OPTUS BUSINESS AND ALPHAWEST SERVE UP YOUR IT AS A SERVICE

New on-premise cloud service based on Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud platform

Optus Business and Alphawest today announced a new on-premise cloud solution that will enable businesses to deliver IT as a service and simplify how they deploy and manage IT products and services across their organisation.

A private cloud solution hosting data on-premise, ‘Your IT as a Service’ features a centralised catalogue of virtualised IT products and services, including servers, storage, networking, and security applications, from a single web portal. It enables customers to ‘automate’ their IT architecture as a service to significantly reduce deployment time from weeks to potentially a matter of minutes. For example, IT teams can automatically provision services for specific users, while business departments can self-service their requests, such as additional storage needs.

“‘Your IT as A Service’ can help transform the way IT departments manage their IT and service their internal clients. It enables IT managers to have a single view of technology requirements across their organisation, helping to free up valuable IT resources to focus on consulting to the business,” Ian Smith, Alphawest CEO said.

“The service also helps businesses to scale infrastructure based on demand, and provides greater visibility of costs. This is the first of many offerings to enable the delivery of IT as a service and is a great example of how Optus Business and Alphawest combine their strengths to deliver innovative ICT solutions to customers.”

‘Your IT as a Service’ is built on the Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud platform using NetApp and Cisco FlexPod™ virtual storage, network and compute, VMware virtualisation and CommVault data management technologies.

“Cisco is very pleased that Optus Business and Alphawest are adopting Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud as the foundation of its on-premise cloud service for customers. By greatly simplifying the automation, provisioning and management of cloud services within and between data centres, Optus Business and Alphawest can now provide a business-class cloud user experience wherever the user is located and across the many clouds involved in delivering a service,” Sara Adams, Managing Director, Cisco Partner Business Group, Australia and New Zealand said.

Today’s announcement follows the implementation of a bespoke private cloud solution for Mantra Group in 2011 to help the accommodation company manage a phase of strong online business and market expansion. The solution, built on similar technology to ‘Your IT as a Service’, helped Mantra Group lower operational costs and improve speed to market for new services.

“The success of the private cloud implementation for the Mantra Group paved a clear path for developing ‘Your IT as a Service’. We have since enhanced the solution, adding automation technology, on-premise spare capacity and greater scalability, to bring ‘Your IT as a Service’ to market for customers,” Ian Smith said.

‘Your IT as a Service’ extends the Optus Business and Alphawest suite of cloud solutions by offering customers a choice between on-premise and off-premise cloud services such as Optus Elevate, which is hosted in Optus’ data centre.

Available from May, ‘Your IT as Service’ is implemented on-premise through Alphawest’s Data Centre Practice, and will be available to both Optus Business and Alphawest customers. The service is offered in three tiers depending on the size of the organisation. Optus Business and Alphawest will demonstrate ‘Your IT as a Service’ for the first time at Cisco Live 2012, held in Melbourne until 23 March.

About Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud
Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud is a self-service provisioning and orchestration software solution for cloud computing and data center automation. It helps customers enable highly secure, on-demand, and highly automated IT operations for both virtual and physical infrastructure across compute, network, storage, and applications.