A new purpose-built data centre at the Tasmanian Technopark is expected to provide support to a range of local businesses, the Minister for Innovation, Science and Technology, David O'Byrne said today.

Mr O'Byrne today opened telecommunications provider TasmaNet's new data centre, saying the new centre formed part of the business's $5.5 million investment in Tasmania.

"This is both a significant step forward for a local telecommunications company, and an important investment in a key sector in our economy," he said.

"We're at the forefront of digital innovation and our proactive development in the digital sphere offers a wide range of opportunities for investment.

"The Tasmanian Government is helping businesses and industry to capitalise on the advantages of the National Broadband Network (NBN), to reinforce our reputation as a dynamic 'interactive' state.

"Our $1.13 billion ICT sector employs more than 3 700 highly skilled people and plays a key role in the state's economic transformation and is a priority sector in our Economic Development Plan.

"Digital productivity and innovation is transforming economies globally.

"This facility is a key digital infrastructure component to enable industry, business and government to take advantage of the Tasmanian NBN footprint.

"Alongside our six-year NBN head-start over the rest of Australia, this facility will contribute to making Tasmania an attractive place to relocate for those businesses wishing to plug into our state-of-the-art infrastructure."

TasmaNet Managing Director, Joel Harris, said in the next five years, industry observers predict more than 75 per cent of all businesses will adopt some form of cloud computing for their ICT infrastructure.

"We recognised the need for an enterprise level data centre in Tasmania and we are proud to be delivering this," Mr Harris said.

"Our new data centre at Technopark will enable Tasmanian businesses to move towards cloud computing, with access to the largest data centre in the state.

"It is a world class facility with high bandwidth access in a highly configurable secure and resilient environment.

"This is a one of the most sophisticated, cutting edge data storage centres in the country and will enable businesses to grow with confidence in the security of their information.

"It sees TasmaNet move to being a major data communications and ICT services provider in Tasmania and represents a major upgrade of our Data Centre facilities through a significant capital investment."