Hyro launches business centre with IBM, stops all IT acquisitions.

Hyro Limited is traditionally a digital service provider, supporting online marketing, electronic commerce and other digital (Internet, mobile phone and IPTV) channel-based activities of major corporations and government agencies throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

Since its acquisition of Australian-based IT service provider, Synergy Software Holdings in May 2007, Hyro has had to expand its offerings and produce a broader channel model.

Hyro chief operating officer Bill Votsaris told CRN the company has always worked with the channel, however since its Synergy buy, Hyro has had to bring its channel focus to the forefront of the business.

“The channel has always been part of the business but we have picked up a significant amount of software capabilities and we need to ensure the channel becomes part of the business loop,” said Votsaris.

To inform all of those involved with Hyro about its new capabilities, Hyro in conjunction with Syngery’s channel partner IBM, has built the 'Hyro business Centre', launched in Sydney on the 19 February.

According to Votsaris the centre, which will be launched in Melbourne next, gives Hyro the opportunity to showcase its capabilities without the need for powerpoint presentations.

“The Hyro Innovation Centre is one of only a dozen or so such IBM Business Partner Innovation Centres (BPIC) in the world, so it's really quite an accolade, and is built on an IBM eServer system comprising System i, System p, System x and storage hardware. The Hyro Innovation Centre can demonstrate multiple technologies, including; Server & Storage Consolidation; Server & Storage Virtualisation; High Availability & Disaster Recovery; Solution Design / Evaluation and others,” said Votsaris.

Votsaris told CRN the service provider will stop all acquisitions in 2008. This year will be a time for Hyro to build the company organically.

“The acquisitions over the past couple of years have been made. Now is the time for us to basically finish fully integrating all the companies into a single backend. This was a strategy progressively implemented in the second half of 2007 and within that time we changed the management board to fit the new model,” he said.

According to Votsaris, Hyro has grown from a $20 million dollar company in 2006 to a $65 million company in 2007. The company has also grown its staff from 120 people to 500.

“The fact is if you are a small business you want to make acquisitions to grow to a certain size, once you have critical mass you can’t stay on the same policy,” he said.

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