The NBN and Cloud Computing
What does the National Broadband Network (NBN) mean for cloud computing in Australia? ‘Good things’ is the answer!
As most tech-savvy people know, internet in Australia is lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of speed. ADSL2+ has a theoretical maximum of 24Mb per second download and about 1Mb upload. If you happen to not live next to an exchange, that speed drops quite quickly the further away you are. The fact is not many people in Australia get the full speed ADSL2+ has to offer.
It’s the upload speed limitations that hurt businesses. They simply can’t get their stuff onto the internet fast enough. And that is a problem for cloud computing since you have to get your data into the cloud somehow before you can reap the benefits. Ninefold’s Sneakernet service may help some, but for others this may not be practical.
The NBN will mean the end of slow downloads and, more importantly, uploads. ISPs such as Internode are offering plans with up to 40Mb upload speeds. That’s 40 times faster than ADSL2+. This means businesses can start to seriously consider doing away with their legacy infrastructure and can upload big data to the cloud at impressive speeds. These speeds are also only going to get better as the technology improves. Once the fibre is installed, it’s only a matter of upgrading the endpoints for speeds to dramatically improve. Hopefully this means more businesses start to see the benefits of cloud computing in Australia.
Another issue with Australia is that we are just so far away from everyone. There are only a handful of undersea cables leaving Australia to connect us with the rest of the world. Southern Cross, which operates a few of them, have just upgraded the link between Australia/NZ and the USA to 7.2Tb/s capacity. That is a massive amount of bandwidth. However even with this upgrade, latency to and from the US is still quite high. This will continue to be a problem that never goes away - we're just too far away!
The NBN, delivering fast speeds and bigger quotas, means businesses can stay in their own backyard for the best possible cloud computing experience in Australia.
When a business’ remote sites can get a relatively cheap 100Mb (or better) connection to the cloud, the benefits become obvious. No more ‘head office’ server rooms. No more expensive dark fibre links between sites. Data can be stored in a central location, on super-fast cloud storage, and be accessed from anywhere via the cloud. Fibre to the home means employees can work from the study or spare bedroom with speeds equivalent to sitting in the office.
So cloud computing in Australia can only get bigger. While the NBN is expensive, the cost of not doing it is far greater. The NBN is not about downloading movies faster, or watching HD YouTube without stuttering or lag. It’s about creating a world-class network that Australia can continue to build upon. It's about sustaining our thirst for content into the foreseeable future - an area that is seeing exponential growth each year. It's about laying the foundations of new business models, new ways of working, new efficiencies that are simply not possible today. And cloud computing is a central part of that faster, more efficient and frankly better business future.