Telstra wins $23m Komatsu deal extension

Telstra has won an extension to a 15-year-partnership with mining equipment manufacturer Komatsu, signing a three-year extension valued at $23 million.

Under the deal, Telstra will continue to provide voice, data and mobile services as well as machine-to-machine and cloud services to the company.

The telco will help Komatsu extend a recent trial of M2M technology, which Komatsu said had allowed the company to remotely download performance diagnostic data from more than 700 pieces of Komatsu equipment on mine sites without human interaction.

The data was centralised at Komatsu's inSite Centre in Sydney's Fairfield in real-time, the company said.

It meant Komatsu no longer needed to remove the equipment from use to access the data, "resulting in improved fleet and production efficiency" for Komatsu's customers, which includes mining giant Rio Tinto.

Telstra will also help Komatsu move to a hybrid cloud set-up, the pair said. The solution will involve a private cloud with the ability to shift into Microsoft Azure for storage and additional workloads.

Komatsu moved all its infrastructure into Telstra hosting in 2010.

“From the beginning of our cloud journey with Telstra, the focus has been on giving more time back to the business so we can innovate and adapt, and not worry about IT," Komatsu CIO Ian Harvison said in a statement.

Komatsu is a predominantly SAP and Microsoft shop.

The last deal between the pair was signed in 2010 and worth $35 million over five years.

During that contract, Komatsu introduced a mobility solution to its field workers. It deployed over 1200 mobile devices and 400 wireless broadband services running Telstra's enterprise mobile broadband offering.

One hundred and fifty of the users were able to access Microsoft's mobile enterprise solution - an identity, mobile management and data protection solution able to run Android, iOS and Windows - as well as MIcrosoft Office Communications Server for remote emailing and unified communications.

Komatsu has a workforce of around 1800 across 42 branches and 35 service depots.