SoftIron has opened Australia’s first-ever component-level IT infrastructure manufacturing facility in Sydney, bringing Australia one step closer towards developing its first sovereign capability in critical technology.
Backed by a Defence Department’s Sovereign Industry Capability Grant, the Advanced Manufacturing Facility, which opened at Botany on Monday, will produce ICT componentry for SoftIron’s ground-breaking HyperCloud Intelligent Cloud Fabric, the world’s first complete technology for building clouds. The grant was awarded to SoftIron in 2021.
The new facility fortifies Australia’s position to take advantage of the AUKUS agreement, which will see an unprecedented level of information sharing between the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and their industry partners.
Through local manufacturing, SoftIron eliminates the risk of malicious state actors that leverage firmware implants to create “backdoors” into critical information systems.
In a statement, SoftIron’s Chief Operating Officer Jason Van der Schyff said recent events globally had emphasised that onshoring or “friend-shoring” ICT supply chains was the only guaranteed way for Australian IT providers to mitigate their commercial and strategic risk.
“Aside from exposing Australian companies to an unacceptable business risk, our reliance on foreign-manufactured componentry has increased the risk of malicious state actors introducing covert hardware or firmware during the manufacturing process,” Van der Schyff said.
“Unlike manufacturers who rely on opaque supply chains for their componentry, SoftIron offers total transparency of the design and manufacturing of hardware and software supply chains in its HyperCloud IT infrastructure,” added Van der Schyff.
The SoftIron executive also highlighted how the company is ahead of the curve in Australia by identifying the impending challenges in the industry and establishing the capabilities to meet them.
Assistant Minister for Defence and local member for Kingsford Smith Matt Thistlethwaite attended the opening of the new Advanced Manufacturing Facility on Monday.
The event was also attended by federal and state government representatives, defence, business, and IT industry leaders, and SoftIron’s leadership team.
