordable for smaller companies.
