SYDNEY, Australia, 27 October, 2014 – Today at TechEd Sydney, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President for Cloud + Enterprise, Scott Guthrie, joined Pip Marlow, country managing director, to declare the company’s newest Azure Geography (Geo) in Australia open for business.
“We’re adding an Australian accent to our global cloud network,” Mr Guthrie said.
The new Azure Geo includes geographically redundant regions in New South Wales and Victoria. It will lower latency rates and address data sovereignty considerations for Microsoft customers and partners of all shapes and sizes who are embracing cloud computing to drive business model transformation, better manage variable workloads and deliver new digital services and experiences to customers and employees.
“From today, our goal is to create Australia’s best and most complete cloud, enabled by world class technology and a world class cloud ecosystem,” he said.
Ms Marlow added: “A world class cloud ecosystem requires a rock star team. We’re privileged to work with a team of thousands of Australian partners employing over 290,000 people who are helping our customers grow and transform their businesses. Almost 70 per cent of our partners are small businesses themselves, perfectly positioned to help our customers move to the cloud on their own terms,” she said.
Ms Marlow said that various factors were driving customer adoption of Microsoft Azure, led by a passion to deliver innovative solutions to fuel growth, drive efficiencies and help people do more and achieve more.
“When I started at Microsoft, we had a vision to put a PC on every desk – at home and at work. We believed we could help people realise their full potential. That vision hasn’t changed. We believe we can help people do more and achieve more, and help Australia be amazing, by providing the best and most complete cloud,” said Ms Marlow.
“With the cloud, the barriers to innovation are not just being lowered, they’re being smashed away,” she said.
“Customers tell me that Microsoft Azure frees them to focus on what they really want to do – enabling and adding value to the business, driving innovation and impact faster and being able to focus on their customers – while leaving Microsoft to manage what’s under the hood.
“CIOs tell me they love being able to turn infrastructure on at the tap of a key, and spin up or down their use of our cloud according to the needs of their businesses. Additionally, they like having the choice of a hybrid cloud approach with Microsoft. This means they can integrate and continue to leverage their on-premise investments while moving to the cloud. With the choice of public or private cloud too, our on-ramp works at the speed our customers want,” she said.
The newest Azure Geography brings the total number of regions to 19 globally, giving Microsoft enhanced capabilities to seamlessly deliver upon customers’ needs wherever they are in the world.
Expands ExpressRoute partnerships
Microsoft also announced an expansion of its ExpressRoute offering in Australia via its existing global partnership with Equinix and forming a new alliance with Telstra. The expansion gives Australian customers and partners the option to create private connections between the Australia Azure Regions and infrastructure located on-premises or in a colocation environment. ExpressRoute connections do not go over the public Internet, and offer more reliability, faster speeds and lower latencies.
Erez Yarkoni, Executive Director Cloud, Telstra said, “As a Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute partner, our customers who want to access Microsoft’s Cloud for scalability and cost effectiveness, can now do so through our intelligent Next IP network. As customers increasingly take advantage of cloud infrastructure from global providers, choosing the right network remains a vital decision to run applications at peak performance.”
Equinix brings unique value to Microsoft Azure by enabling enterprise customers to deploy hybrid cloud environments that extend their networks and enhance on-premises investments. To complete the private connectivity model, customers can leverage a broad choice of network service providers that are part of Equinix’s business ecosystems.
ExpressRoute via Equinix will be generally available later this calendar year. ExpressRoute via Telstra will be available in the New Year.
Customers and partners invest in Microsoft Azure
A diverse group of companies – big and small – are using Microsoft Azure to drive innovation within their organisations while delivering better outcomes for their customers.
Commonwealth Bank is using cloud computing to provide flexibility and elasticity for some technology services, along with the added regulatory benefit of the local Azure Geo. Taking advantage of Microsoft Azure’s hyper-scale capabilities, event management software provider Centium Software is leveraging the platform to seamlessly manage some of the world’s largest events.
Talentpay – a Sydney based rights management company – is using cloud to rapidly scale its business to expand into new markets, such as Singapore and New Zealand. Audit, tax and advisory experts BDO, are adopting a hybrid cloud model, enabling it to rapidly bring new services online while extending the lifecycle and reducing the total cost of ownership for its infrastructure.
Situated on the cutting edge of new commerce, Carsales.com.au – the largest online automotive, motorcycle and marine classifieds business in Australia – handles 12 billion images a month through its Azure enabled image infrastructure. For iCareHealth, a healthcare software provider for community and residential care providers, Microsoft Azure in Australia enables it to assure customers that their data will be hosted onshore and deliver a lower total cost of ownership.
Local partners are also using Microsoft Azure to respond to their customers’ evolving business needs. Those investing big on the platform include Breeze, Kloud, Readify, Sitecore, Diliginet, Janison and Ensyst. More information on how customers and partners are benefiting from Microsoft Azure can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/news/
About Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure platform offers a wealth of cloud services including infrastructure services, data management, web applications, development and virtual machine testing, storage, backup, and recovery services.
“When I talk to customers and startups about how to meet today’s business challenges with cloud, I talk to them about what our cloud platform can uniquely do to transform their businesses,” said Mr Guthrie.
“The first way we are different is our hyper-scale – and this matters because it gives customers the ability to reach the maximum number of their customers, realize incredible economic value and run the most challenging workloads,” he said.
“The second is our focus on being enterprise grade. We’ve been helping enterprises run their business for years and our cloud meets the critical security, reliability and availability needs they have. We also deliver on the promise of an open platform – supporting the languages, tools and frameworks they need and want to run.
“Finally, our focus on hybrid ensures our enterprise customers get the power of the cloud where they want it – in our public cloud, service provider clouds or in their clouds.”
With Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft is delivering the industry’s most complete cloud — for every business, every industry and every geography. Microsoft delivers over 200 services to over 1 billion customers and 20 million businesses are served by our cloud infrastructure in over 90 markets, globally.