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Fast growing Waikato firm goes international

Fast growing Waikato firm goes international

One of the Waikato's fastest growing companies has expanded into Canada.

Waikato Innovation Park based LayerX Group, who consistently appear in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and are award winners in the NZ Fast 50, is offering its vGRID stack of high performance cloud services in Canada after building its own server platforms in Calgary and Vancouver where it has staff.

"We already have some good traction in the Canadian market but it is early days, and a big market," said LayerX Group chief executive Bruce Trevarthen.

LayerX Group owned theCloud has been operating in New Zealand for eight years through its own vGRID platforms in Auckland, Hamilton, and Wellington. It has in excess of 500 terabytes online, and is adding around 100 terabytes of data storage every six months.

It is offering self-service, on-demand, storage and computing services such as internet connectivity, exchange email, data backup, line of business and voice services tailored for small to medium sized businesses.

vGRID delivers both flexible computing infrastructure and software as a service.

Trevarthen describes the offering as "elastic cloud for the enterprise" which means businesses are not limited to the capabilities of the computing hardware they have at their own business premises. vGRID delivers computing capabilities via the cloud that meld, from moment to moment, to fit the needs of the user.

"We keep it really simple," he said.

Trevarthen, who employs around a dozen staff, has plans to expand the software solution offered online, into other overseas markets. Trevarthen is eyeing Australia, the UK and Asia.

"For a small business of ten people to run multiple servers you would need to have a full time IT person at least and spend up to $200,000 every three years on refreshing the hardware you have in place," Trevarthen said.

vGRID is able to provide a better cloud based service, tailored to the needs of the small to medium sized business, keeping consumption of services simple whilst maintaining the high degree of security and resilience enabled by the underlying VMware platform.

"We build even better platforms commoditising enterprise level IT services. We're a Kiwi company, in country, delivering these services in a very simple and fully automated way."

One of the key philosophies was to replace all IT equipment at least every three years, taking advantage of the latest and greatest computing hardware.

"We are putting in new gear every month now. We never run our hardware beyond three years," Trevarthen said.

"Large organisations will spend hundreds of thousands on a technology refresh to maintain resilience.

"That same level of performance would benefit a small business in a similar way. Why should a small business not have that level of IT available?"

LayerX Group is gold sponsor of UltraFast Fibre's Beyond Broadband Expo at Waikato Show on April 8-10 at Claudelands Events Centre, Hamilton.

LayerX Group's company theCloud, which operates vGRID in New Zealand, was placed 415th in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for Asia Pacific last year after experiencing 108 per cent growth. LayerX Group came 156th in 2014 after 295 per cent growth and 187th in 2013 with 176 per cent growth. The business was ranked 27th in the Deloitte Fast 50 in 2014 having experienced 295 per cent growth, previously being placed 42nd on the Deloitte Fast 50 in 2013 with 176 per cent growth.