Internet traffic in Australia is set to grow 3-fold from 2013 to 2017 according to the latest data from Cisco's Visual Networking Index (VNI). However, if we "look behind the curtain" there is more to this story beyond just greater bandwidth demand as both consumers and enterprises are increasingly adopting cloud-based services. This move to the cloud provides a new opportunity for traditional service providers since they can uniquely combine network infrastructure and data center capacity to deliver premium cloud services with an SLA guarantee. Australia's leading telecommunications and information services company, Telstra, has established itself as a trusted provider of cloud services, such as collaboration and management applications, to customers. They're achieving this with a new architectural approach that enables a next generation Internet experience combining networks, data centers and applications together while ensuring resiliency, low-latency performance, and programmability.

Telstra recently announcedextending our partnership to provide scale, innovation and improved global reach with a network that can manage multiple applications across hybrid, public cloud environments.  The scale and intelligence of this cloud will provide the reliability and reach that Telstra customers demand. With cloud-ready capabilities such as providing service level assurance and dynamic network services for workloads and applications, business can now shift more to the cloud with confidence.

A key milestone in partnership was the inauguration of live traffic on Cisco's Network Convergence System (NCS) 6000. With the Cisco NCS 6008 at the core of their network to provide the capacity and intelligence to allow customers to shift more workloads to the cloud with confidence, Telstra has led the industry in building a scalable and resilient programmable network. A network that can easily virtualize services, simplify and consolidate network layers and automate and provision services real-time across multiple domains. The Cisco NCS6008 underpins a new Evolved Programmable Architecture from Telstra that will see the network dynamically adjust to provide the required capacity and SLA for the application or service being delivered.