Macquarie Telecom defies economic downturn with rapid expansion

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 03 March 2009 12:47

IT Industry - Strategy

Macquarie Telecom seems to be defying the economic downturn with rapid expansion and growth in its hosting and data business now accounting for one third of overall revenue and a resulting doubling of its sales and operations team over the past three months.

The hosting division of Macquarie Telecom contributed $81.2 million in revenue to the business in the last financial year ending June 2008 which the company said necessitated the addition of 20 new appointments to the sales and operations team based in Sydney covering the areas of business development, project management, senior engineering support and network operations management.

According to Aidan Tudenhope, managing director, hosting at Macquarie Telecom, the appointments come at an opportune time as the company experiences increased demand from business and government for managed services, managed security and solutions that help them reduce operating costs and streamline processes in the current economic climate.

Tudenhope expects that over the next 12 to 18 months Macquarie will see, what he describes as, “another steep increase in the number of organisations either selectively outsourcing or moving their critical applications online.”

“In 2008 we saw an increase greater than 30% of Australian businesses looking to outsource some aspects of their IT infrastructure and we expect 2009 to build on this.”

 Tudenhope said he continued to be surprised, particularly in the current uncertain economic climate, that organisations “fail to estimate the true costs of managing their IT infrastructure in-house when assessing their IT management strategies.”
 
He also said that the new appointments in the past three months brought to Macquarie Hosting more than 10 decades of experience in the industry from organisations including WebCentral, Optus, Telstra and AT&T.
 
Through a new partnership with the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Tudenhope said some appointees had been drawn from the University’s Bachelor of IT course. It was the first time the hosting division had partnered with a local university to recruit IT specialists directly into the business, and they would be trained as part of the company’s network operations centre team.
 
Tudenhope said Macquarie Telecom’s second business sales team would be led by the most senior appointment to the new Macquarie Hosting team, Gerard Barwell as sales manager.