Published on Telsoc ( https://telsoc.org) Home > AARNet's Cloudstor+ Cloud storage initiative AARNet's Cloudstor+ Cloud storage initiative Abstract This paper describes the rationale behind AARNet?s involvement in providing a range of value-added services over its Research and Education high-speed network. Special emphasis is given to services offered 'in the Cloud', and in particular concentrating on its latest service offering, Cloudstor+, which provides Cloud storage to researchers across Australia. Introduction AARNet, the Australian national higher education and research network organisation, has launched a number of initiatives for its members in the 'cloud computing' space. This paper is concerned primarily with a new service called 'Cloudstor+', but it first sets out the context and rationale for providing this service. AARNet is owned and operated by 38 Australian universities together with CSIRO. It was founded in 1989, and so is celebrating 25 years this year, its 20th anniversary being celebrated by publication of a book (Korporaal 2009 [5]). It provides high-speed and high-availability network connections between its members and the Internet at large. It has its own fibre on redundant paths across Australia and it leases dark fibre across the Pacific, which are now lit variously at 10Gbps, 40Gbps and 100Gbps; all its member organisations are connected at 10Gbps or better. While enhancing and upgrading its network (now moving to its fourth generation, implementing MPLS) remains AARNet? s first priority, it has for many years now sought to offer value-added services layered over the network. National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy AARNet works collaboratively with other Higher Education (HE) and research-sector agencies around Australia to implement the Australian Government?s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). This strategy, which has seen many hundreds of millions of dollars of government and sector investment between about 2005 and the present day, seeks to provide a comprehensive suite of capabilities to support research. It includes high-performance computing, data storage, tools, authentication and authorisation, and of course networks. AARNet is the operator of the network component of this suite, known as the Australian Research & Education Alex Reid [1] University of Western Australia AJTDE - Vol 2, No 2 - May 2014 [2] [3] 49 [4]  1