One of Australia’s most secure and high tech buildings is officially open for business after it was unveiled today by Minister for Information and Communication Technology Robert Schwarten.

The Polaris Data Centre is the most advanced purpose built facility of its type in the country, complete with the kind of technology you would expect to find in a Hollywood movie.

The $220 million building is located in the heart of Greater Springfield, in South East Queensland’s fastest growing region and is complete with bullet proof glass, biometric fingerprint scanners, dark fibre network and man traps.

The Data Centre has been designed as a primary and secondary facility and acts as a disaster recovery site, Internet data centre and carrier interconnect exchange.

Springfield Land Corporation General Manager of Commercial Projects Chris Schroor said the Centre will not only protect Greater Springfield’s key IT infrastructure services, it will also host mission-critical ICT systems for Government departments and corporate enterprises.

“Polaris is the largest of its kind in Australia that has been purpose built on a Greenfield site to play host to some of Australia’s biggest organisations, as well as support the IT for the city’s hospitals, banks, supply chain management, email and Internet,” Mr Schroor said.

“Springfield is fitted with a fibre optic backbone which is linked to the Brisbane CBD via existing telecommunication companies or through the Springfield to Brisbane Dark Fibre network.

“Our plan is to have all offices and homes in Springfield connected to the Data Centre using this network so everyone can rest assured their high end IT equipment is safely protected in a purpose built, high security building.”

The centre was developed by Springfield Land Corporation in partnership with Suncorp and constructed by Thiess.

Thiess’ Design Manager Nathan Atkinson said the whole premise of the building has such high security measures, visitors and workers need to go through several layers of security to get onto data floors.

“The type of security measures used in the project meet the requirements of the Federal Government and the equipment used is not unlike that which would be used in a prison.”

The five-storey information hub comprises 14,000 square metres of floor space, with 7,000 square metres of raised floor area or net lettable space over three levels.

The data centre is built to accommodate IT loads up to 1,500w/m 2 on average and provide point solutions for racks up to 60kw and is Queensland’s only Tier 3+ co-location facility.

Minister Schwarten said the opening of the Polaris Data Centre marked the beginning of a bright new era in information and communication technology in Queensland.

“This new ICT data centre will support Queensland’s growing use of innovative information technology in the delivery of high-quality government services for the Queensland community.

“For the Queensland Government in particular, the very nature of business service delivery and continuity is increasingly reliant on electronically stored information and this centre provides just that.

“The Polaris Data Centre supports the Bligh Government’s Toward Q2 – Tomorrow’s Queensland vision of a Strong Queensland: that is, creating a diverse economy powered by bright ideas,” he said.

Mr Schroor said the biggest draw card for a building like Polaris was availability of space and secure technology.

“In the past businesses used space in their existing office buildings to store core ICT equipment.

“We realised office buildings are not built to accommodate this type of equipment which rely on redundant services such as power and cooling.

“In most business situations the design and management of power and cooling infrastructure is not core business, and the ability to guarantee how the necessary services are actually delivered is the reason companies are turning to this type of facility, rather than developing it themselves.”

Tenants at the Polaris Data Centre currently include Suncorp, NEC, Citec, ICC and EDS.