Telstra adds yet more public cloud to its portfolio

Telstra will sell IBM’s SoftLayer cloud infrastructure platform in Australia, bolstering the carrier's already-packed dance card of public cloud partnerships.

The offering will be available from Wednesday 8 April.

The telco will offer SoftLayer’s infrastructure-as-a-service platform, which includes the “full-range” of services: bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, security services and networking.

Telstra customers will have access to IBM’s monthly and hourly computer services, as well as IP VPN connectivity via the telco's Cloud Direct Connect service between the Next IP network and other cloud platforms.

[Go behind the scenes of Telstra's newest data centre]

The partnership follows this month's launch of SoftLayer's second Australian point of presence in Sydney. The facility - at an unnamed location that many have suggested is GlobalSwitch - joins a Melbourne PoP in a Digital Realty facility at Deer Park, which was launched in August last year with space for 15,000 servers.

Big Blue announced a $35 million investment in SoftLayer in Australia last year, while the vendor reportedly quadrupled the number of cloud facilities it had around the world in the 18 months to December.

IBM also works with Avnet Technology Solutions around its SoftLayer channel strategy.

Telstra has been bullish in growing its public cloud portfolio. It was the launch partner for Microsoft's locally-hosted Azure services in Australia in October last year, having previously had an exclusive partnership around Microsoft's Office 365 software-as-a-service suite.

The telco was also a global launch partner for Cisco Intercloud, based on Openstack, operating a Cisco Cloud Services (CCS) node in its data centre. 

Telstra is also a partner for VMware’s upcoming vCloud Air service – for which the Australian node will be hosted in a Telstra data centre in Melbourne.

Late last year Telstra showed off its new data centre in Clayton in Melbourne, with more than 2000sqm of data centre space. At the time, Telstra said the facility would host both Intercloud and vCloud Air services.