Telstra wins $35m telco, cloud deal

Komatsu Australia announced today that it signed a new five-year contract with Telstra, which will see it continue to receive telecommunications from the incumbent provider and also migrate to a managed cloud service.

Telstra will provide a bevy of services including a managed data network between Komatsu's sites, managed infrastructure-as-a-service so that Komatsu's computing power needs could be scaled on demand, security products such as firewall, 1200 mobile products for the 1800 staff, and 400 wireless broadband services.

Moving to a managed network would allow Komatsu to focus on its core business, according to the company's Australia president Bill Pike. "Put simply, the new approach brings us cost certainty, managed risk and long-term efficiency. We can focus our attention on growing our business in Australia rather than being distracted by maintaining the physical hardware and software ourselves."

Next G was going to make Komatsu's workforce more efficient, according to Pike. "For example, our sales force once had to wait until they were back in the office or hotel to sync their data and process quotes, but with the Telstra Next G network this will happen in real time, improving both customer service and sales."

Komatsu had already been working with Telstra for three years. The telco helped Komatsu change its standard carriage environment into a managed network. The decision to extend the partnership for another five years, with the additional provision of infrastructure-as-a-service, came after a six-month review.