Telstra adds a crucial cog in cloud arena
October 10, 2011
TELSTRA has added a crucial cog in its cloud computing wheel, joining EMC Australia’s cosy cohort of six to resell the storage giant’s wares.
The alliance will see Telstra bolster its cloud division with new specialist sales personnel, according to Mark Pratley, Telstra Cloud Computing general manager.
The telco joins EMC’s Velocity Service Provider Partner program alongside Melbourne IT, Infoplex, CSC, Macquarie Telecom and Dimension Data. They will also deploy and market EMC gear to cloud computing customers…
EMC products will be sold as part of Telstra’s cloud offering and not a standalone storage-as-a-service product.
Mr Pratley said the new relationship would result in tighter co-ordination between both parties.
The program will give Telstra staff a deeper understanding of EMC’s product set and architecture.
"From an engineering and operations perspective, in addition to always looking for people with the capabilities that complement our existing products and networks experts, the skill sets that are of interest are architect and application experts in relation to cloud computing," Mr Pratley said.
He declined to provide specific numbers on the hiring plan.
He said he was confident Telstra would be able to stave off competition from other vendors looking for cloud computing skills.
"If you went back 10 years, very few (people) looking for that kind of career would consider Telstra.
"They would naturally not think of coming here," Mr Pratley said.
But in the past two years, he said, there had been a "definite change".
Telstra had become "one of the places to work" when it came to cloud computing, he said.
The telco cloud journey continues apace; recently, SAP Australia gave Telstra’s cloud infrastructure a tick of approval.
Telstra is investing more than $800 million over five years in cloud services, where it also counts IT suppliers Accenture, Microsoft and Cisco as partners.
The telco’s Accenture partnership has already borne fruit — Telstra will provide hosting services based on its cloud platform for Labor’s $500m personally controlled e-health record program.
Telstra is part of the Accenture-led consortium, including Oracle and Orion Health, that bagged the $77m deal in August.