As government agencies continue to push their workloads into the cloud, it has been announced that Macquarie Government, part of the Macquarie Telecom Group, became the fifth cloud services provider to join the NSW Government’s cloud purchasing arrangements (CPA) panel.
By striking the agreement with the NSW Government, Macquarie Government will be joining other existing cloud providers such as Vault Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and IBM on the panel.
The NSW Government’s CPA panel, which was established in 2020 before the NSW Government adopted a new public cloud policy requiring all agencies to “make use of public cloud services as the default”, allows its agencies to consume infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud services. This reduces sourcing costs and avoids the need for individual contract negotiations.
With the public cloud policy and the creation of the CPA panel, the NSW Government is expecting that all local agencies will be using public cloud “for a minimum 25 per cent of their ICT services” by 2023.
As of the moment, around 17 per cent of ICT services are currently hosted in the public cloud.
The new sourcing agreement with Macquarie Telecom will make it easier for NSW agencies to access the company’s cyber expertise and secure cloud, network and data centre services.
Aside from this, the agreement will also include the use of Macquarie Government’s planned data centre, a “sovereign cyber security centre of excellence”, at Sydney’s Macquarie Park tech hub.
Macquarie Government is the latest cloud provider to join the CPA panel since the NSW Government approached the market in September 2020 to diversify the digital platforms and services available to agencies.
Macquarie Government managing director Aidan Tudehope said joining the panel was a huge step in its 20-year journey of providing the NSW Government with cloud and cyber security services.
“NSW is fast becoming a world leader in cloud and cyber security, and we are proud to be providing government agencies with these services for more than 20 years,” he said.
“This is a huge step in that journey, but it’s more than that. It illustrates the range of cloud capabilities sovereign Australian companies can now provide to achieve whole-of-government agreements, which have typically been afforded to multinational providers.”
Macquarie Government is expected to invest in a range of new roles that will support the opportunities that will stem from the agreement.