ASG Group takes IBM relationship into Cloud

Victorian-based IT services provider ASG Group (ASX: ASZ) has extended its relationship with IBM to support the service provider's Cloud offerings.

The agreement will invlove ASG Group providing a locally-hosted private cloud with the processing architecture of IBM's Power 770 systems. The company will host managed business applications via the Cloud.

ASG Group general manager, Steve Tull, said in a statement the performance of the Power 7 System stood out from competitor offerings due to the virtualised environment provided by the vendor's hardware partitioning.

“This agreement is critical to our strategic entry into the Australian cloud computing market, enabling us to offer a unique, flexible solution tailored to the specific needs of our enterprise customers,” he said.

According to Tull, the Cloud services will be attractive to customers as it will be locally hosted at ASG Group's proposed data centres in Perth and Sydney. The company currently hosts customer data in a data centre provided by a third party. "The self-management of the storage system offers us enterprise level performance but not an enterprise level price," he said. "This means we can offer our clients competitive prices and don’t need complex pricing tiers."

Under the deal, ASG Group will be provided with IBM's XIV storage systems, Power 770 systems, System x5 servers, backup offerings, Brocade switches and Systems Director software.

The IBM systems will also provide infrastructure for ASG Group’s disaster recovery infrastructure which would link its two data centres.

IBM has an existing relationship with ASG Group. The announcement follows news this month that the company was building a data centre in Perth following a $35 million deal with electricity provider Western Power .

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

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