Telco serves up ‘IT as a Service’ to business.

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Optus Business and Alphawest launched a local cloud solution for businesses to deliver ‘Your IT as a service’ and simplify how it deploys and manages IT in organisations.

The cloud solution hosting data on-premise, features a centralised catalogue of virtualised IT services, including servers, storage, networking, and security applications from a single web portal.

It enables customers to ‘automate’ IT architecture as a service and reduce deployment time from weeks to a matter of minutes, e.g. IT teams can automatically provision services for specific users, while business departments can self-service their requests, such as additional storage needs.

“It enables IT managers to have a single view of technology requirements across their organisation, helping to free up valuable IT resources to focus on consulting to the business,” Ian Smith, Alphawest CEO said.

The service helps businesses to scale infrastructure based on demand, and provides greater visibility of costs.

Built on the Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud, Optus ‘Your IT as a service’ uses NetApp and Cisco FlexPod virtual storage, network and compute, VMware virtualisation and CommVault data management technologies.

‘Your IT as a Service’ also offers a choice between on-premise and off-premise cloud services such as Optus Elevate, hosted in the telco’s data centre.

Available from May, ‘Your IT as Service’ is implemented on-premise through Alphawest’s Data Centre Practice, and will be available for Optus Business and Alphawest customers.

The service is offered in three tiers depending on the size of the organisation.

The service will be demonstrated at Cisco Live 2012 currently taking place in Melbourne until 23 March.