Thodey's Telstra Cloud thunders to the tune of $800m

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 16 June 2011 15:52

Business IT - Networking

Presumably wanting to rain upon the parade of cloud computing competitors, Telstra has announced a whopping AUD $800m investment in cloud tech over the next five years.

When Australia's biggest telco, Telstra, invests $800m, you know it will be in technology the company has no intention of hanging-up on.

Indeed, for $800m you can probably make every phone ring in Australia, non-stop, at the same time, but Telstra is not going to waste its money on such frivolous endeavours, but instead, state-of-the-art cloud tech.

Telstra says that cloud computing is part of the company's strategy to 'grow its network application and services business', and promises that its cloud computing service offers 'world leading software, infrastructure and communications available on a pay-for-use basis.'

It proves there's hay to be made whether the sun is shining or the clouds are out, due to the 'growing demand from Australian organisations for cloud services', so sayeth the Big T.

Telstra hasn't just made an announcement about an announcement, either, instead also announcing 'more corporate customers' using Telstra's cloud computing technologies, including 'Australian Vintage Limited, The Salvation Army Employment Plus, Oz Minerals, Tabcorp, and Tristar Medical Group.'

As you'd imagine, such a momentous announcement also comes with a comment not from one of Telstra's executive directors, but instead the big kahuna himself: Telstra CEO, David Thodey.

Without trepidation, Telstra's Thodey thundered thus: 'Sales of our T-Suite software-as-a-service have grown threefold for the past year and use of our infrastructure cloud has increased by nearly 50 per cent this year.

'We are also experiencing strong sales in our cloud voice and video services, which are exceeding 80 per cent per year and we now manage more than 100,000 IP telephony services delivered from the cloud', said Telstra's telephonic-tsar, Thodey.

Telstra notes that it has been deep in research mode prior to its Cloud launch, stating that it has spoken to 'more than 160 Australian organisations about their cloud computing needs' over the past 12 months, with Telstra saying that 'many of these [organisations are] beginning to move into the cloud'.

One of Telstra's new customers, 'The Salvation Army Employment Plus', put its general manager of business administration, Howard Morey, into the front lines, to spruik the Salvo's full frontal employment services salvo into the cloud computing battlefield.

Mr Morey's story is that 'We found buying our own equipment, managing it and looking after the operating system took resources away from matching people to jobs.

'We didn't want to try to find massive amounts of capital to run IT; we saw that as the old way of doing business. We wanted to be out working with employers and finding people jobs,' concluded Mr Morey.

More clouds are forming on page two, where we learn just what Telstra is spending its $800m on - please read on!