Telstra in lucrative cloud deal with Ikea,7-11 owner, Dairy Farm Group

Fran Foo
MARCH 05, 2015
THE AUSTRALIAN

IKEA and 7-Eleven are amongst the brand names to benefit from a wide-ranging, multi-million dollar technology tie-up with Telstra.
Telstra inked a deal with Dairy Farm Group which has more than 100,000 employees and 5800 stores and franchises across Asia, including the furniture giant and convenience store chain.
Australia’s largest telco will manage the storage, physical security, maintenance and connectivity of Dairy Farm’s new SAP suite.
SAP applications consists of payroll, human resources and financials, among others.
Dairy Farm’s SAP migration to Telstra’s private cloud solutions commenced in November 2014 covering health and beauty stores. The project is slated for completion next month.
Organisations use external cloud providers so they don’t have to invest and maintain their own infrastructure, thus avoiding high, upfront capital expenditure and internal headcount.
The organisation could broaden its relationship with Telstra in 24 months to include unified communications as a service, network and retail media solutions, the telco said.
Dairy Farm chief information officer Gerhard Roux said Telstra was selected for its “flexibility, ability to scale and willingness to adjust and refine the proposal in line with our needs”.
“The total cost of ownership and immediate partnership that developed during the negotiation phase also influenced our final decision,” Mr Roux said.
Telstra has a slew of private and government cloud computing clients and competes not only with the likes of traditional rival Optus but also Amazon Web Services.