Ninefold ties up with Australian incubators

Fledgling cloud provider Ninefold has announced tie-ups with Australian startup hubs Pollenizer and Startmate, as it tries to attract new companies to its cloud services.

The “Cloud Booster Program” means that companies in the two hubs’ startup communities can get free cloud computing – up to $AU2,000 worth per month – for up to a year. Ninefold will also provide a technical sales consultation for setup, and will include the startups in its marketing campaigns.

Citing its local data centres (with consequent low latency), as well as support via e-mail, live chat, Twitter and (heaven forefend) telephone, Ninefold’s managing director Peter James said the Cloud Booster Program is “evidence of our ongoing commitment to the local startup ecosystem”.

Niki Scevak of Startmate said the partnership removes early-stage bottlenecks for its startups.

The Macquarie Telecom-owned Ninefold launched at the beginning of this year. Much of its pitch to date has been towards developers, publishing APIs to write software designed to interact with the cloud service from the beginning.

However, more recent launches – including a service under which the company will load large customer datasets from portable drives rather than asking them to tie up network resources for long periods of time – have signaled a desire for a broader customer base. ®