Backup provider goes under, owing EMC $280,000

Trans-Tasman data management provider iData Resolutions has gone into liquidation in both New Zealand and Australia.

The Australian arm had more than $478,000 of debts on 23 January when it ceased operations and appointed liquidator Michael Rowley of Woodgate & Co. The biggest single unsecured creditor is EMC, owed almost $280,000, according to a report to creditors.

The company counted IBM, VMware, Symantec, Varonis, AWS, SoftLayer, Microsoft Azure, Quantum, Pure Storage and Hitachi among its vendors.

Rowley told CRN that the collapse of the New Zealand parent company precipitated the Kiwi liquidator to contact him to wind up the Australian arm. iData had four staff members in Australia with all its infrastructure hosted in New Zealand.

According to the Australian liquidator, customers are "making their own arrangements" as no agreement had been orchestrated with any other provider to continue their service.

However, former iData account manager Jakob Wollner told CRN that fellow EMC partner SI Systems has continued to provide service for Australian customers.

"Myself and a consultant moved over [upon liquidation] to work for SI Systems in Melbourne," said Wollner. "We now direct [the Australian] customers to deal directly with EMC support… but SI Systems are [also] here to look after them."

Negotiations with several different EMC partners were initiated when a collapse looked imminent, said Wollner, which led to SI Systems and "some other EMC partners" looking after clients post-liquidation. He added that SI Systems did not purchase the iData customer list.

Wollner also told CRN that four iData staffers in New Zealand had created a new company named Sempre, which has maintained client service – including full managed services – in that country. The Kiwi parent had about 20 employees.

According to the company website, iData Resolutions started in 1992 as Backup Strategies Limited and was the "original Legato distributor" in New Zealand. As the firm grew, the catalogue expanded from backups into other storage activities such as "replication, high availability, disaster recovery and virtualisation".

"With little or no staff turnover iData has built a team of highly skilled professionals with a clear understanding of the mutual value relationship between iData and our customers," read the iData website.

iData in Australia had offices in Sydney and Melbourne, while the Kiwi parent company operated out of Auckland and Wellington.

Do you know more? Are you a customer of iData Resolutions?

Please email the reporter or phone (02) 9901 6395.