Inside Australia Post's IT transformation

What’s next?

AusPost will complete its move into M1 in the first quarter of its next financial year in August. After that, the organisation is planning a push into private and public cloud services. 

“That involves building new private cloud infrastructure into M1, and once that’s constructed we will then probably transition our existing VM platform across and on to that, and we’re evaluating what our plans will be,” Walduck.

The idea is to move to the type of utility model and pricing it provides for business units inside of Australia Post. 

“We have enterprise applications that serve every business unit, that run intranet, email, a number of parcel systems, a number of retail systems and it really spans between enterprise-wide applications and business units. And a big consumer of it are some of the digital-based services.”

Last year, Post general manager of telecommunications products and services Maha Krishnapillai said the company would offer fixed line broadband over the NBN and mobile services in the future, as part of a move to become a major part of the next stage of e-commerce. 

"Our goal is to build a sustainable communications business — sustainable being a keyword there — both physically and digitally, to leverage the online changes that are occurring with our physical footprint," he said at the time. 

Krishnapillai, a former Optus executive, was hired as part of a recruitment drive which fuelled speculation around Post’s ambitions in the mobile services market. It is expected to launch a mobile play that will enhance its Digital Mailbox service.

The face of Post’s digital transformation, Digital MailBox is a secure online mail channel between consumers and service providers.

It launched last October to a select group of launch partners and employees, and was pulled offline shortly after due to technical issues. It is expected to open its doors to consumers midway through this year.