Category Archives: telstra

Big Data, IoT, News & Analysis, telstra

Telsta adds IoT and big data offering to Network and Services biz unit

Location Australia. Green pin on the map.Australian telco Telstra has continued efforts to bolster its Network Applications and Services (NAS) business unit through acquiring Readify, reports Telecoms.com.

The company has been vocal about its aims for the NAS business unit as it has sought to expand through numerous acquisitions in recent years. Aside from the Readify deal, the company has also incorporated O2 Networks, Bridge Point Communications, Kloud and North Shore Connections, as well as numerous partnerships including with cloud security start-up vArmour.

“This arm of the business (NAS) has been a strong growth area for Telstra, achieving double-digit growth in revenue driven by business momentum in Asia, as well as advances in technology in the cloud computing space,” said a statement on the company website. “We are well equipped to continue to capitalise on this growth and ensure our focus on NAS continues to drive revenue.”

Readify, which currently offers enterprise cloud application solutions as well as Big Data and IoT, will provide an additional platform for Telstra to drive digital transformation for its enterprise customers in domestic and global markets. The offering builds on the January acquisition of Kloud which offers cloud migration services, as well as unified communications solutions and contact centre provider North Shore Connections in 2013, network integration services provider O2 Networks in 2014 and security, networking, and data management provider Bridgepoint, also in 2014.

“Readify will provide application development and data analytics services, nicely complementing Kloud’s existing services,” said Telstra Executive Director Global Enterprise and Services, Michelle Bendschneider. “It will enable Telstra to add incremental value to customers in enterprise cloud applications, API-based customisation and extensions as well as business technology advisory services.”

Back in April, the company announced a business multi-cloud connecting solution, which supports numerous offerings hybrid cloud offerings including Azure, AWS, VMware, and IBM. The one-to-many “gateway” model will enable Australian customers to connect to Microsoft Azure, Office365, AWS, IBM SoftLayer, and VMware vCloud Air, while international customers can only connect to AWS and IBM SoftLayer for the moment.

The cloud and enterprise services market has been a long-ambition of the company, though it did get off to a slow start. Back in 2014, its national rival Optus Business stole a march on Telstra through acquiring Ensyst, winner of Australian Country Partner of the Year at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Awards during the same year, as it looked to grow its own cloud proposition. It would appear Telstra is making up for lost time through an accelerated program of product releases and acquisitions.

hybrid, hybrid cloud, News & Analysis, telstra

Telstra launches one-to-many Cloud Gateway offering

GatewayAustralian telco Telstra has bolstered his position in the growing cloud market with the launch of Cloud Gateway.

The Cloud Gateway is Telstra’s new solution which enables businesses to connect to multiple public cloud environments, acting as a one-to-many “gateway” model via Telstra’s IP network.

“Most organisations don’t realise the full value of cloud out of a single service,” said Philip Jones, Global Products and Solutions at Telstra. “Instead, our customers are investing in sophisticated hybrid cloud environments, which come with their own range of fragmented networking challenges.

“These include managing multiple vendors, portals and contracts, while trying to maintain a high level of security, performance and operational efficiency. We believe that just because these solutions are sophisticated, doesn’t mean that they should also be complex. Cloud Gateway is Telstra’s simple way to connect multiple clouds, and create hybrid environments.”

The product offering will enable Australian customers to connect to Microsoft Azure, Office365, AWS, IBM SoftLayer, and VMware vCloud Air, while international customers can only connect to AWS and IBM SoftLayer for the moment.

“Telstra is very well positioned to help customers with hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, as we bring the cloud and the network together,” said Jones. “The network is the fundamental piece of the puzzle that helps provide a secure and reliable application experience. Having a single touchpoint also helps reduce IT complexity, enabling our customers to maximise the benefits of investing in cloud.”

Telstra has been making moves within the cloud space in recent months, following the announcement of a cloud innovation centre in February. The centre was launched alongside partners AWS and Ericsson with the focus of accelerating the adoption of cloud technologies.

