Mac Tel offers 'labour-intensive' cloud
Business telco Macquarie Telecom is now taking orders for its new enterprise-managed cloud offering, which managing director Aidan Tudehope says is more labour intensive for the telco than the offerings of its competitors.
Tudehope said that the reason the company is late to the Australian cloud party behind competitors like Optus and Telstra, is that it spent a large amount of time talking to customers about what they needed out of their managed cloud and tweaking the product to their exacting specifications.
"We've waited a while to get this formula right," Tudehope said.
The company is set to integrate its existing workforce of sales staff and network engineers to optimise the cloud offering for the customer, rather than a self-serve option like Amazon Web Services.
"Our competitors do not, so picking the name Telstra for example, do not provide migration services to their masses. They'll leverage Accenture or something which anyone can go and sign up for Accenture or IBM, for example," he said.
"Certainly, bringing [customers] into the front door is very labour intensive," said Tudehope.
Tudehope also differentiated the Macquarie Telecom enterprise cloud from competitor offerings due to its on-shore data presence.
"There's differentiators regarding where the data is residing; Telstra, for example, is heavily reliant on reselling the Microsoft product out of Singapore."
Telstra's Microsoft Online offering via T-Suite is hosted in Singapore; however, Telstra has said that it hosts all enterprise customers on-shore.
Tudehope said that the company wouldn't increase headcount with the new managed cloud offering at this stage, instead deciding to use its existing workforce of sales and network engineers to cater to customer needs.
"Our headcount growth mirrors revenue … headcount will keep growing as more customers come on board," he said.
Macquarie Telecom is offering four levels of service in its new integrated infrastructure-as-a-service cloud environment, starting from $99 and moving into a pay-by-the-hour structure. Options range from a stand-by cloud option where users can scale up their computing requirements as needed, or choose an always-on offering for frequent, high volume usage.
Tudehope said that Macquarie Telecom is "vendor agnostic" and will offer its customers a packaged product with an operating system of their choice provided or a BYO option.
The government cloud
Tudehope told ZDNet Australia today that he believes Macquarie Telecom is now in the best position to bid for federal government cloud dollars when it goes to market, adding that the telco plans to add its voice to the government's draft consultation strategy on cloud migration.
"It's a great step for the government to embrace cloud," he said, adding that the company already handles hosting services for IP Australia and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
"We're in a fantastic position to take [contracts] like that out with our new managed hosting product," Tudehope added.