Data centre provider iSeek has launched a bid for territory in the cloud computing market and revealed plans to expand its Queensland operations.
Managing director and owner Jason Gomersall told iTnews at the Australian Data Centre Strategy Summit yesterday the company has started transitioning customers from physical managed infrastructure to full virtualised cloud servers and storage.
Gomersall said iSeek’s managed infrastructure services were effectively an early form of cloud computing.
However, he said the company had been reluctant to brand them as cloud offerings for fear the term would go out of fashion. He is now confident the market has firmly embraced the concept of cloud computing as the next logical step in technology management.
“It’s happening. That’s where the customers are transitioning. The idea of running your own servers is slowly dissipating,” he said.
“Initially everyone built their own little broom closet with an air-conditioner and they ran their computers in there. Then they worked out that that wasn’t the best way to go and they started outsourcing into co-location facilities.
“The next phase of that is that they don’t want run those servers anymore. We’re talking about the commodity functions of the business. Where they’ve got a unique or special application they will probably keep that in house but for basic infrastructure there’s a good argument to outsource."
To support its push into the cloud market iSeek had taken steps to build a new 1000 square metre data centre facility on land adjacent to one of its current locations in Queensland.
He also recognised a need to raise the company’s profile in Sydney.
iSeek currently has three data centres in Brisbane ranging in size from 600 square metres to 1000 square metres, and it leases 1000 square metres alongside the ASX at a fourth facility in Sydney’s Gore Hill, owned by Securis.
Gomersall said iSeek’s Queensland facilities had reached about 90 percent capacity while its Sydney capacity was nipping at about 75 percent.
iSeek isn't the first co-lo provider to launch cloud services - at times in competition with their own tenants. Fellow Brisbane operator Digital Sense did the same several months ago and MD Michael Tran told iTnews most co-lo customers understood it as a natural transition. Many of them were providers of application services, rather than IaaS, he said.
When asked whether Telstra’s $800 million investment in cloud computing posed a threat, Gomersall said he was more concerned about Amazon Web Services.
“Telstra’s a competitor for sure but AWS seems to be the one that’s doing the best out there."
