Optus targets seasonal firms for space on its cloud

SYDNEY - Australia's second-largest telco Optus says it will be the first in Australia to offer cloud computing solutions to business customers.

Optus said this week it will go live with the product from next month.

Cloud computing allows corporates to lease computing resources such as memory capacity and processing power from external providers.

The theory is that it saves companies from establishing physical infrastructure, such as servers.

Instead, employees access all their data, and potentially even run applications, via a secure internet link.

Optus Business director of fixed products, marketing and strategy Scott Mason said the product was suited to companies which had a variable, or seasonal, demand for computing resources, such as those in the travel industry.

This was because it allowed companies flexibility to scale up and scale down the amount of computing resources on an as-needs basis.

He said modelling by Optus suggested a mid-market or small corporate customer would save "about 20 per cent" in costs compared with deploying their own infrastructure.

Optus Business acting managing director of Rob Parcell declined to detail any targets the company had in terms of revenue or number of clients it hoped to secure.

"We have allowed in our demand side for fairly significant growth," Parcell said.

EMC Australia-New Zealand chief technology officer Clive Gold said there was a "data centre crisis" in Australia, so cloud computing solutions were an "incredible alternative".

Optus conducted trials with Curtin University of Technology and real estate service provider Savills.

The telco said its cloud computing products were built on VMware, Cisco and EMC technology platforms.

- AAP