Macquarie Telecom has announced it has signed a new multi-year, multi-million-dollar contract with Kelsian Group Limited.
Kelsian Group operates as an integrated land and marine, tourism, and public transport service provider, with fleets throughout Australia, the UK and Singapore and moves more than 207 million people every year. The current company was formed following a $635 million acquisition of Transit Systems before the pandemic.
Macquarie Telecom had previously provided SD-WAN, mobile and cloud services to Transit Systems, but needed to prove its worth in the new company. Ultimately, it secured a much larger deal switching the majority of Kelsian Group’s mobile services held primarily by a major telco and Singapore-based cloud services company to Macquarie’s network.
“In a transformative merger like we had with Kelsian Group and Transit Systems, there’s a lot of going back to the drawing board to ensure supply partners are equipped to service the new structure. Macquarie Telecom really had to justify its position in the new Kelsian Group and ultimately Macquarie’s efficiency and customer service made all the difference,” Kelsian Group CIO, Chris Benson said.
The new agreement provides additional cloud services, including engaging Macquarie’s Azure expertise to help manage Australian workloads, the migration of a Singapore-based production environment, and the critical applications that manage the core operations for our people and bus networks.
“The team has become an extension of our own, and is helping to educate our IT personnel, particularly in Azure skills, which are in high demand,” said Mr Benson.
SD-WAN services are being extended across 35+ locations of Kelsian Group’s Australian Public Transport Division, maximising network visibility, reliability, and control. The company’s public transport mobile services are now under Macquarie’s Optus-backed 5G network, with Kelsian Group also considering Optus for the rest of its fleet. It follows Macquarie securing a $34 million exclusive agreement with the carrier last year.
“Communications reliability is essential from a safety and efficiency perspective across our teams. Admittedly, we were sceptical about Optus being able to provide the coverage we needed. Macquarie expertly guided us – using the Optus roadmap, giving us the confidence and flexibility to ensure it would meet our needs – while significantly reducing costs,” added Benson.
Macquarie is also working with specialist mobile partner Mobile Mentor on a proof-of-concept (POC) trial rolling out 200 tablets to Kelsian Group buses. The tablets track GPS position and communicates back to the operations centre, with the real-time data used to keep buses on schedule and provide better service reliability to customers in Australia.
Luke Clifton, Group Executive, Macquarie Telecom said this is two great ASX companies collaborating to help each other grow. “Once again, our commitment to homegrown, industry-leading customer service has paved the way for an even stronger partnership with a thriving Australian company. We look forward to seeing Kelsian Group continue to go from strength to strength and we’ll continue to develop new cloud and network services to help it achieve that.”
