blueAPACHE in Talkin' Cloud Top 100

blueAPACHE in the Talkin' Cloud Top 100

blueAPACHE has made the Talkin' Cloud Top 100 Cloud Service Providers for 2014.

The Talkin' Cloud 100 awards rank the world's top cloud service providers, aggregators, brokers and related businesses. Hotly contested across multiple channels, blueAPACHE has featured since the list's inception and continues to appear as one of the leading providers in the Asia and Pacific region.

How the ranking works

Companies on the Talkin' Cloud 100 are ranked using an internal formula that places a heavy weighting on recurring cloud revenues.

That methodological choice is what makes the list meaningful, and it is worth understanding rather than skipping past.

A ranking based on total revenue would reward volume — including one-off project work, hardware resale and migration services. A ranking weighted toward recurring cloud revenue measures something narrower and harder: how much of the business consists of customers consuming a cloud platform on an ongoing basis.

The distinction shows up in how a provider behaves:

A provider whose revenue recurs is structurally incentivised to keep the platform stable, because instability costs them money rather than earning it.

The company blueAPACHE was ranked alongside

The top ten for 2014 included IBM, Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Google and Citrix.

That context is the point of the placement. This was not a list of managed service providers competing among themselves — it ranked cloud providers globally, placing an Australian mid-market specialist on the same measure as the largest technology companies in the world.

The regional qualifier matters too. Appearing consistently as a leading provider across Australia, New Zealand and Asia is a claim about the market blueAPACHE actually serves.

What blueAPACHE said

Chris Marshall, Managing Director of blueAPACHE:

"We are incredibly pleased that our ongoing investment into emPOWER Cloud continues to be recognised globally. This serves as testament to the multi-million dollar investment we made five years ago, and our ongoing commitment to delivering world-class private and hybrid cloud platforms that our clients can rely on throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia."

The five-year investment

That reference dates the emPOWER Cloud investment to approximately 2009–2010 — which aligns with the company's own timeline: emPOWER Cloud and the emPOWER Network launched in 2010, following emPOWER Facilities Management and emPOWER Managed Services in 2003.

The significance of the date is what it says about timing. In 2009, cloud was not an established purchasing category for mid-market Australian businesses. Committing multi-million-dollar capital to a private and hybrid cloud platform at that point was a genuine bet, made before the demand it served was proven.

The trigger was also specific rather than speculative. blueAPACHE had lost an ASX-listed customer representing approximately half its revenue; building its own network and cloud platform was the response to a demonstrated fragility, not an opportunistic expansion.

The reinvestment cycle has continued since. blueAPACHE committed a further $6 million to a multi-phase Cisco core network refresh beginning in late 2020, upgrading the ASR 9000 Series aggregation routers underpinning emPOWER Cloud, alongside adoption of HPE infrastructure and cloud offerings as part of the same platform overhaul.

Private and hybrid, specifically

The phrase private and hybrid cloud in Marshall's statement is a deliberate positioning, and it explains what emPOWER Cloud is for.

Public hyperscale cloud is the right answer for many workloads. It is not the right answer for all of them — particularly where an organisation faces data residency obligations, needs predictable performance for a latency-sensitive application, runs software that was never designed for elastic infrastructure, or requires a cost model that does not vary unpredictably with consumption.

A private cloud platform operated by an Australian provider, in Australian data centres, with a named party contractually accountable for availability, addresses a different set of requirements. blueAPACHE's platform runs across three core geographically diverse data centres along Australia's eastern seaboard, which is what supports the 99.999% uptime guarantee on emPOWER Cloud.

Related recognition

The Talkin' Cloud placement sits alongside other rankings from the same period that measure the same underlying property:

• MSPmentor 501 Global Edition — blueAPACHE reached number four for the Asia and Australia region, on its fourth appearance, ranked on annual recurring revenue and total revenue
• CRN Fast50 — eight appearances in ten annual awards, ranking growth in the Australian channel
• CRN All Star — the inaugural award in 2014, two in 2015 (the only company in Australia to receive two that year), and a third in 2016
• Channel Partners MSP 501 — continued placement in 2025, on the successor list to MSPmentor

Further information

For information on how your business can benefit from emPOWER Cloud, contact blueAPACHE.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Talkin' Cloud Top 100? An annual global ranking of cloud service providers, aggregators, brokers and related businesses. blueAPACHE made the 2014 list and, per this post, had featured since the list's inception, appearing as one of the leading providers in the Asia and Pacific region.

How were companies ranked, and why does the methodology matter? By an internal formula weighted heavily toward recurring cloud revenues. The page argues this makes the list more meaningful than a total-revenue ranking, which would reward volume including one-off projects, hardware resale and migration work. Recurring revenue measures how much of a business consists of customers consuming a cloud platform on an ongoing basis.

Why does recurring revenue change how a provider behaves? Because it changes what instability costs them. Under project-led revenue, remediation work is billable; under recurring revenue, incidents consume margin, so the provider is structurally incentivised toward prevention and toward investing across the life of the platform rather than the life of the current project.

Who else was on the 2014 list? The top ten included IBM, Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Google and Citrix. The page's point is that this was a global cloud ranking rather than a contest among managed service providers, so the placement measured an Australian mid-market specialist on the same basis as the largest technology companies in the world.

When did blueAPACHE invest in emPOWER Cloud? Chris Marshall's statement refers to a multi-million-dollar investment made five years before 2014, dating it to roughly 2009–2010 and matching the company's own timeline, which records emPOWER Cloud and the emPOWER Network launching in 2010. The page notes that in 2009 cloud was not yet an established purchasing category for mid-market Australian businesses, so the commitment preceded proven demand — and that the trigger was the loss of an ASX-listed customer representing approximately half of revenue.

What does "private and hybrid cloud" mean here, and when is it the right choice? It is a deliberate positioning. The page accepts that public hyperscale cloud suits many workloads, and identifies where it may not: data residency obligations, latency-sensitive applications needing predictable performance, software never designed for elastic infrastructure, and requirements for a cost model that does not vary unpredictably with consumption.

What availability does emPOWER Cloud carry? The page states a 99.999% uptime guarantee, supported by three core geographically diverse data centres along Australia's eastern seaboard. The commitment that binds in any particular engagement is the one in the customer's Service Order and the service agreement.

Is this ranking current? No. It records the 2014 edition of a list that has since been superseded; the page notes blueAPACHE's continued placement on the Channel Partners MSP 501, the successor to MSPmentor. For current services see the linked pages.

Related

• emPOWER Cloud
• Cloud services
• Public cloud — Microsoft Azure
• Azure Local
• Storage as a service
• Data sovereignty and privacy
• Core network and data centre interconnect — the Cisco ASR 9000 refresh
• Connectivity
• Managed services
• blueAPACHE Cloud case study
• Our story
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