Macquarie Cloud Services Appoints Jonathan Staff To Lead Private Cloud Business

Macquarie Cloud Services, part of Macquarie Technology Group (ASX: MAQ), today announced it has promoted Jonathan Staff to lead its private cloud business. Staff takes on the role following more than two years leading direct sales for the company.

His appointment comes as Macquarie prepares to roll out an enhanced version of its Launch private cloud product, with investments in high-performance computing including GPUs for AI and deep learning capabilities, edge technology, and greater interoperability with Macquarie’s award-winning public cloud services on Microsoft Azure.

Staff, an 18-year cloud and network veteran with experience at AC3 and Dimension Data, said the investment is timely with organisations suffering from a lack of competition. It comes as major players such as Telstra decommission private cloud services and dominance grows among a small number of multinational public cloud providers.

“Cloud costs are rising, IT budgets are shrinking, and choice is fading – it’s a recipe for disaster,” said Staff.

“We’re seeing dominance by hyperscalers in Australia’s $2.6 billion and rising infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market, and shrinking private cloud options which means Australian mid-sized businesses and government agencies may lack choice. That could mean higher prices or outdated infrastructure that can’t ready them for AI and other data-intensive shifts.”

Macquarie Cloud Services’ private cloud has been designed to cater to customers at varying stages of their cloud transformation, including those yet to start, organisations looking to adapt a hybrid cloud model and easily shift workloads between public and private cloud, and companies with mature cloud plays exploring emerging technologies such as AI to gain more from their data.

Launch is also supported by Macquarie’s market-leading security expertise and technology, including more than 200 staff cleared by the Australian Federal Government to manage classified data and a Cyber Threat Intelligence Platform leveraging automation, orchestration, AI, and machine learning.

“It all ties to our core purpose of helping customers which are underserved and overcharged, and there’s no shortage across these areas,” added Staff.

“Organisations are accustomed to compromising to fit their applications around the cloud environment they want to move into, but we’ve designed our platform to reverse engineer that and match the right secure environment to the application. And for workloads more suited to a public cloud environment, we’re a tier one Microsoft Azure Expert MSP accredited partner.”

The enhanced Launch product was showcased this week at Dell Technologies Forum Sydney, where Macquarie Technology Group picked up the Dell Technologies Global Alliances Technology Innovation Award 2023, Australia & New Zealand. Macquarie Cloud Services’ private cloud is backed by Dell Technologies’ latest 16th Generation servers and data protection, unstructured data and block storage solutions, and Macquarie has strengthened its partnership with Dell Technologies as part of its Partner First Strategy.

The announcement also follows a significant investment from Macquarie’s data centre business to expand its next facility, IC3 Super West, to meet rising demand for AI workloads. Launch will house data within the secure, sovereign facility once completed, enabling customers to benefit from its best-in-class design.

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