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In 2011, Telstra International injected AUD$800 million dollar (US$861 million) to expand its cloud services portfolio. Initiatives included modernizing its data center facilities, expanding the range of enterprise applications, introducing a new online account management portal, and increasing the automation of utility computing services.

With these investments, Telstra International hopes to extend is cloud services outside Australia into Asia. According to Nathan Bell (pictured), director of products and marketing, Telstra International, Telstra is now evaluating ways to extend its data center footprint in Asia, and provide customers with international network services.

In an interview with Asia Cloud Forum, Bell describes Telstra International’s successful deployment of a private cloud solution for Komatsu; explains the success of Visy Industries’ cloud platform implementation; the major findings of Telstra-sponsored “State of the CXO 2011 Survey”; and how organizations will collaborate to form ‘community of interest’ clouds to create business process-based architectures.

Nathan Bell: Our Network Computing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering has gained traction with customers deploying private clouds to deliver seamless services to their customers in multiple locations around the world.

Customers include Komatsu with a utility IT services on private cloud solution. In this case, we’re helping them move 85 virtual servers, five physical servers and the mainframe, all into one of our Sydney data centers. 

We’re providing the underlying infrastructure, the servers and also the storage, so that they no longer need to have a lease/capital acquisition-type engagement. We’re also helping them move to a utility-based engagement, so that they only pay for what they use, when they use it. This differs from an outsourcing model because it allows Komatsu to retain ownership and management of their core applications.

Over the next few years, we will extend these services internationally and help both Australian and internationally-headquartered organizations expand into new geographies powered by our cloud-infrastructure and network at the core.

Bell: We have seen the steady global development of truly enterprise grade cloud solutions this year. No longer are cloud infrastructure solutions reserved for the small to medium business and developer markets and we are increasingly seeing the adoption of cloud solutions by large multinational corporations (MNCs) across Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas. 

Most notably, we have seen MNCs in Asia Pacific have the largest uptake of cloud services with many more global enterprises

A particular deployment that stands out is with Visy Industries, the packaging, paper and recycling giant that has integrated an enterprise cloud computing platform to supports its critical business applications across 140 sites in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the US. Inside its network, an enterprise utility computing capability provides security, computing, storage and activities relating to disaster recovery and business continuity planning. 

This game-changing approach provides Visy with a cloud computing platform that supports critical enterprise systems, including its Global SAP environment and is expected to deliver a 30% saving against the previous approach where the telecommunications network was separate from the computing model that was internally supported.

Bell: The cloud is not a panacea for everyone and every situation. Some organizations rely heavily on more ‘traditional’ hosting models such as co-location and dedicated servers, and these will continue to work well for them.

For businesses that give priority to having a flexible and agile infrastructure, as well as a sustainable strategy to support growth (or contraction), the benefits of cloud services cannot be ignored. Cloud services have a definite role in helping their CIOs achieve these goals. 

Businesses that remain reluctant to transition to the cloud should consider cloud computing initially for developing test environments. This will enable businesses to benefit from a larger compute capability, whilst gaining experience and reducing their perceived commitment to a Cloud based IT architecture

Additionally, the ability to provide infrastructure on an ‘as-needed’ basis with cloud services is an especially compelling benefit. With the political uncertainty and volatile global economy, many organizations are finding it difficult to forecast business activity and infrastructure requirements three to five years ahead. Increasingly, they are trying to find ways to operate in a more agile manner. Any technology or operating model that improves a business’ flexibility and responsiveness will quickly earn the approval from their respective management teams.