The cloud services arm of Macquarie Telecom has announced a partnership with Microsoft, allowing the Australian company to offer Azure managed services.
With Macquarie Cloud Services officially launching its Azure practice, the company can now also manage cloud workloads offshore for Australian-headquartered businesses.
"Partnership remains firmly within Microsoft's DNA, and our business market segments see high adoption of Microsoft technologies -- so combined with our existing relationship, our undiluted focus on Azure makes perfect sense," said Naran McClung, who will lead the dedicated Azure practice.
See also: Microsoft Azure: A cheat sheet[1] (TechRepublic)
"We've invested heavily in people, accreditations, product development automation, and we're helping Australian businesses embrace Azure to its fullest expression. This will lead to successful migrations, cost savings and predictability, refined IT architecture, and true cloud-native operations for our customers."
Macquarie has already been working with Microsoft to provide Azure managed services to a number of customers and said the latest arrangement expands its cloud offering, enabling it to bring public cloud into its managed hybrid IT services.
The company expects the new practice will complement its existing cloud, hosting, data centre, and telco businesses.
"Our customers want to maximise their value from Azure and adapt with the platform as it evolves. They look to us for insights, facilitated change and the assurance of our ongoing focus," McClung added.
See also: Microsoft partners with Canberra Data Centres to cash in on government IT spend[2]
Macquarie Government, another arm of the Macquarie Telecom Group, last year announced a new offering, a security operations centre as-a-service[3] (SOCaaS) targeted at government agencies in Australia.
The new centre provides full cybersecurity coverage, including 24/7 event monitoring and alert response.
"Government agencies often struggle to attract strong security talent and they need these scarce resources