Telstra joins PaaS gold rush with T-Suite

Steve Hodgkinson
Friday, 20 June 2008 09:05

IT Industry - Strategy

Well, unlike Salesforce, Google or IBM, which are in the business of commercialising software (be it single- or multi-tenanted), Telstra is not a software company.

Like Google, however, Telstra is in the business of benefiting from virtually any growth in the number of Internet users on its platform.

Both companies have built sophisticated engines to turn bits travelling around the Internet into money: Google via advertising; Telstra via network usage charges.

T-Suite may benefit Telstra if its SMB customers are stimulated to upgrade their broadband contracts, but this will only happen if Telstra can attract a critical mass of developers to host their applications on the T-Suite platform.

Telstra needs to be wary of being dragged into a highly competitive SaaS delivery model that is not its core competence, and should instead focus on providing a compelling PaaS offering to software developers – but this is also a highly competitive space.

Telstra's challenge, and opportunity, will be to construct an offering that leverages both its local marketing muscle and the increased capacity of its new Next G and Next IP networks.

T-Suite will need to come up with some innovative ways to 'hoist itself up with its own bootlaces' to get application developers on board and offer up an attractive set of applications to its customers.

Steve Hodgkinson is the director of Ovum's government practice in Australia and New Zealand.