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Innovation

Aussie battler cloud providers vie with global cloud behemoths

The Australian government's pre-vetted cloud suppliers list pits local players like Flying Haggis, iCognition, Sliced Tech, Squiz, and CloudCentral against multinational IT giants IBM, HP, Dell, Fujitsu and others.
Written by Angus Macaskill, Contributor

In October 2012 the Australian Federal government's Department of Finance (DOF) published a list of Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) in its Datacentre-as-a-service (DCAAS) Multi User List (MUL).  CSPs were invited to apply for inclusion and then added to the list following an evaluation process.

The DOF website says: "The MUL contributes to the Australian Government Data Centre Strategy 2010-25 (the Strategy) outcome of avoiding $1 billion in costs.  The MUL enables streamlined procurement of ICT services, reduces Agency procurement overheads and reduces the costs of the procured services." 

The purpose of the DCaaS MUL, is to provide Agencies "with a simple way to procure Cloud and Cloud-Like services. Contracts through the DCaaS MUL are limited to $80,000 (inc GST) and terms up to 12 months."

Initially comprising 35 companies, the list now extends to some 104 suppliers, with a total of 1,592 services defined in the service catalogue.

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Australian Federal Government CTO John Sheridan

In a recent interview, government CTO John Sheridan told ZDNet $1.5m worth of cloud services have already been acquired via the MUL.

The DCAAS MUL provides a summary of the key capabilities of each CSP, including services offered (e.g. compute, storage, email, collaboration software etc.), service levels, and numbers and location of datacentres (including PUE ratings and datacentre tier classification).

It comprises the usual suspects like multinational IT giants IBM, HP, Dell, Fujitsu and so on, as well as a raft of less well-known local players.  Who, for instance, are Flying Haggis, iCognition, Sliced Tech, Squiz and CloudCentral?

In this series about local CSPs, ZDNet profiles some of the Australian providers that have sprung up recently and are winning contracts with government agencies and commercial enterprises.

Check out the links to see profiles of  local CSPs and check back as we add new CSP profiles each day.

 

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