Hales IT Students Field Trip

Hales IT Students Field Trip to Telstra’s Global Operations Centre (GOC), Clayton

By Barry Newnham, IT Department

On the 9th of August 2010, Hales IT Students were invited to a field visit at Telstra’s GOC. This impressive facility gave students an insight on how Telstra controls its entire network across Australia and overseas.

To get some idea of the scale of monitoring conducted via this facility, the Telstra network handles almost 25 billion PSTN, SMS, mobile, wireless and ADSL broadband connection per year, all managed by the GOC.

After passing through Telstra’s security and meeting the host, Telstra’s Mr Steve Callinan, the students were taken to the GOC’s presentation room where they took part in an introductory discussion and audiovisual display. This included information on the GOC’s function and the latest ICT features and trends, for example ‘cloud technology’ and the impact of the National Wideband Network (NWN). The session took about one hour to complete.

As the students are studying Multimedia, it is important for them to be exposed to the latest industry trends and to understand the direction the ICT sector is heading, for example ‘Cloud Technology’.

Cloud computing is a paradigm shift, where user’s operating system, applications and data are stored on ISP’s virtual machines, instead of local hard-disks. This will soon have a direct impact on the ICT/multimedia sector.

After the visit, the students were invited to a ‘debrief’ at Jells Park over a BBQ lunch, prior to returning to the city, to disperse. It anticipated that the field visit will be a catalyst for further classroom discussion in the future.

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