SoftIron opens first computer manufacturing facility in Australia

UK tech firm SoftIron has launched its first manufacturing facility in Australia —the first component-level computer manufacturing facility in the country.

According to Austrade, the new Sydney factory will build “clean” computer servers for customers that want to be sure there is no unknown code in their data centres.

The facility will begin commissioning in October, with locally manufactured computing hardware set to be ready in early 2022.

SoftIron Chief Operating Officer, Jason Van der Schyff, said they are very excited to be building a facility as part of their expansion in Australia.

“By establishing our first-ever factory on Australian soil, we will help further bolster Australia’s data infrastructure resilience by locally manufacturing our world-leading data centre solutions,” Schyff said.

“Our products will help our local customers deploy a credible, transparent and trusted alternative to public clouds that are based on imported, opaque hardware,” he said.

SoftIron designs and manufactures appliances for scale-out data centres. This includes private and public cloud, and enterprise-scale facilities. It is the only manufacturer offering auditable provenance on every single appliance it supplies.

A major milestone in SoftIron’s global “Edge Manufacturing” strategy, the new Sydney facility will be the company’s second location in the world after California.

According to the manufacturer, the introduction of a local facility will also aim to address and close the skills gap through the hiring and growth of local high-tech manufacturing skills.

The company continued that the advantage of a locally manufacturing SoftIron hardware will help customers gain transparency, resiliency, and achieve complete data sovereignty.

“The global supply chain is quite complex, with major security gaps,” Schyff said.

“The reality is that most data centres don’t know if their appliances are secure since manufacturers tend to operate opaque processes. Our goal is to offer our customers in Australia complete transparency with a range of appliances that are true to their design. Nothing more, nothing less,” he concluded.

Source: Austrade