OPTUS BUSINESS UPS ITS COMMITMENT IN CLOUD

• Optus to expand its enterprise cloud services catalogue and offer cloud consulting via NCS
• Cloud portfolio to be re-branded as PowerON as Optus gets ready to launch regional cloud services with SingTel

Optus Business today announced several new cloud initiatives as part of its strategy to continue to differentiate in the enterprise and government cloud computing market.

Optus Business will introduce new features to its enterprise cloud suite, offer cloud consulting services, and re-brand the Optus Cloud portfolio as Optus PowerON to pave the way for the launch of a regional cloud service with SingTel. The announcement follows Optus Business becoming part of SingTel Group ICT, a new division which brings together all of the Group’s enterprise-related business units.

John Paitaridis, Managing Director, Optus Business said, “Our Optus Future of Business Report shows that 87 per cent of organisations expect to be using some sort of cloud computing service within the next three to five years. As businesses embrace the benefits of cloud, we’re continuing to invest to differentiate in this market and bring new and enhanced capabilities to our customers. With the backing of SingTel Group ICT, we will be able to offer an even stronger portfolio of cloud services, both local and regional, to help businesses make the most of the cloud opportunity.”

Cloud portfolio to expand with new storage solution, consulting services and more pricing and access options

To give customers more flexibility in how they consume and use cloud services, Optus will expand its cloud service catalogue in the second half of this year. Launched in October 2010, Optus PowerON Compute (formerly Optus Elevate) is a virtual private data centre solution used by corporate and government customers, including Savills and RDNS, to support multiple applications in the cloud. It enables customers to consume virtual computing and storage capacity and manage this using a self-service online portal, with the data housed in Optus’ Australian ISO 27001-certified data centre facilities.

• To offer customers more choice and cost certainty, Optus will offer pay-as-you-consume and ‘burstable’ consumption pricing models in addition to a fixed price per compute ‘slice’ and storage per gigabyte. Optus will also provide more options to access the Optus Cloud in addition to a private Optus Evolve IP network connection.
• To give businesses more options to securely back up their data, Optus Business will launch a new enterprise cloud storage service, with product details announced closer to launch.
• Leveraging NCS capabilities as part of SingTel Group ICT, Optus Business will offer customers a Cloud Readiness Assessment to help organisations assess their readiness to move applications into the cloud. The cloud consulting service includes guiding business strategy, evaluating the most suitable applications for the cloud and reviewing existing security and governance policies.

These service enhancements follow Optus becoming the first and only cloud solutions provider in Australia to achieve accreditation under the VMware vCloud® Datacenter services program last year, alongside SingTel. The certification provides Optus PowerON customers with the assurance that the service is compliant with the latest VMware cloud solution standards.

Cloud portfolio re-brand paves way for regional service offering

Leveraging the strength of the SingTel Group ICT, Optus and SingTel will launch a regional PowerON Compute cloud service in the second half of this year.

Optus and SingTel already share a common cloud technology platform and have tested the ability to move virtual workloads between their respective clouds in Australia and Singapore. The service will enable customers with regional operations to access virtual capacity across multiple clouds, but manage their resources from a single portal.

“This is the next step in our regional cloud roadmap now that Optus Business is part of SingTel Group ICT. Customers can look forward to a seamless regional cloud offering that will make it easier to manage their cloud resources – that’s one contract, one bill and one management portal, with access to multiple clouds across the region,” Mr Paitaridis said.

Choice of on-premise and off-premise cloud solutions

In addition to Optus PowerON, Optus Business offers customers a choice of on-premise private cloud solutions. Launched in May, ‘Your IT as a Service’ is a private cloud solution that hosts data on a customer’s premise. It enables customers to virtualise and ‘automate’ their IT architecture as a service, making it easier to deploy and manage IT products and services.

For more information, please visit www.optus.com.au/business/cloud.

Media contacts:
Kasia Ciszak/Derek Lau
Optus Corporate Affairs
Tel: (02) 80827850