Telstra to open cloud node in US east coast

Telstra has today announced the availability of a new US node in its cloud infrastructure services by the end of 2014, adding the US east coast to cloud coverage that already covers Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.

It was almost a year ago that Telstra flaged its push of its cloud offering into Asian datacentres, with today's announcement representing the latest allocation of Telstra's AU$800 budget to invest in cloud services.

"When it comes to IT projects, we are finding that customers are increasingly opting for cloud-based services and with this expansion we are even better equipped to serve organisations with operations in the US — be it their long-term head-quarters or a new market they are expanding into," said Martin Bishop, Telstra global head of network applications and services.

"The new US node brings our total cloud presence up to seven distinct locations throughout the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific and will enable customers operating across multiple geographic locations, including the US, to quickly and efficiently realise the benefits of enterprise cloud services on their global operations."

In March, Telstra announced that it was partnering with Cisco to become the first global customer to launch cloud services based on Cisco's InterCloud platform by the end of 2014. As part of the deal Cisco will be operating and controlling the telco's cloud platform in its datacentre and using Telstra's mobile network in Australia.

"Doing it yourself, buying our own kit, and then running our own software on top of it ... to do that, even as big as Telstra is, as one local instance to Australia, would be uncompetitive with the global offerings, " Telstra's global enterprise and services executive director for cloud, Erez Yarkoni, told ZDNet at the time.

Telstra will look to sign government customers, Australian businesses, and Australian multinationals before the company looks to target international companies.