IBM Australia Announces New Global Research Development Lab

davidmwilliams writes "Today Prime Minister Julia Gillard and IBM Australia and New Zealand Managing Director Glen Boreham announced a new global research and development lab to be based at the University of Victoria, creating 150 jobs and tackling Australian national concerns. The controversial Labor Government's National Broadband Network has been cited as a major drawcard."

Comments

It's not even done yet.

[mjwx]

The NBN has only begun rolling out, it's future is still in jeopardy and already it's drawing new business to Australia. Does anyone still need that CBA (Cost Benefit Analysis)?

Of course I mean anyone rational.

Australia has been built on developing new tech, on research. CSIRAC (CSIRO) was the worlds fourth digital computer and the CSIRO have done a lot more since then, a lot which has benefited Australia's main export industries (agriculture and mining). Killing this trend will only result in Australia shooting itself in the foot.

Re:It's not even done yet.

[sortius_nod]

There's also stories of high tech IT companies waiting with baited breath for the NBN to be rolled out so they can move manufacturing, datacentres, DR sites, etc, out of the big cities. This is a major chance for Australia to revitalise the bush, but the opposition feels that sabotaging the first major public infrastructure project in decades is a smart idea. Their alternative is wireless. No business worth anything would rely on wireless for high speed data, mainly because of the limitations and security concerns with wireless.

Add to this that the estimate of how many towers would be required is insanely higher than there currently is (some estimates put it at 1 tower per street).

Re:It's not even done yet.

[MichaelSmith]

Add to this that the estimate of how many towers would be required is insanely higher than there currently is (some estimates put it at 1 tower per street).

But that sounds perfectly okay to me. Pretty much every intersection in the Melbourne CBD has microcells mounted on traffic signal pylons. Why not do it in the suburbs? Cheaper than pulling cable from the street into houses.

Re:It's not even done yet.

[sortius_nod]

Go price a cell and then go price a few hundred metres of fibre and a fibre exchange card.

Not only will the cells need fibre to each of them and the card, but the cable will need to be hauled down every street anyway. All you're saving is the cost of a fibre lead in and a fibre splitter for every 32 houses, to spend much more on cells.

Re:It's not even done yet.

[fabs64]

This possibility has intrigued me for a while. We have a lot of very very very cheap land in rural towns that already has roads/water/electricity/sewage and has basically sat idle since the mechanisation of agriculture.

There do exist knowledge workers who don't want to live in a city, or hell just want to be able to afford a house.

Re:It's not even done yet.

[fabs64]

The ones who speak perfect english, went to university in Australia and are only a 2 hour drive away.

Having worked with Indian outsourcing for IT projects before I'd say 3x the price for onshore is a no-brainer. But no doubt it's more competitive than that.

Re:It's not even done yet.

[Gadget_Guy]

Yeah, because under 200 some jobs is worth the...how much are you guys investing in this again?

$43 billion. But what makes you think that the only benefit will be 200 jobs? This is a massive undertaking, which will have massive consequences.

And isn't this the same country that had a lone ISP that ran your internet for years? Or was it DNS, I forget. Then you had some sorry ass links to the outside world because of this...

You might be thinking of Melbourne IT, which was responsible for the .com.au addresses. One person handled the entire registration process for the entire country. This was much more complicated than getting a .com address because you had to provide documentation to prove you had the company name to match the address. Back in the 90s it ended up with a massive backlog. But this didn't affect the ability to connect to the Internet.

You might also be thinking of Telstra. It is true that Telstra resells their ADSL as a wholesaler, which was quite proper. However, they also are a public ISP and this creates a conflict of interest. The big problem that we had with Telstra in this respect was that it was privatised at about the time the Internet was becoming popular. It should have been broken up before privatisation so that they would not be in competition with their own resellers. Even worse, they were in competition with themselves. I remember many years ago when we wanted to use Internet access over mobile phones (long before 3G). We could get a cheaper price at Telstra if we asked at a different department. It was way too massive.

The ideal would have been to keep the wholesaler in government hands and sell off the retailer parts. This is exactly what the NBN is going to fix.

And nowadays, you have some ridiculous on and offline censorship. Video games.

I have a lot of issues with the Australian Classification Board. But I don't see how this is relevant to this topic.

And aren't you the folks that has a hit list, sorry, morality blacklist of unacceptable web sites, with lone government oversight, thanks to your governments and population's newfound "morality"?

No. Apart from a trial of a few ISPs (now over), it has never been implemented. And I doubt it ever will. There was always going to be too large a backlash.

So chalk up one for you with an IBM research center. Good for you. They smelled the dollars, and came running. When it runs out, they'll leave.

So what? Don't ever try anything because things might change in the future? Seriously, what is the point of your rambling?

Which Uni?

[MichaelSmith]

TFS and TFA refer to the "University of Victoria" which could be the same as "Victoria University" but the announcement was made at the "University of Melbourne" which leaves me confused.

Then there is this:

Natural disasters, resource management, life sciences and e-health will be keyed as high priorities for a new global research and development lab to be opened at the University of Melbourne by IBM.

So I think its Melbourne Uni.

Re:Which Uni?

[datakid23]

Indeed, The University of Victoria is, in fact, in Canada. They are welcome to take PM Gillard off our hands if they would like.

Re:Which Uni?

[catsidhe]

You are correct, it's in the University of Melbourne.

In fact, it is about two floors directly underneath me as I type this.

Re:Which Uni?

[MichaelSmith]

Thats two people who work directly above this lab. Getting crowded at unimelb.

Re:Which Uni?

[catsidhe]

I wouldn't be surprised if the AC and I are within twenty meters of each other.

Who would have thought that sysads might read /.

Great...

[pookemon]

Just what we need in Melbourne - an IBM "Research" lab. Because we don't have anything like it. Except for maybe the CSIRO, who, IMO are more worthy than IBM for getting tax payer funded hand outs. Or RMIT, or Monash, Melbourne University... I'm betting this will be another flash in the pan development like the IBM centre at UoB which is essentially just IBM getting IT students to work for peanuts on their help desk.

My rights online?

[BitterOak]

This sounds like an interesting project, but why is this story classified under "Your Rights Online."?

Re:My rights online?

[rakslice]

The Bayesian network that now performs all Slashdot editing has come to associate "Australia" with the "Your Rights Online" category, due to what I will call "poor quality training data" from Australian lawmakers.

Re:cost benefit of the rollout

[dbIII]

It's not a "proposal" or policy, it was a series of off the cuff comments from people who barely know how to use MS Word. One thing that set off alarm bells was the suggestion that the current wireless implementations can carry more bandwith than fibre-optic cable. Nobody in that party has put a high school weekend homework project worth of work into the idea, it's just another example of saying no to everything the government does.
All of the "detail" we've got is a couple of newspaper journalists at the Australian trying to fill in the gaps of inane comments along the lines of "we don't need expensive cables, we'll use wireless".

What Australian National Concerns Are There?

[frank_adrian314159]

Not enough stubbies in the fridge? Too many sheep to perve? Bosses spewing because too many folks are chucking a sickie? Automatic translation of Aussie into English?