Came. Saw. Conquered.
August 25, 2010 , John Fontana
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Customers
One thing I love about technology is getting to talk to people who get dirty up to their elbows in the stuff. I enjoy writing about end-users because once warmed up they usually have some great stories and unique anecdotes to share.
Internally, we have been juicing our efforts to get more customer stories into the flow. So today’s post is as much highlighting one of those end-users – Australian telecom provider AAPT – as it is a kickoff to some customer case studies you’ll see pass through these virtual pages.
Specifically regarding AAPT, it is shooting for the cloud, literally, and aiming at being strongest out of the gate with a range of business services from authentication, to storage, to reselling Google Apps
The company is cutting its services teeth on internal adoption of Google Apps and Gmail.
Internally, the company spent five days rolling out Google Apps to 1,200 user and is in the process of rolling out 1,700 Google Gmail inboxes. User access to those services is secured with a hosted Single Sign-On service run off Ping Connect, a hosted service from Ping Identity.
Last year, however, AAPT nearly hit a nasty and potentially embarrassing roadblock. As part of a partnership with Google, AAPT was set to record a television commercial detailing how they rolled out Google Apps and secured it via Single Sign-On.
The problem was the IT architects might have been the last to know, according to David Tarrant, AAPT IT architect and a consultant on the company’s cloud build out and Google adoption.Ten days before the commercial, IT was informed of the SSO requirement and had to not only roll out software but pick a product.
Parent company Telecom New Zealand had an identity platform built on Sun Microsystems products, said Tarrant, but the estimated time to federate it with the Google platform was 2-3 months.
“So I found Ping and we had it done in 3-4 days,” he said. “As soon as I found Ping had a hosted service [PingConnect] that is what I wanted.”
But Tarrant acknowledges it was a means to an end. “We didn’t care about SSO, what is important is the same password. You don’t have to learn new passwords. And all of it falls under compliance.” And Tarrant says the Google/Ping strategy saves the IT department $252,000 per year.
Now Tarrant is eyeing the Salesforce.com users within the organization as the next project.
In parallel, the third-largest telecom provider in the country also is actively building out a commercial offering designed to provide virtual private clouds to customers. The company plans to ramp up services like desktops, applications and email. Tarrant says that should be in full swing in the next 18 months to two years.
AAPT owns and operates its own national voice and data network. It provides residential, business, government and wholesale customers with local and long distance voice, mobile, data and internet solutions.
“We don’t want to build our own authentication service we want to use somebody else’s, we don’t want to build our own Google services we want to use somebody else’s, we don’t want to build storage services we want to use somebody else’s,” said Tarrant. “We want to build relationships with cloud providers all over the world.”
And how is the cloud services build-out going?
In May, Paul Broad, CEO of AAPT made a presentation at the company’s investor briefing day and singled out content delivery and cloud computing as areas targeted to grow, highlighted Q3 as the launch of Google Apps for business users, and named Specialty Fashion Group, Rio Tinto, Austar and WPP Holdings as key new customers.
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