New portal eases access to Telstra cloud

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 08 November 2011 09:18

Telstra Business has launched a portal through which customers can order and configure cloud computing resources.

Telstra Business group managing director, Will Irving, said that the aim was to drive cloud take-up and productivity in Australia's small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

He claimed: "Independent modelling undertaken for Telstra shows a SME using the new service could save up to $7000 a year over three years compared to what they would normally spend setting up on-premises servers."

Telstra Cloud Services are available in five packages ranging from $200 to $4000 a month, on a pay-as-you-go basis with minimal or no up-front costs or fixed contract term.

According to Telstra, "The simplicity of ordering online will appeal to large enterprise through to small business customers, especially those seeking to rapidly deploy virtual environments for a variety of uses including testing, development or short-term projects. They can self-purchase and manage virtual servers via the platform or go to the cloud with help from a growing network of channel partners."

Telstra is offering Windows and Linux-based virtual servers, hosted in Telstra's Australian data centres, charged to a Telstra bill and managed online. "Telstra's Cloud Services portal provides access to our enterprise-grade servers, built on industry-leading computing infrastructure from Cisco, VMware and EMC, backed by service level agreements and 24 x 7 support on a pay-for-use basis or subscription basis," it said.

Irving said the portal represented the next stage of Telstra's $800m five year investment in cloud services announced last year. "Just as T-Suite has made cloud software easy for Australian SMEs, this is yet another way to access a productivity tool already used widely by big business."