For years, IT vendors have been telling their clients to implement business continuity plans and disaster recovery (DR) systems to secure their business should a disaster force them to lose data and working days.
 
Now, it appears the message has gotten through with new data centres springing up all over the country to cater for growing demand. The latest, an $8 million 750-square-metre facility in Brisbane’s Eight Mile Plains Technology Park opened this week.
 
The facility’s owner, technology company Interactive, will host a stand-by workplace and critical IT back-up operation for the Bank of Queensland on the premises. It will be hiring additional staff as available space is taken up by additional clients.
 
Interactive already has a data centre in Melbourne and in Sydney, and will be opening a second 1000-square metre plant in Melbourne in June.  It recently added four new staff to its locations and has plans to hire more in both data centre management and technical support. It already has some 80 engineers on staff among 190 workers nationally.
 
Simon Durkin, director of sales, says the data centre business is booming and provides great job prospects for the right candidates.
 
“Demand has definitely increased in the last couple of years. It’s been primarily driven by compliance requirements,” he says.
 
“Two years ago IT managers were told by their boards DR was interesting, but only as insurance. Now that ASIC (Australian Securities and Investment Commission) and other government bodies are indicating people should have DR plans in place, we have CFOs, CEOs and other board members coming down to see what they are getting for their money.”
 
Durkin says IT workers who have good problem-solving skills and can work across a number of disciplines be they networking, operating systems, software programming or hardware do particularly well in the industry. CONTINUED PAGE 2