Australia’s largest operator Telstra has signed a $23 million contract with Komatsu to manage the mining and construction equipment manufacturer’s core telecoms services and M2M strategy.

The three-year agreement covers voice and data services as well as M2M and cloud technologies. The two companies will build on a recent M2M trial that enabled “zero touch” remote download of performance diagnostic data from more than 700 pieces of equipment on mine sites.

Accessing this data from the Komatsu in-site centre in Fairfield (Sydney) in real time eliminates the need to halt use of the equipment for data to be downloaded, resulting in improved fleet and production efficiency.

Telstra said Komatsu, an early adopter of its cloud services in 2010, will transition to a hybrid cloud solution, which will include a dedicated private cloud with native integration into Microsoft Azure for storage and additional workload deployments.

The new agreement extends their 15-year relationship.