PRESS RELEASE
Award-winning IT as a Service (ITaaS) provider’s blueAPACHE have significantly expanded their operations in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, responding to strong demand from a thriving local business market.
Following significant growth in Queensland, blueAPACHE have transferred long-term Victorian executive, Andrew Bird, to lead the Brisbane operations as their new Territory Manager.
“Andrew is firmly entrenched in our management team, so we have essentially moved one of our star performers to Queensland. This demonstrates the level of potential that we see in the region.” explained Chris Marshall, founder and CEO of blueAPACHE. “The local economy has bounced back very well from the downturn in mining and resources, and smart businesses are investing in their future through technology.”
The Queensland push has also resulted in new hires for the Brisbane account management and service centre teams, plus significant expansion to local datacentre infrastructure.
blueAPACHE offers traditional technology – network, cloud, telephony, managed services and support, disaster recovery and security – but delivers it as a simple, converged service. Providing business-critical technology as a service means clients can benefit from the latest technology offerings without committing valuable capital to costly infrastructure, and be supported by a national team of engineers and industry specialists.
Long-standing Queensland customers include KWB Group, owners of the Kitchen Connection and Wallspan brands. KWB Group experienced the business continuity benefits of an outsourced ITaaS environment first-hand when the Queensland floods struck in 2011. The company was able to close their at-risk retail outlets, and by requesting that blueAPACHE re-route key technology and communications services to another store, were able to maintain business operations and mitigate potential downtime.
The scalability of ITaaS allows KWB Group to expand much more easily than was previously possible, reducing limitations and simplifying new store openings. Effectively, ‘switching on’ a new retail outlet takes one phone call to blueAPACHE. “We can plug everything in and have it work straight away. There is so much less complexity than before,” said Chris Palin, CFO of KWB Group.
Andrew Bird said of his new deployment: “blueAPACHE have been experiencing significant national growth since well before I joined the business eight years ago, and I’m thrilled to be a part of the continued expansion.
“Queensland has unique requirements – particularly in areas such as disaster recovery – and I am looking forward to showing organisations how they can reduce their technology investment, realise a genuine return on investment, and improve their business continuity profile with the new ITaaS model.”
The Queensland state government cites a competitive tax environment, a growing, diverse economy and solid population growth as leading factors behind an increase in business investment.
Marshall continued: “this expansion underlines our belief in the positive growth of Queensland. We now have additional resources on hand to take care of our existing customers, as well as expand the services we offer to new customers among the many Queensland companies who are on a similar growth trajectory.”
This expansion follows another record year for the blueAPACHE. In 2015, the local cloud specialist grew over 30%, secured global recognition of their ITaaS model and was showcased by HP around the world for their Australian Cloud platform.
About blueAPACHE
Since 1998, the multi-awarded blueAPACHE has helped organisations in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and North America leverage technology to their business advantage by delivering comprehensive IT Management, Cloud, Network, Voice, Software and Consulting as a converged service – when they need it, as they need it. This is IT. This is blueAPACHE. To learn more, visit www.blueapache.com