City of the future with a business focus
By BILL HOFFMAN
It may look like a concrete cube, but it’s actually the city of our future.
Impervious to the worst cyclone, safe from the ravages of fires and rain and uninhabitable as it may appear, this structure with its 0.3048m thick walls will one day soon be the hub of business and commerce on the Sunshine Coast.
It already houses between $10 million and $20 million of metal and three times that value in consulting services.
The recently opened structure is the data centre the Sunshine Coast needs to give its existing business sectors the smarts to survive the tough times that are upon us and the infrastructure to build our transition away from a narrow economic base.
Coupled with the roll-out of 64-bundle optic fibre into the central Coast and Cooroy, and the reach of the new wireless network built by Allegro Networks, it will enable high broadband demand customers such as hospitals, schools, health services, architects, developers and creative industries to move files quickly and securely.
The suite of infrastructure being brought on-stream to support it includes next generation wireless broadband, which has optic-fibre-like quality and up to 40 megabytes per second capacity.
Mach Technologies was brought on board to set up and run the data centre with Allegro Networks signing on to roll out the fibre optic.
Mach Technologies founder Paul Pettigrew said the new technology would enable the growth of a knowledge economy that needed not much more than a laptop at home.
“It’s low impact. All the work goes on between the ears,†Mr Pettigrew said. “it’s cheap to set up, environmentally friendly and productive.â€
Mr Pettigrew said the centre allowed medium-sized businesses to halve the price of hiring a permanent on-site presence.
“The data centre will be the capital city of the Sunshine Coast knowledge economy,†he said.
“We expect about 1,000 ‘sales’ within the first year, typically ranging from from $5 per month to a few hundred dollars a month.â€
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