To help drive the adoption of cloud services within the public sector, Telstra today announced its plans to create a cloud environment built specifically for federal, state and local government.

The Government Cloud represents another significant investment by Telstra and a key milestone in the implementation of its long term cloud strategy, which is to offer customers scalable and flexible cloud services.

Scheduled to launch in the first half of 2015, the new environment will significantly increase the ability of government organisations to access highly secure and compliant cloud services and help achieve their cloud first policy objectives across both UNCLASSIFIED and PROTECTED level data.

Erez Yarkoni, Executive Director Cloud, Telstra Global Enterprise and Services said, “Telstra has a long and successful history working with governments and we’re committed to ensuring our relationship continues to grow as technology requirements change and evolve

“As governments move into a new era of service delivery transformation to meet the current and future digital expectations of its citizens, the ability to use protected cloud services is as critical to their future plans as it is to the private sector – digital disruption is impacting everyone.

“Importantly, Telstra’s Government Cloud will provide confidence that the data is safe and hosted in Australia. It will also help enable the public sector to achieve greater efficiency and generate more value from its ICT investments.

“In line with our own cloud strategy to offer increased flexibility and choice, this new, highly secure cloud platform will help enable governments to be leaders in the use of cloud services and provide opportunities for continued innovation and collaboration.”

This latest announcement draws on the company’s long heritage of serving a broad range of Government customers including the Department of Defence, Department of Human Services and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. It also complements previous collaborative initiatives such as the investment in the Federal Government Managed Secure Network Gateway, which allows agencies to connect securely.

Telstra has a dedicated security approved team operating its secure service desk operations to government, and operates a Government Accredited Secure Facility to provide proactive network security for customers’ cloud networks, data, applications and devices.