Komatsu inks $35m Telstra cloud computing deal

Komatsu Australia has announced a five year, $35 million contract with Telstra today which will see the company consolidate its telecommunications with the telco as well as the implementation of a new cloud computing infrastructure.

The mining equipment manufacturer has 1800 employees that Telstra will have to provide ICT services to, including voice and mobile data services and fixed network services utilising Telstra’s Next IP Network.

Komatsu’s president Bill Pike said of the partnership that it “will improve a critical ingredient for our business moving forward, especially given the diverse nature of our workforce. For example our salesforce once had to wait until they are back at the office or hotel to sync their data and process quotes.”

After a three-year history together, the review of an extension of Telstra’s services with Komatsu was a six month deliberation, with Komatsu deciding upon an expansion of Telstra’s services to include the cloud infrastructure.

“Put simply the new approach brings us cost certainty, managed risk and long term efficiency,” said Pike. “We can focus our attention on growing business in Australia rather than being distracted by maintaining the physical hardware and software ourselves.”

The task ahead of Telstra covers a broad region with 42 branches and 35 service depots located in Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia.

Telstra enterprise and government group managing director Nerida Caesar, said: “We expect Komatsu Australia will recognise significant sustainable improvements by reducing the need to travel and increase the productivity of its workforce as it adapts enhanced business processes to utilise these new capabilities.”

The cloud computing infrastructure will include a secure network that can be accessed from all of Komatsu’s country and city sites and scalable computing and storage environment within the Telstra cloud, that Komatsu can upgrade on demand and add new servers to as needed.

The contract encompasses requirements of 1200 Telstra Next G Mobile services, 150 wireless email devices utilising Microsoft’s Mobile Enterprise solution and 400 wireless broadband devices with Telstra’s Enterprise Mobile Broadband Plus. All “enhanced products” such as, managed security, firewall, VPN service and co-location services are also included in the agreement.