ADELAIDE ADVERTISER
Hostworks booms with outsourcing
IT SERVICES provider Hostworks is one of the state's up-and-coming successes, recently posting half-year net profit growth of 350 per cent and being named on BRW' s fast 100 list for 2004.
Hostworks managing director Marty Gauvin has pointed to more growth in the pipeline with an increase of online traffic, internet-based commerce and outsourcing.
Put simply, the business hosts the websites of corporations such as nineMSN, ensuring they are always online.
Hostworks manages critical applications and websites for clients including AAMI, Microsoft, Sony, Ticketek and American Express.
"The business has really transitioned in the last year. In the year to June 2004 we made our maiden full-year profit, we've just announced our first dividend and the business is generating cash quite strongly," Mr Gauvin said.
He said demand from companies outsourcing their critical IT systems was driving growth for his business.
So much so, he was looking to employ a further nine staff to cope with the workload. The company has a staff of about 70 at present.
"For many businesses when they look at their IT infrastructure they say 'we really do need this now' and it has been that drive towards critical applications that has seen our business grow quite significantly and also grow in useful ways, such as get more significant customers," he said.
"We took onboard American Express Travel's travel booking engine.
"We now run that for them here and for the UK operation. Travel agents in the UK are actually accessing an application based here in Adelaide."
Among the major challenges Marty Gauvin faced in establishing his business was amassing a team of advisers when the company listed on the stock exchange as a hosting company in February 2001, and creating the right culture to ensure staff are engaged and motivated.
"We're very much a technical organisation, basically a bunch of geeks," he said.
"Keeping geeks enthused and engaged is very much about keeping the challenges coming."
Those challenges have been coming thick and fast for Hostworks. It is one of only four data centres in the world that host MSN websites for Microsoft. The other centres are in London, Tokyo and Seattle.
"That right from the very beginning put us at the very high end of our sector - we only do the serious and tricky stuff," he said. "We have lots of very public, high-volume content. We now do (channels) Nine and Seven websites."
Mr Gauvin said the decision to make Hostworks a public company was partly to make access to capital easier, and to raise Hostworks' credibility because its clients were major international comp
HWG
hostworks group limited
