IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Telstra (ASX: TLS) today announced that Telstra will sell the SoftLayer Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform from IBM. Under the agreement, Telstra customers will have access to SoftLayer’s highly secure and agile cloud infrastructure.

With two newly opened data centres in Melbourne and Sydney, moving to the IBM Cloud allows organisations to quickly and securely provision capacity where and when it is required by an individual business. The pay-as-you-go, on-demand model also helps deliver cost savings for Australian businesses, reducing the need for up-front capital expenditure on IT, along with the cost of ongoing IT maintenance and refreshes.

Erez Yarkoni, Telstra’s Chief Information Officer and Executive Director of Cloud said the alliance will provide customers with choice and flexibility when adopting an efficient and agile hybrid cloud environment and demonstrated another key milestone in Telstra’s global cloud strategy.

“Telstra customers will be able to access IBM’s hourly and monthly compute services on the SoftLayer platform, a network of virtual data centres and global points-of-presence (PoPs), all of which are increasingly important as enterprises look to run their applications on the cloud. SoftLayer is a platform that lets businesses quickly migrate, build, test, and deploy their applications and innovations,” he said.

Telstra’s Australian customers, from large scale enterprise to start-ups, will have access to the full-range of SoftLayer infrastructure services, including bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, security services and networking. The network of connected enterprise-grade SoftLayer data centres will enable Australian business to manage data residency, security and resiliency.

“Telstra customers can connect to IBM’s services via the internet or with a simple extension of their private network. By adding the Telstra Cloud Direct Connect™ offering, they can also access IP VPN connectivity, giving them a smooth experience between our Next IP® network and their choice of global cloud platforms,” Mr. Yarkoni said.
Mark Brewer, General Manager, IBM Global Technology Services Australia and New Zealand, said, “Australian businesses have quickly realised the benefits of moving to a flexible cloud model to accommodate the rapidly changing needs of business today. IBM Cloud provides Telstra customers with unmatched choice and freedom of where to run their workloads, with proven levels security and high performance.”

About IBM Cloud: IBM is the global leader in open enterprise cloud enabling secure data and infrastructure integration in the cloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at www.thoughtsoncloud.com. Join the conversation #ibmcloud.