As agencies prepare to move more workloads to the public cloud this year, Macquarie Telecom has become the fifth cloud services provider to join the NSW government’s cloud buying arrangements (CPA) panel. The business announced an arrangement with the state government to join current panel members Vault Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and IBM.
The CPA enables agencies to utilize cloud services such as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS), lowering sourcing costs and eliminating the need for individual contract discussions. It was formed in mid-2020, only months before the government implemented a new public cloud policy forcing all agencies to “use public cloud services as the default.”
By 2023, the government intends all agencies to use the public cloud “for at least 25% of their ICT services.” Currently, the public cloud hosts around 17% of ICT services.
According to the firm, the new sourcing agreement would make it simpler for NSW agencies to use Macquarie Telecom’s “cyber expertise and secure cloud, network, and data centre services.”
It stated that this would include a “sovereign cyber security centre of excellence” based in Macquarie Telecom’s proposed data center in Sydney’s Macquarie Park tech area. Since the government contacted the market in September 2020 to diversify the platforms and services accessible to agencies, this is the first new cloud provider to join the panel.
According to Macquarie Government managing director Aidan Tudehope, joining the panel is a “major stride” in the companies more than 20-year history of delivering cloud and cyber security services to the NSW government. “NSW is quickly becoming a world leader in cloud and cyber security, and we are happy to have provided these services to government agencies for more than 20 years,” he said in a statement.
This is a significant step forward in that path, but much more.
“It demonstrates the spectrum of cloud capabilities that sovereign Australian enterprises can now supply to accomplish whole-of-government agreements, which were previously only available to international providers.”
Macquarie Telecom is now anticipated to invest in various new jobs to capitalize on the prospects created by the deal.
