Local data centre commands premium price

Beverley Head
Thursday, 03 February 2011 18:05

Symantec.cloud, the newly branded MessageLabs business, which is gearing up to offer more of its products on a software as a service basis, will offer Australian enterprise users access to a local data centre - for a premium.

The company already has one local data centre in Sydney and is building a second at an as yet undisclosed location, according to Keith Buckley, regional director for the business unit. 'We are making a significant investment in data centres,' said Mr Buckley.

He claimed that while small and medium businesses were not overly concerned about where their data was stored - 'they just want it secure' he said - that was not the case for enterprise clients. 'The bigger end of town has a large desire to host their data in the country,' he claimed at a briefing in Sydney today.

Mr Buckley warned however that higher network and bandwidth costs in Australia meant that clients should expect to pay a premium for opting to have their data stored locally.

He said that by the end of the year the organisation hoped to be able to offer onshore data archiving as a cloud service.

Symantec.cloud, which will offer a range of hosted services, replaces the MessageLabs business unit, although the MessageLabs brand will remain as a product name. The company intends to 'Spend significant time and resources to educate the market about the cloud and what it can deliver,' according to Mr Buckley.