a) The data centre is a very good quality one with lots of power and people who are clueful and sane commercially (ie. don't act like d**ks because your _THE_ site to go). b) It has good onsite services so that my NOC guys can call up and get stuff done 24x7 c) It has *freaking awesome* connectivity to *EVERY* provider in NZ that matters, including TNZ, TC, Vodafone etc so that one deployment can pickup almost all of NZ and that access to the landing stations or connectivity out of NZ is cheap and easy. d) Less importantly it's easy to get to from Auckland airport, it's got a good hotel nearby and some nice food.
As long as a,b and c are met then people will start appearing. Build it and they will come.
MMC
Soo.. a) rules out Auckland then. Power situation in Auckland is not good and due simply where the power sources in NZ are is more points for South centre. I think someone jokingly said something about creating a "Green" Data centre run off Lake Manapouri @ Nethui... I like this idea. But I think that the follow up comment was "The Megaupload case has ruined the chances of that happening" wrt strategic/competitive advantage of NZ based hosting. I do agree that it doesn't really matter where it is, so long as it meets some set of criteria are fullfilled. Although the main factor being the Elephant in the room is Cost. If someone was to propose a data centre and set of accompanying national cable roll-outs that allayed my concerns about pinch points on the national transit comming out of Auckland (perhaps a marine cable via Corromandel?). Then I would be happy to see it happen. If however we are going to postulate on ideals, I support Nathan's notion more.