RBA asks NTT to design and implement its new IT infrastructure

Reserve Bank of Australia is moving into the design and implementation phase of its CoreMod program, appointing NTT Australia to assemble its new IT infrastructure.

A tender notice shows that NTT will be paid $12.7 million for its services through to October 2025.

CoreMod was first unveiled at the end of last year, and sees RBA set up a new head office data centre in a CDC facility, with new IT infrastructure, and then the migration of workloads into it.

It is anticipated to run until mid-to-late 2027.

“Following the selection of the new colocation data centre and the acquisition of hardware, advancing to the design and implementation phase of the CoreMod program marks a critical milestone,” CoreMod program director Janet Mengel told iTnews.

“This phase is essential for establishing a future-ready, modern, resilient, and secure infrastructure platform. 

“Partnering with a reliable vendor for the design and implementation activities brings us closer to migrating national critical applications to the new infrastructure. 

“This step is pivotal in fulfilling our commitment to providing a robust, safe, and efficient payments system for the Australian people, both now and in the future.”

RBA has made a number of infrastructure-related procurements this year, all with contractual terms running through to 2029.

Three of the mostly-hardware procurements are also with NTT Australia - two contracts for Cisco hardware and software worth a combined $67.5 million, and a further $16.1 million for F5 load balancers.

The central bank has also awarded a $13.6 million “managed services” agreement to Hitachi Vantara Australia.

In tandem with the infrastructure design and implementation through 2025, RBA will seek help for the workload migration to the new infrastructure, as well as for an observability tool for the environment.

It has earmarked 2026 for the business applications migration and observability tool deployment, and 2027 for the decommissioning of its current head office data centre.

The bank is in the process of renovating its head office in Sydney’s Martin Place.