A reseller gets out front with Google cloud services

Newcomer Barbador gets help from Optimation

By Randal Jackson, Auckland | Monday, 17 September 2012
Just one month after taking a 50 percent ownership position in Barbador, a Google enterprise partner and the first partner in Australasia for Google’s new cloud services, Optimation is about to enter into a proof of concept with an un-named major customer.

“The Google cloud is quite a recent announcement, and most parties are selling at the product end. This is a solution sale, says Scott McCallum, Optimation general manager professional services.
“We see ourselves as technology neutral. But cloud-based services are becoming a set of platforms you can’t ignore. With most other cloud providers, you have to go back to the US. That’s not okay in some cases.”
Barbador connects to a network point of presence in Australia, with the capability to provide a secure connection.

Optimation sees strong opportunities to leverage Google cloud services such as BigQuery, predictive algorithms, and the compute engine oriented at big data applications. It will offer the supporting consulting project management and other professional services capabilities.
Barbador is a start-up, established in April. It has an office in Sydney, with five staff, and one in Wellington, with three staff.

“We saw a real opportunity around the Google cloud, says Surinder Saini, Barbador director of cloud services. “We are 100 percent cloud and 100 percent Google; our mission is to help companies accelerate their journey to the cloud so they can innovate, get to market faster, and simplify their business.

“You will see very much a hybrid cloud market for the next few years.”

Saini, a telco industry veteran, was previously chief architect with the IBM transformation programme for Vodafone’s Project Sam, a rebuild of the telco’s billing system.

McCallum says he had a long-standing relationship with Saini, and once the Google cloud platform was announced it “turned into something that was absolutely in our space”.

“We also get better access into Australia.”

Google’s cloud platform products enable users to implement application solutions, business process apps, and websites, using the Google AppEngine and GoogleCloud SQL. There are also storage, high performance computing, and big data solutions.