Cloudscene unveils global marketplace for connectivity services

Bevan Slattery - Founder, Cloudscene

Cloudscene has launched an independent telecommunications marketplace, targeting buyers and sellers of connectivity services.

Labelled Cloudscene Marketplace, the platform will support buyers of colocation, infrastructure-as-a-service, voice, cloud and internet services by directly connecting enterprises to the 5,000+ service providers listed on Cloudscene, a directory of colocation data centres, cloud service providers and network fabrics.

“Cloudscene, as an idea, started a little over two years ago,” Cloudscene founder Bevan Slattery said.

“It began in the form of a spreadsheet that I used to keep track of which providers were in which data centres across Australia and Asia, and then the world.

“Prior to Cloudscene, it wasn’t possible to get the level of detail I required to support the needs of the other telecommunications-based businesses I’d established. I figured if it’s a problem for me, it must be a problem for others.”

According to Slattery, Cloudscene began to receive “countless requests” from enterprise buyers looking to connect with the service providers listed on the global directory.

“Shortly after we launched Cloudscene, the market quickly realised the potential of the data our analysts were collating,” he explained.

“With more than 6,000 data centres and 5,000 service providers, our users began asking us to help match them to service providers who could fulfil their needs for services such as transit, metro ethernet tails or international capacity.

“Initially we just helped by connecting people, but after a while we decided to build a solution that benefits the entire industry, and Cloudscene's Marketplace was born.”

Even though well established network industry forums and user groups continue to be an important medium for community discussions and advice, Slattery said they do not remove the “time-consuming, manual quotation process” for enterprises.

“With Marketplace, Cloudscene is now able to bring buyers and sellers together, to close the gap and facilitate a smoother buying experience,” he said.

“Coupled with the network intelligence offered by the data on our connectivity directory, we’re able to provide a much greater support to enterprise buyers.”

Slattery said the initial launch of Cloudscene’s Marketplace provides “free, unlimited listings” to all enterprise buyers, with the product roadmap set to see the release of additional features such as direct messaging, analytics and sellers’ listings.