Applaud turns to the cloud

Managed services company Applaud has built a cloud platform called Applaud Cloud and is testing it with key customers.

The Sydney-based reseller had chosen HP and Dell hardware to build its cloud infrastructure. Dell's Equalogic storage appealed because of its ability to scale, said managing director Ricci Danieletto.

Applaud joins a growing number of providers that are assembling cloud offerings for their customers. However, Danieletto claimed the company's history in managed services meant it could offer a more personalised service than larger players.

"We've been a managed services company from the beginning," Danieletto said. "There's not necessarily a player out there that can offer a solid cloud offering."

Demand from cloud services was coming from Applaud's smaller customers, he said.

 "Our larger corporate customers  - in finance, healthcare and gaming and entertainment - want to hold onto their infrastructure. It's the small business segment that is willing to hand over ownership to a party that can manage and support it," Danieletto said.

Applaud will start with two services, managed desktop and managed applications. There are no plans to offer other cloud services such as infrastructure-as-a-service,  Danieletto said. 

No commercial contracts have been signed but several customers are beta testing the product.

Some customers were seeking to terminate their hosted Exchange contracts early because they weren't able to integrate the email program with other business applications, said Danieletto. Some hosted application providers that used multi-tenanting for hosted Exchange offered no customisation at all, he added.

Applaud Cloud would tenant customers separately.