No kudos for Optus' new cloud service

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 15 September 2010 17:44

Opinion and Analysis

When it comes to capturing the attention of the World's IT press Cisco seems to think that Optus, doesn't have the pulling power of  SingTel, even when Optus is ahead in its implementation of the solution Cisco is striving to promote.

That's one possible explanation. The other of course is that SingTel wanted to keep the kudos for itself rather than let the spotlight fall on its Optus subsidiary.

Cisco issued a press release today entitled "SingTel to Enable Enterprise Cloud-Based Virtual Data Centre Offering With VCE."

It said: "Cisco and EMC with VMware today announced that SingTel will introduce enterprise cloud-based virtual data centre services in Singapore with technology from VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment coalition created by Cisco, EMC and VMware."

It went on to explain: "The cloud-based services, scheduled to be available later in the year, will enable enterprise customers to operate their businesses more efficiently by ensuring IT resources are available when the business needs them, and eliminate the time and cost of investing in additional infrastructure as demands for IT services grow."

This is precisely what Optus announced yesterday as a full commercial service to be launched on 1 October as Optus Elevate, the first service under the umbrella of Optus Cloud Solutions.

Did Optus get any credit for this? Well, sort of. "As a SingTel Optus pilot customer, Curtin University in Australia trialled the solution to improve the productivity of its IT staff," the release said. "The solution provided Curtin with the flexibility to rapidly provision new infrastructure to meet any sudden need for increased capacity, as well as scale down when the resources are no longer required."