Staff assumes the role having served for more than two years as head of direct sales for Macquarie Cloud Services.
His appointment comes as Macquarie readies the deployment of 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 public cloud services on Microsoft Azure.
As an 18-year cloud and network veteran having worked for the likes of AC3 and Dimension Data, Staff said the investment is timely with organisations suffering from a lack of competition.
“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 That could mean higher prices or outdated infrastructure that can’t ready them for AI and other data-intensive shifts.”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 is 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 environments exploring emerging technologies such as AI.
Launch is also supported by Macquarie’s security and technology expertise, including more than 200 staff approved by the Australian Federal Government to manage classified data and a cyber threat intelligence platform using 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.”
