Gen-i has won a 10 year contract to provide data centre services to Westpac.

After winning all-of-government cloud computing contracts, each company plans to build a major new data centre - one in Hamiliton, one in Wellington.

Iceland is putting itself forward to host the world’s data centres as its cold climate would drastically reduce the amount of energy needed to cool down servers.

The global computer industry accounts for about 2% of the world's carbon emissions, which puts it on par with the airline industy, according to a IDC survey. Most of the output is due to server farms and the energy needed to cool them.

If New Zealand businesses want to reduce the amount of money they spend on data centres then outsourcing is the way to go, Brocade says.

As businesses emerge from the wake of the credit crunch and the aftershock of the recession, cost is an omnipresent factor for companies around the world, Brocade vice president for Asia Pacific Deb Dutta told NBR today.

Mr Dutta said storage was not a recession proof industry but as data continues to soar and increases exponentially daily, it is a commodity businesses cannot ignore.