Enterprise-focused telco Macquarie Telecom today launched its cloud computing play in the Australian market, joining a throng of competitors to have entered the space over the past year.
In a press release issued this morning, the company said its decision to join the cloud computing market was driven by a 30 per cent year-on-year growth in its managed infrastructure and hosting business, achieved over the last three years. Macquarie Telcom managing director of Hosting, Aidan Tudehope, said the company’s move to cloud computing was also due to market demand for Australia-based services, which — he said — Macquarie could offer at globally competitive prices.
“This strategic investment is the next step in the evolution of Macquarie Telecom as a major player in the Australian hosting and telecommunications market,” he said. “Our commitment to providing enterprise cloud services in Australia directly reflects customer demand and market sentiment for locally based enterprise-grade cloud services”.
The company will deliver its cloud services through its Australia-based datacentre facilities.
The company’s ‘Enterprise Cloud’ will offer what Macquarie described as an Integrated Infrastructure as a Service (IIaaS) platform to Australian organisations and IT departments, allowing to burst their in-house resources into the cloud to satisfy peak demand.
Applications can utilise the additional processing resources located in Macquarie’s datacentres irrespective of how they are hosted in their basic state — on the telco’s own servers, a customer’s co-located server or a company’s existing in-house infrastructure over a WAN or private VPN.
According to Macquarie’s media release, its cloud computing offering will enable the adoption of cloud services quickly. Unlike rival platform as a service offerings, the company claimed, its IIaaS is hardware vendor and operating system neutral, avoiding the need for customers to rewrite applications to run in the cloud.
Tudehope said in a statement he believed the future of cloud computing was in telcos’ hands. He said Macquarie Enterprise Cloud will address current industry-wide concerns around data residency, latency, regulatory and customer service areas that Macquarie claimed had delayed cloud services adoption by Australian organisations.
“Only telcos can provide end-to-end Integrated IaaS because we already have the infrastructure in place that can guarantee the resiliency critical to delivering enterprise cloud services,” he said. “The cloud and the data centre are now core for a company’s business. Recently, Industry analyst dirm IDC stated that ‘telcos will win the cloud war,’ because they own the infrastructure — the large bandwidth and data centres — that make cloud possible.”
Macquarie will provide customers with what it described as “real-time reporting” through its online management tool InView, although it did not clarify whether this tool also allows instant provisioning of extra cloud resources, as some providers allow. Billing will be done in arrears after the end of each month.
The telco did not clarify what underlying hardware or software technology its platform was based on, but it outlined three main usage plans in its statement — a flat fee plan with unlimited usage, a plan based on predictable bursting with a fixed monthly fee and variable usage billing, and a third plan for those who need only infrequent bursting, and featuring a lower monthly fee but a higher hourly charge.
Image credit: Fred Fokkelman, royalty free