Gorillas in the cloud

Server vendors HP, IBM and Dell have each announced plans to offer cloud computing services from data centres being built in or nearly Australia in 2011, in moves that will shake-up the local IT services industry.

The automated

Aiming to win back business from with the automated, utility-style public cloud computing services offered by the likes of Amazon.com and Rackspace, the infrastructure build-out will likely be welcomed by those Australian clients demanding greater flexibility from services hosted onshore.

By late 2011, HP expects to be offering cloud computing and other managed IT services from a large data centre in accordance with construction in Sydney’s Eastern Creek. The vendor is expected to outline specific cloud computing offerings for corporate and Government clients in Australia within weeks.

The second release split the existing Virtual Server Services offering into tiers in order to provide medium-sized organisations a shot at renting Linux or Windows-based virtual servers hosted at the vendor’s Australian data centres. Nevertheless unlike commoditised IaaS services hosted overseas, VSS does not but offer self-provisioning – all provisioning is handled via a ticket process by IBM engineers here in Australia.

Phase one of SmartCloud offers 99.5 percent availability for Linux and Windows virtual servers rented by the hour, and is promoted as an ideal platform for testing and development of new applications. This service is already available in the United States.

Dell and HP, and to a lesser degree IBM, are rolling out these services together as promoting bundles of computing products said to be optimised for clients and resellers to build their own infrastructure "clouds".