Telstra places its IT services businesses under Purple banner
Telstra is taking its business technology services functions and repackaging them under the name of Telstra Purple.
Former brands and companies in the market such such as VMTech, MSC, Readify, Kloud, Bridgepoint, O2, NSC, iVision, and Company85 will be retired under the consolidation, which will cover over 1,500 employees that work on more than 8,000 projects annually, the telco said.
The emergence of Purple is far from the first time the telco has gone to market with a large IT services brand, having previously gone to market with Kaz.
Kaz was eventually sold to Fujitsu in 2009 for AU$200 million, with then-Telstra enterprise and government chief David Thodey stating IT services was not a core part of its strategy.
Telstra CEO Andy Penn told ZDNet that Purple was not a return to IT services for the telco however, since it was putting together businesses that already exist.
"If we look back over the last four or five years, our network applications services business, of which the professional services piece is a key element, have grown in double-digit numbers, I think last year was north of AU$3.8 billion in terms of revenue," he said.
"This is basically just consolidating on the success that we've had and really positioning us for this next wave of technology innovation, which is just going to increase the opportunity for our enterprise customers."
Group executive for Telstra Enterprise, Michael Ebeid, told ZDNet that the demand from enterprise customers was there.
"The technology is available now and our corporate customers need help putting all that together," he said.
"How do you make sense of the technology that's out there, is one of the first conversations that we have with our corporate customers, so demand is there."
The new Purple business will be headed by Christopher Smith.
Telstra explained during its Vantage conference keynote that it came up with the name by chopping the front half of purpose with the back end of people to form Purple.
Disclosure: Chris Duckett travelled to Telstra Vantage as a guest of Telstra
Related Coverage
Penn labels 5G as a strong growth engine for Telstra
With each generation of mobile technology, average revenue per user increases, and 5G should be no different, Telstra CEO Andy Penn said.
Telstra sees profit plunge 40% for full year
Revenue was down 3.6%, while profit has slid by AU$1.4 billion for the year to June 30.
Telstra questions whether metadata restrictions are working as intended
Freeloading agencies skirting Australia's metadata restrictions often do not understand, or adequately protect requested metadata, the telco says.
Telstra announces AU$400m revenue downgrade in wake of NBN corporate plan
With NBN connecting less people next year, Telstra will get AU$300 million less in payments.
NBN reports positive full year EBITDA once Telstra payments excluded
Adjusted EBITDA of AU$608 million wiped out by AU$2 billion in payments to Telstra and Optus.