By Lilia Guan

During a media briefing attended by Government News last week, Telstra CEO David Thodey unveiled more corporate customers who use Telstra cloud computing including Australian Vintage Limited, The Salvation Army Employment Plus, Oz Minerals, Tabcorp and Tristar Medical Group.

“Sales of our T-Suite software-as-a-service have grown threefold for the past year and use of our infrastructure cloud has increased by nearly 50 per cent this year,” Mr Thodey said.

“We are also experiencing strong sales in our cloud voice and video services, which are exceeding 80 per cent per year and we now manage about 100000 IP telephony services delivered from the cloud,” Mr Thodey said.

Mr Thodey said cloud computing expands on the telco’s software-as-a-service model and meant Telstra was experienced in handling these type of services.

Telstra has also partnered with technology vendors including Cisco, VMware and its integration partner Accenture, to build the next phase of its integrated cloud platform as well as using cloud technology partners such as Microsoft to deliver cloud services built with the specific needs of Australian organisations in mind.

“With our cloud computing platform we can provide cloud services that are integrated into our networks and can be accessed from locations across the country,” Mr Thodey said.

Cloud computing is part of Telstra’s strategy to grow its network application and services business and the services were available on a pay-for-use basis.

The $800 million expenditure will be within the company’s 14 per cent capital expenditure to sales ratio and will include;  the building of a Australian data centre; modernising facilities at existing Telstra data centres; expanding the range of enterprise applications; a new integrated online account management portal; increased automation of utility computing services; and enhanced T-Suite capabilities and new applications.