The Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) announced that its new Data Centre in Santa Venera, MITA-01, has won the prestigious Public Sector Data centre Project of the Year in the 2012 Datacentre Solutions Awards held on 23 May 2012 in London.

Datacentre Solutions is an international publication by an industry B2B online and print publisher, conference and exhibition organiser, covering all aspects of data centre technology across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and is available to qualifying IT professionals.  The aim of the Datacentres Solutions Award is to reward the products, projects and services as well as to honour entities operating in the data centre field.
 
The Public Sector Datacentre Project of the Year award is handed in recognition of an organisation’s implementation of a data centre project, centred on the driving force behind the project, the business and technology challenges it addressed, its innovative aspect, and the tangible benefits as a result of the project. In 2011, the winner of this award was the British Transport Police.
 
Commenting on the award, MITA Chairman Dr. Godwin Grima, said: “We are delighted to win such a celebrated award and we are equally delighted by the positive comments and for the recognition from our industry peers.  We strive to provide Government with infrastructure that achieves true business continuity. This award is a real acknowledgement of Government’s investment in ICT and in MITA as the Agency providing a cost-effective ICT hosting environment which meets the forecasted long-term hosting capacity of the Information Systems requirements of the Maltese Government. In particular the award is also in recognition of the MITA personnel who worked towards the success of this project.”
 
Bill Dunlop, CEO of the award organisers said: “The DCS awards are voted for by the readers of our wide range of print and online publications and this year we had a significant increase in the number of overall votes. All finalists did well in making the shortlist but MITA was the clear winner in its category Public Sector Project of the Year.”
 
(…) The award ceremony was held on Wednesday, 23 May 2012, at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel and Conference Centre in London and was attended by distinguished guests and some 200 professionals from this field.
 
MITA-01, inaugurated in December 2011, is a state of the art data centre that puts into play a broad portfolio of Government ICT initiatives covering Healthcare, eLearning, eGovernment and other Government back-office functions based on innovative and cost effective solutions such as virtualisation and open source technologies. 
 
The project was executed in a timely manner of just 7 months and within the estimated budget of €7 million. This investment was aimed at Value for Money and aligned with successful business models to guarantee the highest return on investment (ROI) and reduce operational costs. The Government will be benefiting from large savings on its hosting costs from its previous methodologies and third party hosting.
 
This is not the first time that MITA-01 has achieved international recognition. Last year, MITA-01 attained the highly recognised and sought after international accreditation from the Uptime Institute for the TIER III Data Centre Design. (…) MITA-01 is also inline with the stringent EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres policies and guidelines.
 
In December 2011, MITA-01 also managed to win the prestigious Malta Engineering Excellence Award. These awards, held annually by the Chamber of Engineers, recognise engineering excellence in the areas of innovation and leadership in Malta.

Further Information:

• Original press release - Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA)
• Winners of the Datacentre Solutions Awards 2012
• Malta Engineering Excellence Award