Global integrator tunes up Toyota Australia's cloud costs

The local arm of the US$1.35 billion global integrator Logicalis has migrated Toyota Australia's backup to a pay-by-usage cloud model.

"We see customers challenged in backups by huge data growth – they're unable to meet particular SLAs," Logicalis director of cloud, Stan Sotiropoulos told CRN.

Logicalis has been promoting backups to the cloud with a "true pay-by-usage" charging model as an economical way to cater for data growth.

"Toyota has had servers in the cloud but we had never put backup in the cloud – this is a new concept for most companies," said Toyota's CIO Ellis Brover.

Sotiropoulos told CRN that while moving all IT operations to the cloud typically "takes a lot of effort", migrating backup routines is easily separated out and implemented.

He said Toyota had initiated the project with backups as the specific target for reform.

"We have other customers on backup-as-a-service pay-by-use," said Sotiropoulos. "Customers are maturing and more have been getting comfortable with 'as-a-service' in the last 12 months."

Logicalis is utilising EMC infrastructure through an existing three-year-old relationship. When asked if a charge-by-use model may become available for integrators on the supply side, Sotiropoulos said the vendor is "vigorously pursuing a new model".

Logicalis Australia has around 200 staff spread over offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Cyberjaya in Malaysia, according to Sotiropoulos.

Logicalis is owned by the South African multinational Datatec, which also has distributor Westcon under its umbrella. Logicalis' integration operations alone racked up US$1.35 billion of revenue in the 2013 financial year for its publicly listed parent company.