Datacom is expanding its Western Australian operations with the opening of a new office in Perth’s St Georges Terrace.

Datacom Group CEO Greg Davidson Datacom says, “Western Australia offers us a huge opportunity and we’re positioning ourselves to contribute to the region’s economic prosperity. The expansion of our operations in Perth is an exciting step forward in our goal to bring high-skilled technology opportunities to the regions we work in globally.”

The technology sector enables and supports $1.3 billion in economic value in regional WA alone, making ICT a significant contributor to the future of the region.

“Both public and private sector organisations are poised to take advantage of innovative ICT solutions and their significant efficiency and productivity gains. We are already supporting dozens of commercial customers, as well as a range of state and local government organisations such as the Department of Finance, the Department of Fire and Emergency Services and the Shire of Manjimup, with whom we recently enabled with our cloud-based software solution, Datascape,” Davidson says.

“Our local Perth team is growing. We have around 100 people and are actively recruiting for top technology talent in response to increasing customer demand. Our focus now is on scaling our success with further investment. Demonstrating our deep commitment to WA, our Group Head of Public Sector, Mark Muru, will be based in Perth,” says Davidson.

A major driver for a larger regional presence is Datacom’s role in the State’s GovNext-ICT programme, which involves assisting WA State Government agencies to transform from individual owners and operators of ICT infrastructure to consumers of on-demand, consolidated ICT services.

“Since GovNext-ICT’s launch, we’ve worked with WA State Government agencies to transition their services through the programme,” says Keith Morrison, Datacom’s Head of WA Business and GovNext-ICT.

“Following our first customer going live in 2017, we’re now proud to deliver services to 26 separate government agencies and providing a range of ICT solutions under the GovNext-ICT programme.”

Through a Perth-based network operations centre, Datacom provides telecommunication and network support services to a total of 280 agency sites across WA, with more sites currently being transitioned.

GOVNEXT-ICT IN ACTION

An example of Datacom’s work in the region has been upgrading the infrastructure behind the Department of Fire and Emergency Services’ (DFES) operations to ultimately improve the coordination and safety of first responders, reduce response times, and provide better outcomes for community safety.

In order for DFES to better use modern technology, base ICT infrastructure capabilities needed to expand and improve. DFES partnered with Datacom to implement network and telephony services under GovNext-ICT as a first step.

With a modern, scalable network now connecting their 67 sites throughout WA, DFES have turned their focus to improving bandwidth capacity (particularly in regional WA), enabling enhanced consumption of common cloud services and planning infrastructure for future ICT capabilities.

DATASCAPE

On both sides of the Tasman local governments are adopting Datascape – Datacom’s cloud-based software solution. Aimed at bringing together services and applications under one roof, Datascape also offers Antenno, a new Datacom-built app enabling councils and ratepayers to engage more directly with each other. The Shire of Manjimup, in the south west region of WA and 320kms south of Perth, implemented Datascape earlier this year.