Luke Clifton (Macquarie Telecom)
Macquarie Telecom is to launch a public cloud service to its hosting business in an effort to boost its customer numbers.
The publicly-listed company currently provides a private cloud platform across its three data centres, but will expand into public cloud services as part of an overall pivot towards hybrid adoption.
The announcement comes off the back of a strong performance within Macquarie Telecom’s hosting division, as year-on-year revenue rose from $91.1 million to $105.8 million.
The company is currently in the process of completing its $80-million Macquarie Intellicentre 3 (IC3) East, which will expand its data centre capacity from a total load of 10MW to 26MW. The centre’s completion was however delayed and the first data hall is now expected to be completed by the second half of FY20.
Upon the centre’s completion, the entire Macquarie Park Data Centre Campus will provide 43MW in total load, a "significant" increase in the current 10MW facility.
As such, Macquarie hopes to grow its revenue from providing cyber security and secure cloud computing to government customers.
While the hosting business showed promise, Macquarie Telecom’s telecommunication business fared less well, with revenue shrinking from $142 million to $140 million.
According to the company, this was largely due to softening mobile sales. However, growth is expected to come from Macquarie’s six-year wholesale supply agreement with NBN Co, which will see it migrate “thousands” of business customers to the NBN and “leverage” SD Wan technology.
The company expects to make a “significant investment” in staff to facilitate these migrations. Last month, CEO Luke Clifton revealed to ARN the company had hired hundreds of staff who had been affected by job cuts at top-tier telcos like Telstra.
Overall, revenue for the financial year ended 30 June grew six per cent from $233.6 million to $246 million while EBITDA rose from $47.8 million to $52.1 million.
However, Macquarie Telecom’s net profit after tax took a hit, falling by three per cent to $16.4 million, which was attributed to its recent capital investment “to drive future growth”.