“Telstra’s vision is to build a trusted network service for mission critical cloud data, and we are excited to explore the opportunity of bringing this vision to life with Ericsson and AWS,” said Vish Nandlall, CTO of Telstra, at the time of the announcement. “The Cloud Innovation Center at Gurrowa intends to bring together cloud experts from Ericsson, AWS and Telstra to encourage cloud adoption and the development of new business opportunities for Telstra and our customers.”

Asia Pacific, Big Data, Kate McKenzie, Melissa Ries, News & Analysis, Pivotal, telstra

Pivotal teams with Telstra on enterprise big data

Telstra and Pivotal are teaming up to push Cloud Foundry and big data services in Australia

Telstra and Pivotal are teaming up to push Cloud Foundry and big data services in Australia

Pivotal announced a partnership with Australian telco Telstra that will see the two firms jointly marketing Pivotal’s big data development services to Telstra enterprise customers.

Pivotal will also offer enterprise customers training at its newly established Pivotal Labs office in Sydney, Australia, its 16th globally.

The company said the move would help it reach a broader enterprise customer base in the region by leveraging Telstra’s existing local relationships and experience in the ICT sector.

“The arrival of Pivotal Labs in Australia presents a great opportunity for local organisations. Pivotal Labs will quickly become a software innovation hub for Australia’s largest enterprises in all industries to transform into great software companies – taking digital disruption to the next level,” said Melissa Ries, vice president and general manager APJ, Pivotal.

“Pivotal has a great relationship with Telstra, which is built on a foundation of shared visions. With Telstra’s involvement in the Cloud Foundry Foundation and our joint venture, we’re partnering to help Telstra’s customers transform into great software companies.”

The companies said that by using tools like Pivotal CF, the Cloud Foundry-based platform as a service (PaaS), and Pivotal Big Data Suite (BDS), enterprise customers will be able to improve how they develop their web and mobile services.

Kate McKenzie, chief operations officer at Telstra said: “In conjunction with our new Gurrowa Innovation Lab, Pivotal Labs will enhance our innovation offering for our customers and create a pipeline of skills to grow our development capabilities. Innovation at Telstra is about helping our customers get the best out of technology for the future and ultimately providing access to the best networks from which they can innovate, and the partnership will allow us to do just that.”

AT&T, Ericsson, Networks, News & Analysis, NFV, SDN, telstra

Ericsson cloud lab to focus on NFV, SDN

Ericsson is opening up a lab to help coordinate SDN and NFV research among telcos

Ericsson is opening up a lab to help coordinate SDN and NFV research among telcos

Ericsson has opened a lab in Italy which will coordinate research among telecoms operators on deploying software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV) in their datacentres.

The company said the lab, which will be based in Rome but will also have an associated cloud platform for data sharing and collaboration, will help develop multi-vendor SDN and NFV solutions that primarily address the needs of telcos.

Participating organisations will be able to link up to the cloud platform and share their results.

Nunzio Mirtillo, head of Ericsson in the Mediterranean region said: “Cloud will enable the biggest evolution of the telecom business and this new lab is an example of Ericsson’s passion for driving innovations in Italy.”

“As great ideas come from collaboration, operators can turn cloud-based approaches to their advantage and implement new architectures that provide network efficiency and shorter time to market for innovative services,” Mirtillo added.

The company said the lab is intended to help operators experiment with getting SDN and NFV technologies integrated into their existing infrastructure estate, which can be quite a challenge for most that aren’t refreshing their hardware for SDN or NFV compliance quickly enough. As a result many have been forced to take the overlay approach.

Ericsson is already working with a number of operators on SDN and NFV. Last year the company was tapped up by Telstra and AT&T to help virtualise key aspects of their networks.

