AUCloud’s latest milestone vindicates exactly why I’m in the business of cloud. It’s all about economics, literally everyone wins – and there’s no better business than that to be in!
Barely two years into operation and AUCloud has announced and automatically passed on to customers and partners, another significant price reduction. The near 35% cost reduction to our Storage as a Service (STaaS) offering applies to existing as well as new customers/partners, in both our PROTECTED and OFFICIAL environments, across our multiple geo-resilient sovereignty zones. With object storage underpinning the bulk of our IaaS, the benefit of the price reduction will immediately be felt across our customer and partner network.
This is clearly good for us and good for our customers, but the significance of this announcement goes beyond simply spruiking ‘cheaper prices’.
On a more serious note, it’s the ‘how’ we can do this, ‘why’ we would want to, and the real story, namely that every other cloud provider should be able to do the same, that is much more interesting.
For me, cloud has never been about riding the wave of the latest technology trend, or for that matter a contemporary ‘re-birthing’ of outsourcing or managed services. It is, always has been and always should be, about the economics.
The basic maths is simple: the bigger you build, the lower the unit cost the easier it is to pass those same savings onto your customers. Granted, it may be a little more complicated than that, but not much.
Fundamentally, the buying power of cloud providers, such as AUCloud, combined with significant support from our suppliers means we benefit from economies of scale that reduce the unit cost of what we buy (ie units of IT infrastructure). That’s on the supply side. On the demand side, higher utilisation of the infrastructure assets potentially a 10-15x improvement, delivers a similar result – also driving down unit costs. On the operational side, we simply use automation rather than people to make things easier, more accurate and more secure.
Couple this with elastic cloud pricing where you only use what you need and only pay for what you use, whilst also having the ability to scale (up and down), the economics make even more sense.
Although the most basic of cloud efficiency equations (with many other cost savings and efficiencies to be recognised via cloud), it serves the purpose of my starting point – namely, how AUCloud’s ability to reduce our pricing to deliver better value services vindicates why I’m in this business.
The growing reach of AUCloud across government and our critical national infrastructure communities, combined with the success of our diverse partner community underpins our ability to pass on these growing efficiencies as we scale. This also addresses ‘why’ we would want to do this and vindicates why I’m in this business. Put simply, economics like this means everyone wins. Leveraging the economics of elastic cloud and the inherent incentives of a transparent, credentialled cloud service provider, without lock in clauses and exit fees. Focus on the performance of your services, maintain your transparency, value your customers – and the virtuous nature of cloud economics does the rest.
This pricing announcement is one of many similar milestones I anticipate. The real story – the continuing maturity and scaling of AUCloud on the global stage of cloud providers, where we are already a formidable, respected competitor on sovereign soil.
