TORONTO, ON – It’s not everyday that a single announcement can bring three household names together in one room, but that is just what happened Tuesday.
At a small gathering in downtown, Telus announced that it is partnering with the software and networking giants to provide cloud aimed at the mid-market and large enterprise.
The managed Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering will include public, private and hybrid clouds, and is enabled both by its own, as well as Microsoft’s new data centres that are coming to Toronto and Quebec city in the new year, and Cisco’s Cloud Architecture.
“What we’ve essentially done here… is the Telus Hybrid Cloud,” said Tom Jolly, vice president of IT and cloud services at Telus. “We are interworking Microsoft’s and Cisco’s technologies into the Microsoft Azure platform, as well as providing the ability to integrate customer on-premise data centres.”
He explained that any private cloud services will be offered using Telus’ data centres, while Microsoft’s Canadian data centres are responsible for public cloud. Both are connected by Cisco’s architecture for an experience that’s meant to be “seamless” and through a single pane of glass.
The offering has seen 18 months of development, according to Roy Purtill, vice president of cloud computing at Cisco Canada, who added that the technology integration is not new. What is new, is that applications can now be tied to network environments and can be turned on together.
“That’s a first in the industry, I don’t think anyone else has got that,” he said. “This has been developed in the long term for Telus, and for other service providers.”
The companies are also conscious of data breaches.
“There are 22 certifications and attestations that certify security,” according to Matt Kestian, solution sales director at Microsoft Canada. “I think it’s a misunderstanding in the industry – customer data in a public cloud isn’t traversing environments. It’s very structured.”
He said the combination of the expertise from all three companies should keep any data stored safe.
“You’re getting a sealed and delivered environment’s critical for people to trust.”