Asia Pacific, Brendon Riley, Hacking, Network security, News & Analysis, Pacnet, telstra

Telstra’s recent buy Pacnet suffers IT security breach

Pacnet's IT network was hacked earlier this year

Pacnet’s IT network was hacked earlier this year

Telstra’s recently acquired datacentre and cloud specialist Pacnet suffered a security breach earlier this year whereby a third-party managed to get access to its IT network, the telco revealed this week.

Telstra was quick to point out that while the breach occurred on Pacnet’s IT network (which isn’t connected to Telstra’s) before its acquisition of Pacnet was finalised in April, it did do and has since done all it can to try and understand the reasons for the breach and its potential impact on customers.

The company has alerted customers, staff and regulators in the relevant jurisdictions.

Group executive of global enterprise services Brendon Riley said the investigation is ongoing, and that the company will apply its own tried and tested security technologies and techniques to Pacnet’s network.

“Our investigation found a third party had attained access to Pacnet’s corporate IT network, including email and other administrative systems, through a SQL vulnerability that enabled malicious software to be uploaded to the network,” Riley said.

“To protect against further activity we rectified the security vulnerabilities that allowed the unauthorised access. We have also put in place additional monitoring and incident response capabilities that we routinely apply to all of our networks.”

He said the firm is alerting customers of the potential impact of the breach, and hopes that the extra precautions the company has put in place will restore confidence in the firm.

The company has so far declined to comment on the scope or volume of data exposed to hackers.

Telstra seems keen to pre-empt any privacy-related regulatory challenges, something the company has had to deal with in recent years – which, it was eventually found, was due in part to its own negligence.

Last year for instance the firm was fined by the Australian Information Commissioner for making the personal details of almost 16,000 customers accessible via the internet between February 2012 and May 2013 after several spreadsheets containing customer data dating back to 2009 was found through Google Search.

Asia Pacific, Brendon Riley, Hacking, Network security, News & Analysis, Pacnet, telstra

Telstra’s recent buy Pacnet suffers IT security breach

Pacnet's IT network was hacked earlier this year

Pacnet’s IT network was hacked earlier this year

Telstra’s recently acquired datacentre and cloud specialist Pacnet suffered a security breach earlier this year whereby a third-party managed to get access to its IT network, the telco revealed this week.

Telstra was quick to point out that while the breach occurred on Pacnet’s IT network (which isn’t connected to Telstra’s) before its acquisition of Pacnet was finalised in April, it did do and has since done all it can to try and understand the reasons for the breach and its potential impact on customers.

The company has alerted customers, staff and regulators in the relevant jurisdictions.

Group executive of global enterprise services Brendon Riley said the investigation is ongoing, and that the company will apply its own tried and tested security technologies and techniques to Pacnet’s network.

“Our investigation found a third party had attained access to Pacnet’s corporate IT network, including email and other administrative systems, through a SQL vulnerability that enabled malicious software to be uploaded to the network,” Riley said.

“To protect against further activity we rectified the security vulnerabilities that allowed the unauthorised access. We have also put in place additional monitoring and incident response capabilities that we routinely apply to all of our networks.”

He said the firm is alerting customers of the potential impact of the breach, and hopes that the extra precautions the company has put in place will restore confidence in the firm.

The company has so far declined to comment on the scope or volume of data exposed to hackers.

Telstra seems keen to pre-empt any privacy-related regulatory challenges, something the company has had to deal with in recent years – which, it was eventually found, was due in part to its own negligence.

Last year for instance the firm was fined by the Australian Information Commissioner for making the personal details of almost 16,000 customers accessible via the internet between February 2012 and May 2013 after several spreadsheets containing customer data dating back to 2009 was found through Google Search.

Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Financial Results, John Chambers, Kelly Kramer, News & Analysis, telstra

Cisco Q3: Enterprise shines while service provider biz struggles

Cisco said it enterprise business is looking strong but service provider segment still sees challenges

Cisco said it enterprise business is looking strong but service provider segment still sees challenges

Cisco reported third quarter 2015 revenues of $12.1bn this week, just over 5 per cent what it raked in during the same quarter last year. In a call with analysts this week Cisco execs said the company sees continued growth in its enterprise segment, but its service provider business continue to struggle.

