Macquarie and VITG sign sovereign cloud deal

Macquarie Cloud Services has expanded an agreement with Virtual IT Group (VITG) to provide secure private cloud services for healthcare clients.

VITG provides managed network, infrastructure, applications and security services to a range of sectors across Australia. It is a leading managed service provider (MSP) for the healthcare industry, which has some of the most stringent data security requirements of any sector.

To ensure it could satisfy the Australian Digital Health Agency’s recommendation for healthcare providers to keep data in Australia, VITG deployed Macquarie Cloud Services’ Launch private cloud. The company is understood to be the only in Australia to have both its cloud and data centre services certified at the ‘Strategic’ level under the government’s Hosting Certification Framework.

“Healthcare providers are increasingly sensitive to cybersecurity concerns, particularly given the major breaches we’ve seen in the past year and the fact that it remains the most targeted industry,” said Mark Farrell, Head of Security and Compliance at VITG.

“Clients constantly ask us about where their data is kept, how it’s secured, and where they might be exposed. Macquarie Cloud Services’ baked-in security, sovereignty and expertise — particularly among its more than 200 NV1, government data security-cleared personnel — make those questions very easy to answer.”

The deployment has seen Macquarie Cloud Services develop a customised private cloud for VITG in its Launch platform, built on Dell Technologies hardware, which includes security updates and patching, 24/7/365 support, monitoring, provision of insights, and alerts. It also migrated a huge volume of data from VITG’s self-managed data centre to Macquarie Data Centres’ sovereign facilities, with no disruption to workloads or customers.

VITG selected Macquarie Cloud Services primarily for its customer experience expertise, its data sovereignty capabilities and its ability to create customisable cloud environments. Farrell said the system is ideal for larger providers, such as private hospitals, but that it can also provide affordable and scalable cloud to smaller GPs, physiotherapists and more.

“Major private or public cloud deployments are often cost-prohibitive and out of reach for smaller healthcare providers,” Farrell said.

“But they’re bound by the same data protection requirements, so they need secure cloud. VITG and Macquarie Cloud Services make those services commercially viable, scalable and secure, and we’ve had multiple requests to stand up more capacity, which the team can instantly provide.”

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