Telstra Cisco Cloud Services goes live for trial

Telstra announced today that its Cisco Cloud Services platform in Australia has gone live in trial mode for testing by selected — but unnamed — Telstra customers and partners.

A Telstra spokesperson told ZDNet that the company would confirm the identities of the customers trialling the product later this year, along with the date of a broader launch for the service.

The announcement comes as the company works to tap the Singapore and Hong Kong cloud services markets, pushing its Cisco Intercloud platform into those regions.

Telstra first announced in March last year it would partner with the network vendor giant to introduce its new set of voice, video, telepresence, and mobile applications — known as Unified Communications-as-a-Service, as part of its five-year AU$800 million investment in cloud services.

The deal sees Cisco operate and control Telstra's cloud platform from the telco's datacentre and use its mobile network in Australia.

In August, Telstra announced it had used the Cisco partnership to launch its global cloud-based unified communications service, extending the service to seven new locations around the world, including the United States, Europe, and the greater Asia Pacific region.

"We are diversifying our portfolio at a rapid pace, adding capabilities and exciting products that are relevant to our customer’s businesses," said Telstra executive director, cloud, Erez Yarkoni. "As we continue to expand our cloud services portfolio to a global footprint, at the core we are offering our customers choice and flexibility, making the transition to hybrid and public clouds simpler and easier to manage.

"We continue to execute our hybrid cloud strategy both domestically and globally, partnering with providers of best in class cloud infrastructure. Through our strategic relationship with Cisco, development of the Cisco Intercloud has progressed well in Australia with Telstra customers and partners now trialling the service," he said.