Gen-i, a division of Telecom New Zealand, has been selected by Air New Zealand for the provision of data centre facilities and services to the airline. 

Gen-i will design, deliver and support an additional data centre and network infrastructure for Air New Zealand.

The new contract extends Gen-i's relationship with Air New Zealand from supporting the airline's telecommunications needs to housing its IT infrastructure in a Gen-i data centre facility.

The data centre provided by Gen-i to Air New Zealand will be located in a Tier 3* carrier grade facility in Airedale Street in Auckland. It will form part of Gen-i's existing data centre complex at the site, which interconnects with Telecom's main Mayoral Drive exchange.

Air New Zealand has selected the facility at Airedale Street as a replacement for its current secondary data centre on Nelson Street. The airline will continue to use the Newton Data Centre.

The new facility features highly seismic-rated buildings, a highly resilient infrastructure design, environmental monitoring and physical security, while Gen-i's services include 24x7x365 management processes.

All of Gen-i's data centres are locally based and have a proven availability of 99.998 per cent.

As part of its selection process, Air New Zealand engaged international data centre design specialists AECOM to analyse and advise on the Tier 3 data centre designs of the shortlisted providers.

Chris Quin, Gen-i's Australasia CEO says the new agreement would signal a further strengthening of the relationship between the two New Zealand companies.

"Like Air New Zealand, Gen-i is a New Zealand company dedicated to understanding the needs of New Zealand businesses and the public," says Quin.

"Gen-i is committed to contributing to the success of Air New Zealand and our selection to provide data centre facilities and services reflects the cultural alignment of people, processes and technology across the two organisations."

Gen-i currently integrates and manages Air New Zealand’s access to voice and data network services worldwide. Gen-i has a team providing 24x7x365 day support and project services across Air New Zealand's global and domestic locations. This includes the management of services delivered by a wide range of telecommunications and technology providers worldwide.

About Gen-i Data Centres

Gen-i operates Tier 3 data centres for its clients and will soon deploy its first Tier 3 Plus facility, which is predominantly a Tier 3 data centre, but featuring some Tier 4 elements.

Gen-i's data centres use the Cold-Aisle Containment design which is noted by Gartner as having the "single largest payback" of any of its recommended data centre energy efficiency measures**.

The power usage effectiveness (PUE) for the facility in which Air New Zealand will be located will be 1.37, which is excellent by international standards. PUE is the ratio of total amount of power used by a computer data centre facility to the power delivered to computing equipment.

* As defined by the Uptime Institute