Revenue for the first nine months of fiscal 2015 was $36.3bn, up from $34.8bn for the first nine months of fiscal 2014.

Kelly Kramer, Cisco executive vice president and chief financial officer said the company saw a good balance across its portfolio, with its enterprise segment looking fairly strong, much like the previous quarter.

UCS revenues for the quarter were $3bn, which is sequentially flat but a 30 per cent year-on-year increase, and the company said its seeing growth in its converged infrastructure offerings (those co-developed with VCE and IBM). Its cloud revenues grew 11 per cent year-on-year, mostly on growth in its conferencing cloud software.

In a call with analysts this week Cisco chairman and chief executive John Chambers said the company is seeing better performance in its enterprise segment than its server provider business – hindered in part by an industry-wide slowdown in spending seen over the past few quarters now.

“In enterprise, the shift to selling outcomes, not products, is resulting in larger opportunities and dramatic increases in pipeline. In US enterprise, for example, the value of our pipeline of deals over $1 million increased approximately 60 per cent year-over-year, with the average deal size up over 30 per cent,” he said.

“We are managing continued challenges in our service provider business, which declined 7 per cent, as global service provider capex remained under pressure and industry consolidation continues. We believe the organisational changes we have made in our global service provider organisation are working, and we are very focused on growing our share of wallet.”

“We are managing continued challenges in our service provider business, which declined 7%, as global service provider CapEx remained under pressure and industry consolidation continues. We believe the organizational changes we have made in our global service provider organization are working, and we are very focused on growing our share of wallet”

Chambers also said Cisco’s intercloud strategy announced last year will kick into “phase 2” shortly, and while he declined to specifically outline what that entails he did shed some light on the programme’s challenges in its bid get other service providers on board with it.

“The pieces that we were missing was how do you go into this new environment where each of these “public clouds in clouds” are separate? And you have to be on different vendors or different companies’ tech to have the ability to go into it. So what we’re looking at first is an architecture and it cements our relationships in service providers. And then it really comes through to how you monetise it over time.”

“This will just take time to monetize, but the effect we see indirectly is already huge when you talk about a Deutsche Telekom or a Telstra and our relationships with those,” he added.

Brendon Riley, M&A, News & Analysis, Pacnet, Telco Cloud, telstra

Telstra, Pacnet finalise acquisition deal

Telstra is buying Pacnet to bolster its presence in the Asia Pacific cloud and managed services market

Telstra is buying Pacnet to bolster its presence in China’s cloud and managed services market

Telstra’s acquisition of Pacnet has now come to fruition, with the Australian telco today announcing it has completed the purchase of the cloud, managed services and datacentre provider. As reported by Telecoms.com in December, the valuation of the deal came in at $697m.

When initially announced, the deal came with the stipulation of agreement from regulatory bodies, as well as Pacnet financier approval. According to Telstra, all necessary approvals and agreements have now been confirmed, and the firm can now begin the full acquisition of Pacnet.

All that remains, it claims, is full regulatory approval in the United States, which it reckons is expected in due course and will not impact operations or the agreed purchase price.

Speaking on the acquisition, Telstra’s Global Enterprise and Services chief executive Brendon Riley said the integration of Pacnet will see its brand gradually retired, but that the Chinese market remains a big focus for the joint-venture.

“The addition of Pacnet’s staff, intrastructure, technology and expertise will position Telstra as a leading provider of services to multinational and large companies in Asia,” he said. “The completed acquisition will double Telstra’s customers in Asia, and greatly increase our network reach and data centre capabilities across the region. This includes the addition of the largest privately owned intra-Asia cable network, 29 data centres and the ability to further grow our China operations through existing joint venture.”

Riley concluded with a nod towards the Pacnet Enabled Network (PEN), an elastic and on-demand network based on SDN architecture, pioneered by Pacnet. PEN was one of the first live SDN-based networks launched globally.

