Macquarie Telecom joins NSW cloud panel

Macquarie Telecom has become the fifth cloud services provider to join the NSW government’s cloud purchasing arrangements (CPA) panel, as agencies look to push more workloads into the public cloud this year.

Macquarie Telecom's IC3 data centre (File photo)

The company said it had struck an agreement with the state government to join existing providers Vault Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and IBM on the panel.

The CPA allows agencies to consume infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud services, reducing sourcing costs and avoiding the need for individual contract negotiations.

It was established in mid-2020, just months before the government adopted a new public cloud policy requiring all agencies to “make use of public cloud services as the default”.

The government expects all agencies will be using public cloud "for a minimum 25 percent of their ICT services" by 2023.

Around 17 percent of ICT services are currently hosted in the public cloud.

The new sourcing agreement will make it easier for NSW agencies to access Macquarie Telecom’s “cyber expertise and secure cloud, network and data centre services”, the company said.

It said this would include the “sovereign cyber security centre of excellence”, which will be housed at Macquarie Telecom’s planned data centre at Sydney’s Macquarie Park tech hub.

The company is the first new cloud provider to join the panel since the government approached the market in September 2020 to diversify the platforms and services available to agencies.

Macquarie Government managing director Aidan Tudehope said joining the panel is a “huge step” in the company’s more than 20-year journey of providing NSW government with cloud and cyber security services.

“NSW is fast becoming a world leader in cloud and cyber security, and we are proud to be providing government agencies with these services for more than 20 years,” he said in a statement.

“This is a huge step in that journey, but it’s more than that.

“It illustrates the range of cloud capabilities sovereign Australian companies can now provide to achieve whole-of-government agreements, which have typically been afforded to multinational providers.”

Macquarie Telecom is now expected to invest in a range of new roles to support the opportunities that flow from the agreement.