Interactive backs into extra space

Australian-owned disaster recovery outfit Interactive has expanded its premises and added 10 new jobs in the process.

Only six months after the formal opening of its 1600 square metre business recovery centre in Sydney, Interactive has taken additional space in neighbouring premises to add another 1000 square metres to the centre’s capacity. The growth in size means the company will add 10 new staff to its roster.

Interactive managing director Christopher Ride, said the company’s revenues were running at over 20 percent ahead of last year.

Revenues for the financial year ending 2005 were $32 million, since then Interactive has added another $6.4 million in revenue to its coffers.

Ride said the company was the nuts and the bolts guy that owns the computer rooms. All the software and hardware used to support customers are from other vendors.

“What makes us different is we provide disclosure to the client about their levels of risk. Disaster recovery is all about risk management process and we demonstrate what the risk profiles are,” he said.

Interactive provides business continuity facilities at several different levels. At the enterprise level, Interactive replicates a client’s infrastructure and maintain transaction files in real time. For SMEs, Interactive provides disaster recovery agreements.

The company also offers multi-subscriber solutions based on shared equipment which can be mobilised for customer use in the event of disaster.

Its disaster services include multi-subscriber, peer-to-peer data replication and dedicated customer systems for the IBM Mid-range (iSeries & pSeries), Intel, Mainframe (zSeries), Sun Microsystems and HP platforms.

Ride said businesses are rapidly increasingly realising crises overall seem to be on the increase.

“At one time it was just the server that was vulnerable. IT failures can be triggered from a number of sources,” he said.

Another factor driving the uptake is statutory compliance. Increasingly stringent prudential regulations demand organisations have the ability to quickly recover from a major interruption to their business, he said.