“The acquisition provides us greater specialisation and scale, including the delivery of enhanced services, such as software-defined networking and opens up significant incremental opportunities for our business,” he said.

Bill Fathers, Datacentre, Duncan Bennet, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud, telstra, VMware

VMware, Telstra bring virtualisation giant’s public cloud to Australia

Telstra and VMware are bringing the virtualisation incumbent's public cloud service to Australia

Telstra and VMware are bringing the virtualisation incumbent’s public cloud service to Australia

VMware announced it is partnering with Telstra to bring its vCloud Air service to Australia.

VMware said the initial VMware vCloud Air deployment in Australia is hosted out of an unspecified Telstra datacentre.

“We continue to see growing client adoption and interest as we build out VMware vCloud Air with our newest service location in Australia,” said Bill Fathers, executive vice president and general manager, Cloud Services Business Unit, VMware.

“VMware’s new Australia service location enables local IT teams, developers and lines of business to create and build their hybrid cloud environments on an agile and resilient IT platform that supports rapid innovation and business transformation,” Fathers said.

Last July VMware made a massive push into the Asia Pacific region, inking deals with SoftBank in Japan and China Telecom in China to bring its public cloud service to the area. But the company said it was adding an Australian location in a bid to appeal to users that have strict data residency requirements.

Duncan Bennet, ‎vice president and managing director, VMware A/NZ added: “Australian businesses will have the ability to seamlessly extend applications into the cloud without any additional configuration, and will have peace of mind, knowing this IT infrastructure will provide a level of reliability and business continuity comparable to in-house IT. It means businesses can quickly respond to changing business conditions, and scale IT up and down as required without disruption to the overall business.”

Telstra has over the past couple of years inked a number of partnerships with large enterprise IT incumbents to strengthen its position in the cloud segment. It was one of the first companies to sign up to Cisco’s Intercloud programme last year, and earlier this month announced a partnership with IBM that will see the Australian telco offer direct network access to SoftLayer cloud infrastructure to local customers.

Erez Yarkoni, IBM, Infrastructure as a Service, Mark Brewer, Networks, News & Analysis, telstra

Telstra to offer SoftLayer cloud access to Australian customers

Telstra and IBM are partnering to offer access to SoftLayer infrastructure

Telstra and IBM are partnering to offer access to SoftLayer infrastructure

Telstra and IBM have announced a partnership that will see the Australian telco offer access to SoftLayer cloud infrastructure to customers in Australia.

Telstra said that with the recent opening of IBM cloud datacentres in Melbourne and Sydney, the company will be able to expand its presence in the local cloud market by offering Australian businesses more choice in locally available cloud infrastructure services.

As part of the deal the telco’s customers will have access to the full-range of SoftLayer infrastructure services including bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, security services and networking.

Erez Yarkoni, who serves as both chief information officer and executive director of cloud at Telstra said: “Telstra customers will be able to access IBM’s hourly and monthly compute services on the SoftLayer platform, a network of virtual data centres and global points-of-presence (PoPs), all of which are increasingly important as enterprises look to run their applications on the cloud.”

“Telstra customers can connect to IBM’s services via the internet or with a simple extension of their private network. By adding the Telstra Cloud Direct Connect offering, they can also access IP VPN connectivity, giving them a smooth experience between our Next IP network and their choice of global cloud platforms,” Yarkoni said.

Mark Brewer, general manager, IBM Global Technology Services Australia and New Zealand said: “Australian businesses have quickly realised the benefits of moving to a flexible cloud model to accommodate the rapidly changing needs of business today. IBM Cloud provides Telstra customers with unmatched choice and freedom of where to run their workloads, with proven levels security and high performance.”

Telstra already partners with Cisco on cloud infrastructure and is a flagship member of the networking giant’s Intercloud programme, but the company hailed its partnership with IBM as a key milestone in its cloud strategy, and may help bolster its appeal to business customers in the region.