Telstra extends its cloud to the US

Telstra this week announced that it has extended its cloud services platform to the east coast US, an expansion of the platform it deploys in Europe and the Asia Pacific region. The move comes the same day one of its European-based competitors, Interoute, announced the launch of a new cloud node in New York.

Martin Bishop, head of network applications and services at Telstra Global, the enterprise IT-focused subsidiary of the Australian telco Telstra said the US extension, which will be located on the east coast, was an important milestone in Telstra’s cloud strategy.

“The new US node brings our total cloud presence up to seven distinct locations throughout the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific and will enable customers operating across multiple geographic locations, including the US, to quickly and efficiently realise the benefits of enterprise cloud services on their global operations,” Bishop said.

He explained that the global presence of its cloud platform coupled with its massive telecommunications network puts it in a competitive position, particularly for large multinational firms. He said the platform offers the same performance regardless of the location.

“In fact, the network underpinning our cloud helps to meet the unique needs of our customers by adapting according to the specific profile of their applications and workloads to deliver their end-users an exceptional experience,” he added.

Telstra’s move into the increasingly saturated American cloud services market comes the same day global ICT and telecommunications service provider Interoute announced the launch of its cloud platform, Interoute Virtual Data Centre, which is strategically located in New York. Interoute, similarly to Telstra, also owns and operates its own fibre links.

In a bid to stay competitive Telstra has deepened its ties with enterprise IT incumbents and leading technology firms. In March this year Telstra also announced that the company would partner with Cisco in a deal that will effectively see Telstra become the first service provider to deploy Cisco’s global cloud compute infrastructure (InterCloud) within its datacentres. At the time the company said standardising its cloud platform on Cisco’s technology would allow it to offer deeper and broader IT service capabilities to its customers.