Melbourne based MINEMAN Systems has awarded a contract to a leading Australian telecommunications company to build and manage MINEMAN's global data centre. MINEMAN Systems supplies mission-critical software to the global mining and metals industry. The data centre will be used to deliver MINEMAN through the Internet to mining and smelting companies in a range of locations in Australia and overseas. The service will be protected by military-grade security and managed on a 24x7 basis. Companies running MINEMAN from the data centre will be able to benefit from MINEMAN at any location in the world that has a connection to the Internet. Mining companies have expressed strong interest in using the new service. As the mining boom continues unabated, the new service will give them a way of circumventing over-stretched IT infrastructure and staff shortages.