Datacom has unveiled its new national network, connecting nine data centres via tier-1 carriers to offer customers cloud capacity that can be scaled up and down by the hour with monthly billing and no lock-in contracts.
Twelve dedicated staff worked on the project for 18 months of planning followed by six months build time, with the investment thought to have been in seven figures.
The consumption-based approach sees Datacom offer an alternative to monthly commitments, and allows customers to burst cloud and network capacity across Datacom's infrastructure as well as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and VMware vCloud Air.
The network is highly scalable, from 1Mbps to 10Gbps, and provides "multiple bandwidth options with burst capabilities to accommodate peak traffic volumes, without having to maintain constant peak-level capacity and expenditure". Datacom promises 99.95 percent availability.
According to Datacom, this national network means "every aspect of a customer’s IT infrastructure is customisable, producing scalable solutions, in both speed and storage, and industry-leading reliability and security, while also catering to state data localisation laws".
A spokesperson for the IT solution provider would not reveal which carriers it was using, and it is thought that utilising multiple carriage providers could see Datacom drive price competition between telcos.
"Datacom’s national network is not reliant on any one telco partner, and utilises a host of tier-1 telecommunications partners to ensure carrier diversity, and to obtain the best prices for each customer on a case by case basis. These arrangements vary regionally, and are confidential.”
The network offers fully redundant connectivity capable of surviving disaster recovery events; in fact. Datacom customers can elect to backup and restore from any of the nine data centres and choose the right fibre provider for their region, ensuring geo-redundancy and performance.
Network and data centre providers across Australia have been moving away from lock-in contracts and monthly commitments and toward flexible access to fibre capacity.
Megaport was the early mover into this sector when it was launched in 2013 by IT entrepreneur Bevan Slattery, founder of PIPE Networks and NextDC.
NextDC launched its AXONVX virtual exchange product in July 2015, which competes with Megaport to offer users "on-demand private connectivity to public clouds", such as Microsoft ExpressRoute, AWS DirectConnect and Direct Link for IBM Softlayer.
Telstra has since entered into the market, when it announced a move to consumption-based network services during Cisco Live 2016 in March. Then in May, Optus announced hourly consumption though its Cloud-N product, connecting to Equinix data centres.
Datacom differentiation
Datacom will flesh out the new network offer with its suite of IT services, with customers also able to access additional Datacom services, including core switching, edge switching, internet services and firewalls.
According to a customer FAQ, "None of our competitors offer our geographic reach, diversity of supply, our ‘as-a-service’ platform, and of course, our famous customer service. We put our customers' needs first, and although we work very closely with our select vendor partners, and aren’t beholden to any individual public cloud operator, telco or hardware/software supplier."
Datacom's Australian data centre footprint spans nine facilities in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and West Australia, with a mix of tier-2 and tier-3 facilities, both first-party and co-location sites. The company also has a number of facilities in New Zealand – while the new network does yet not cross the Tasman, this is in the pipeline.
Glenn Scown, director of Datacom Systems Australia, said: "We are proud of what we’ve achieved with the national network. The national network means that customers will experience the best possible experience from our high performance network, from almost anywhere in Australia, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“We think this is a fundamental game changer for the Australian data centre market, and offers capabilities no one else in the market can fulfil. We guarantee availability and throughput, and the support of the world’s leading public cloud vendors creates a robust infrastructure that can cater to any company’s need, from small business to multinational,” said Scown.
Datacom employs 4,000 staff and turns over more than NZ$900 million (A$857 million) in revenue across Australasia. Datacom Australia is a CRN MVP company, boasting some of the highest levels of vendor certifications in the Australian channel.
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