With only 5 percent of surveillance footage typically ever seen by human eyes, SmartCatch will play a key role in helping NITSC operators become more proactive in monitoring the state's transport networks, says NEC business solutions executive manager Milton Purcell: "It gives us the ability to reach out to any networked camera that we can touch via the Internet," he said.

SmartCatch may be headlining now, but the site will soon sport more innovations. Intended as a center of excellence for Victoria's A$16 billion transport, distribution and logistics (TDL) industry, NITSC incorporates numerous secure development bays, where inventors can quietly build and commercialize transport-related applications combining tools such as intelligent GPS and road hazard navigation, RFID-based vehicle tagging, intelligent container management, and distribution of live traffic condition updates to motorists.

Behind the scenes is a sophisticated network linking a broad range of NEC equipment - most notably, three racks of NEC 5800 Express blade servers, each containing six dual-CPU 3.6GHz Xeon servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with 4GB of RAM.

These are supported by 12 dual-CPU NEC 120LH stand-alone servers, multiple terabytes of server-attached storage, dedicated multimedia streaming technology from Perth company PIVoD Technologies, and a range of video archiving, duplication and distribution systems.

The gear isn't only for creative types, however: the site, whose strong government backing was evident when Victorian Treasurer and Minister for State and Regional Development John Brumby addressed a capacity crowd at its opening last week, also serves as a serviced office and disaster recovery site for smaller, Victorian government agencies.