Kiwi partners sure of Microsoft’s Aussie Azure

“We will be using this very quickly and will be moving most of our workloads over to the Australian Microsoft data centre.”

“We will be using this very quickly and will be moving most of our workloads over to the Australian Microsoft data centre.”

That’s the first reaction of Phillip Ball, Chief Technical Officer of Auckland-based online travel firm Serko, following Microsoft’s official opening of the company’s newest Azure Geography (Geo) in Australia this week.

With Corporate Travel sites in Australia, China and India, Ball says Serko recently ran a demo replica of its online booking tool with a private connection between the Australian Azure data centre and their current Azure data centre in South-East Asia.

“We have a large number of clients that are in this region and the closer they are the better performance they should be able to receive,” he adds.

Revealed at the TechEd event in Sydney on Monday, the new service includes two geo-redundant sub regions in NSW and Victoria, which Microsoft claim will lower latency rates and address data sovereignty issues for Microsoft’s Australasian customers and partners who are embracing cloud computing.

Another Microsoft New Zealand partner set to utilise the Australian Geo is Kiwi mobile marketing firm VMob.

At present all of VMob’s app content is tailored specifically to each shopper via a big data platform, running on the Microsoft Azure network using a combination of historic information and live data points such as location, weather and nearby events.

Bob Drummond, Chief Operating Officer for VMob, says they have a number of existing local clients who will most likely transfer their instances to the Australian Geo in the future.

“It will also be the primary choice for any new local clients and for testing and R&D instances that they are running,” he adds.

“One of the reasons we host our platform with Azure in the first place is that it is crucially important for our customers and their users that we have a quick, reliable connection meaning minimum lag time when using mobile apps connected to our platform.

“Having a local data centre will mean load times are further reduced, which is useful for local clients and running test environments. Having enhanced local, in-time zone support also makes life much easier for us.”

Operating as a service provider of business, information technology and communications solutions, Fujitsu ANZ has also used the Australia Azure Geo Preview to validate whether the network performance to the Australia Azure Geo was improved compared to the network performance to other Azure Geos.

As a result, Fujitsu expects that the Australian Azure Geo will be a catalyst for hybrid cloud deployments in New Zealand.

“We are expecting customers to start moving development and test environments, which can leverage automation and the economics of a pay-for-use model that Microsoft Azure can offer,” says Ate Heukels, Senior Technical Consultant, Fujitsu NZ.

“We also expect customers to look at improving their business continuity by deploying disaster recovery solutions such as Azure Site Recovery.”

Echoing partner comments, Microsoft New Zealand’s Managing Director, Paul Muckleston, says that the opening of the Azure Geo in this region reflects Microsoft’s passion to deliver innovative solutions to fuel growth, drive efficiencies and help people do more and achieve more.

“The cloud gives you the ability to be more agile both from an IT delivery point of view and more broadly with your business,” says Muckleston, as reported by Reseller News yesterday.

“This represents a sea change in enterprise IT, as it gives you the chance to focus more on innovation and less on maintenance.”

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