Telstra & Accenture set up joint cloud computing lab

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 30 August 2011 07:20

Telstra and Accenture have set up a joint cloud computing innovation lab in Melbourne to develop cloud computing products for customers in Australia and New Zealand.

The initiative is part of the cloud computing alliance between Telstra Enterprise and Government and Accenture, signed in April 2010 but announced only in October that year. It also fits within Telstra's announcement earlier this year of plans to invest $800m in cloud computing in the next five years.

Telstra CTO, Hugh Bradlow, said: "One of the things we have been looking at as part of our $880m investment in cloud is how we can deliver a more complete set of cloud services with new innovations and the sort of capabilities organisations will need to migrate to the cloud. Today's announcement is a logical extension of that goal.

"Accenture have a number of services they have developed around the world that are applicable in Australia and we have the capability to deliver cloud services and the customer base so it made sense to combine forces and create this lab to take cloud services to the next level, both for us and for Accenture."

Gavin Michael, chief technology innovation officer at Accenture, added: "This is an important evolution of our alliance with Telstra and a real opportunity for us to bring into Australia proven cloud solutions. [The new lab] is integrated into the Accenture global innovation network. It is a way for us to bring to the market in Australia cloud solutions we see in other parts of the world."

The lab however is not intended to serve as a developer of bespoke apps to meet specific customer needs. Philip Jones, executive director of innovation and product management at Telstra, said: "If the customer asked us to develop something that we saw no other application for I doubt that we would do it, but what I do see it as is a means of bringing customers into the innovation cycle, contributing people and /or intellectual property."

The lab will primarily focus on building solutions around the cloud infrastructure stack Telstra announced in June when it said it would invest $800m on cloud in the next five years. That stack comprises Cisco servers and switching, EMC storage, VMware software and software from number of other software vendors.

It followed the cloud partnership with Accenture announced last October. Under that agreement between Telstra and Accenture clients' applications are hosted in a virtualised environment in Telstra data centres and delivered over Telstra's IP network infrastructure with Accenture providing: the expertise to transition clients' existing applications into the cloud; ongoing support for those applications; and implementing new applications in the cloud rather than in customers' own data centres.

Telstra announced in June plans to invest $800m over the next five years to boost its ability to offer cloud computing services. It said that money would be spent on building a new state-of-the-art data centre in Melbourne, modernising and expanding other existing data centres and expanding the range of cloud based applications on offer, and developing an integrated online account management portal, but gave few specifics. Neither Telstra nor Accenture have given any indication of what investment will be made in the new innovation lab.