The initiative is part of the alliance between Telstra cloud computing company Government and Accenture signed in April 2010, but announced in October that year. It also fits in Telstra's statement earlier this year it plans to invest $ 800 million in cloud computing over the upcoming five years.

Hugh Bradlow, Telstra CTO said: "One of the things we've seen as part of our investment of $ 880m in the cloud is how we can offer a more complete set of services in the cloud with new innovations and the kinds of skills organizations need to migrate to the cloud. Today's announcement is a logical extension of that goal.

"Accenture has a range of services that have developed around the world that are applicable in Australia and are able to offer cloud services and client base so it makes sense to join forces to create this laboratory to provide services in the cloud to the next level, both for us and Accenture."

Gavin Michael, Accenture chief technology innovation officer stated: "This is an important evolution of our partnership with Telstra and a real opportunity for us to bring proven solutions cloud Australia [The new lab] is integrated into the innovation network Accenture global, is a way of bringing to market solutions in Australia clouds we see in other parts of the world. "

The lab will focus on building solutions near the cloud infrastructure Telstra declared in June when it supposed it would spend $ 800 million in the clouds in the next five years. That stack includes Cisco servers and change, EMC storage, VMware software and software from many software vendors.