14 December 2020 was a momentous day for AUCloud with the business listing on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).  Highlights of the ‘bell ringing’ ceremony capture the excitement of all involved from the AUCloud Board through to AUCloud management leads, shareholders and supporters. 

AUCloud’s Managing Director, Phil Dawson took the opportunity to do a short reflection of the journey. 

I’m delighted to have reached this stage in the journey of AUCloud, which began with an idea about eight years ago but only really formed after Cathie Reid and Phil Dawson met in 2016. 

From that meeting, we have assessed the market, understood the security controls and based on best in class VMware, Cisco and Pure Storage Technologies within CDC data centres. We have built geographically diverse platforms to meet all the likely scale, availability and resilient requirements of Government and Critical Industries. 

I think it’s fair to day that we have demonstrated that we are a thought leader as government policy has aligned with our business proposition not only in considerations around sovereignty (a vague concept only a few years ago) but also about the core importance of data for security and for privacy and the risks resulting from overseas operations (storage, service or technical support) or foreign ownership.

I’m proud that AUCloud is able to advise that we recently secured the first IRAP assessment under the new Cloud Assessment and Authorisation Framework, which confirmed the capability of a range of our IaaS related services to meet PROTECTED controls.  More importantly, our many partners are now in a position whereby it is far easier for them to secure similar status for their SaaS services deployed upon AUCloud IaaS; not only saving them time and money but more importantly enabling their government and CI customers to adopt their services more quickly with greater levels of confidence.

We continue to progress, as we outlined at the time of the Prospectus, the opportunities delivered by the tailwind trends of cloud and cyber, greater home working and mobility, sovereignty and the early signs of cost consciousness brought on by the unfortunate economic realities of covid.

Migration to cloud deployments as alternatives to traditional self-managed approaches continue to be a key policy feature for government, which is amplified by reinforcements of cyber security whether through the establishment of the National Advisory Committee, or with the extension and expansion of government’s role in Critical Infrastructure sectors, which now incorporates data and cloud.

We all continue to be excited and positive about the opportunities for AUCloud’s secure sovereign IaaS services offering for government and critical industries into 2021, and on this milestone day for the company want to thank all of those who have supported us thus far.  In particular I want to acknowledge our amazing hard-working team and the critical role they have played.  Thank you to the customers, suppliers, partners and investors who have supported us to date, and a big welcome to all of those who are joining us as shareholders today. 

See video:  https://youtu.be/aYBSIOvbpxY

AUCloud: Keeping the data of Australians in Australia