Image: WOCinTech Chat
The South Australian government will spend more than $5 million on a new IT hub to be located in Adelaide’s north-eastern suburbs.
The government expects the project to create hundreds of jobs, as well as providing training and career opportunities for state residents.
Datacom, a New Zealand IT services company, is to develop the hub at a cost of $22 million, with the South Australian government’s Economic Investment Fund contributing $5.335 million of the total amount.
“We have been aggressively pursuing businesses like Datacom to set up in Adelaide and take advantage of our low cost, low taxation environment,” the state’s premier, Jay Weatherill, said in a news release.
Mr Weatherill also called the project, “a massive win for jobs and training in our north-eastern suburbs.”
Datacom will begin work on the project next year at TAFE SA’s Tea Tree Gully campus. The hub will ultimately have room for more than 600 full time equivalent staff.
“South Australia presented an ideal location to expand our local operations due to a willingness from our local partners, TAFE SA, Workskil, SYC, University of Adelaide, and the South Australian Government, to explore innovative business models,” Datacom CEO Jonathan Ladd said in a news release.
“Our partnership with TAFE SA will ensure the delivery of an innovative training package which will provide our company with a clear training-to-job pathway for potential new employees, and benefit the state economy as a whole,” Mr Ladd said.
Datacom has provided information technology services for more than fifty years since its founding in Christchurch, New Zealand. Its activities include IT management, cloud services, data centres, custom software development, business process, and payroll applications.
“This is a fantastic new partnership between TAFE and an ICT business, and it works for both of them,” Mr Weatherill said in a video posted to YouTube.
“The ICT business gets a pool of graduates that can come through the system and TAFE gets a place where they can train people in real life jobs, which makes them much more relevant for private industry.”
