Oracle plans Aussie CRM on-demand hosting

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Technology behemoth Oracle has become one of the first multinational software giants to buck the trend and start offering software as a service from an Australian datacentre.

The company overnight confirmed a report by iTNews filed from the sidelines of its Openworld conference in San Francisco this week that it would bring its on-demand customer relationship management platform to Australia through a deal with hosting company Harbour MSP.

Harbour MSP’s Australian datacentre is based in the massive Global Switch facility in Ultimo, Sydney.

A spokesperson for Oracle confirmed the iTNews report, which quoted the company’s Asia-Pacific vice president Steve Au Yeung as saying that although the definition of cloud computing meant it shouldn’t matter where data was shosted, sometimes customers — especially in Government — wanted data locally. The service is slated to go live by November this year.

The news comes as a number of other multinational cloud computing software giants have consistently demurred from establishing datacentres in Australia, generally preferring Singapore as the next closest option.

Customer organisations — particularly in the heavily regulated financial services sector, but also in government, have consistently requested locally hosted datacentres from vendors.

Google, for example, has acknowledged that there is “intense” interest in its cloud computing Apps suite including Gmail, but earlier this year stopped short of committing to local infrastructure.

Oracle rival Salesforce.com also hosts its datacentres overseas, as does Microsoft with its hosted Business Productivity Online Suite. However, local IT services partners such as CSC have brought the Microsoft platform in-country and already started winning local cloud email hosting deals with players as large as AMP and Coca-Cola Amatil.

And it’s not just the software companies and systems integrators who are moving into local hosting for cloud computing services. Telcos like Telstra and Optus, for example, have both recently announced initiatives to develop the cloud in Australia.

Image credit: Oracle