Optus uses Singapore to boost cloud

Optus has announced changes to its enterprise cloud suite, which will align the telco's cloud portfolio with Singtel's portfolio,its parent company, and provide additional pricing options to businesses.

The expansion of Optus' cloud services will occur in the second half of this year and will see Optus' cloud offerings rebranded as the PowerON suite, as SingTel calls its own suite. It will also result in Optus' Elevate private cloud computing service, rebranded to PowerON Compute, to extend its pricing options.

When the expansion occurs, Optus will offer businesses pay-as-you-consume pricing models, in addition to what it has termed "burstable" pricing and also fixed pricing for computing and storage services. The company has announced that it will also launch a new enterprise cloud storage service for backing up data, but is yet to release the full details of it.

The rebrand also means that when PowerON Compute is relaunched later this year, businesses will be able to move workload between Australian and Singapore-based clouds.

Another benefit of moving its cloud services in line with its parent company, is that Optus will now be able to offer a cloud consulting service for businesses, through the group's relationship with NCS (National Computer Services). Through NCS, Optus will provide Australian companies with guidance on business strategy, company security and governance policies. On the mobile front, NCS will provide consultancy services to help businesses improve their mobile presence and applications.

Optus also announced changes to its mobile device management suite today. The telco will expand its existing suite, established just last year, to include a security service based on Juniper Network's Junos Pulse product. However, the software is only available for Android, Window Mobile and BlackBerry devices, due to Apple's closed architecture.

Phil Offer, Optus' director of mobility and convergence told ZDNet Australia that businesses that had Apple devices in their fleet would need to take into account whether they considered Apple's stance on security to be sufficient for use in the workplace, and to take into consideration past experiences with the Cupertino-based company.

Nevertheless, Offer said that in the future, should Apple allow a vendor to provide an antivirus and/or security application on its devices, Optus would consider establishing the necessary partnerships, to respond to any business demands for security on Apple products.