Ninefold strikes back in battle for start-ups

By Staff Writers

Nov 3 2011 3:01PM

Imitates Rackspace's free hosting offer.

Australian cloud computing provider Ninefold has fired the latest shot in a growing battle for the start-up, announcing a scheme identical to multinational rival Rackspace offering start-ups $24,000 worth of cloud computing services and storage.

Ninefold strikes back in battle for start-ups

Under Ninefold's Cloud Booster Program, start-ups approved by Australian incubators Pollenizer and Startmate would be offered free cloud computing and storage worth $2000 per month for a year.

The program also offers free technical sales consultation to establish the service. In return, Ninefold has asked the start-ups to spruik the cloud offering with guest posts on the provider's blog.

Rackspace began offering an identical scheme to start-ups tied to Pollenizer last month, also worth $2000 per month. Rackspace had offered similar deals to US-based venture capital funds.

Ninefold countered its competitor's offer with hosting out of the provider's Australian-based data centres, which it argued would provide lower latency and faster bandwidth speeds than Rackspace's Hong Kong data centre.

Phil Morle, chief technology officer at Pollenizer - which is participating in both offerings - told iTnews that it was the more, the merrier for start-ups.

“Our portfolio companies sit in one of two camps: either it’s a business very focused on the local market or it’s a business focused on the global opportunity,” he said.

“For the global opportunity, the Rackspace partnership is what is going to be fantastic for us and the Ninefold partnership is greater for local businesses getting low latency and high performance.”

The incubator had signed three new global portfolio companies in the past month, all of which had taken up Rackspace’s offering. Morle expected significant interest in Ninefold’s service as well.

The start-up space has proved an increasingly volatile space for cloud computing providers. Amazon Web Services' global chief technology officer Werner Vogels earmarked start-ups in Australia - and particularly Melbourne - as a key focus of the cloud giant's expansion plans into Asia Pacific.