Published on the 23/02/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Australia’s Federal Government has announced the names of the first companies in its whole-of-government cloud services panel – and there are surprise absences…
As part of a continued push to consider cloud-first approaches to Federal Government computing, a list of suppliers which have been pre-approved has been released. While there are plenty of the usual suspects – such as IBM, Microsoft, Amazon – and a slew of smaller local providers of cloud, some names are missing.
For example Fujitsu, CSC Australia, Telstra and Optus have yet to make the cut despite all having previously featured on the Data Centre as a Service (DCaaS) supplier list.
Ovum research director for government practice, said that he was particularly surprised at Telstra’s absence, especially following the companies’ investment in the Canberra market late last year. Of course these companies can be added in the future, but their absence from the first list is remarkable.
There were 104 organisations on the earlier DCaaS list which was data centre services for contracts up to $80,000, so it is likely that the current cloud list will grow over time.
Indeed a week after announcing the first list, the Government added a further nine companies including Dimension Data, which like Telstra beefed up its Canberra computing capabilities late last year.
Noonan said that the release of the new cloud services panel was a “quite significant step forward” by a Government which had “taken a long time to warm to cloud”.
He said that the launch of the panel, coupled with the Government’s decision to take a cloud-first approach, and to no longer require ministerial approval if data was located in an offshore cloud represented a significant and important change.
The panel covers core cloud products including software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service and a range of cloud services such as integration and optimisation
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The panel has an initial two year term, with options to extend for a further four years.
Information on the Australian Government Cloud Computing Policy on the Department of Finance website.
More about the Cloud Services Panel and future panel announcements on the Department of Finance blog.
