Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - Who is Interactive?

Ben Richards runs Australia's largest privately owned IT data centre network. As National Data Centre Manager at Interactive, Richards oversees facilities that underpin much of the country's digital business operations and business continuity strategies.

Interactive, he explains, has a national footprint, offering data centres in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. "Interactive offers data centres co-location services to customers that want to host IT infrastructure in our data centres," Richards said. Businesses rely on Interactive by bringing their own equipment to these facilities, where the company provides critical expertise and operational support.

Resilience, Richards argues, sits at the core of their service. "When you think of data centre resilience you really think of resilience around the power infrastructure and the cooling infrastructure that's running the data centre," he said. "Interactive has great systems for resilience in terms of power. We have generators, uninterruptable power supplies - all the best of that."

Redundant and failover systems are standard, he added. "In terms of cooling we deploy systems that are fully redundant so if there's any failure with any of the cooling, we've always got a backup in place."

But Richards is quick to say that Interactive's resilience goes beyond infrastructure. He believes the experience of their engineering teams is a key differentiator in the market. "Interactive has been a managed services provider for IT for about 33 years, and as a result, our data centre engineers and resources are highly skilled technicians," he explained. "If you have an issue with any of your IT equipment, we're in the best place to really help you to get back up and running as quickly as possible."

It's a combination that delivers more than just hosting space. "Not all data centre engineers are equal," Richards said. "Our data centre engineers are highly skilled so we can do the standard data centre tasks - like turn off a computer, plug something in, replace something that's failed – that's quite standard. But because of the skill of our technicians, we can go further and we can offer services to help you build your environment, help you troubleshoot problems with your environment, and that's really a difference we bring to the market."

Richards says another key point of difference is Interactive's ability to deliver high density computing. "We offer high density racks and high density computing in our data centres. We've just deployed a solution for a customer that sees us running up to 30 kilowatts of power in a rack, which is quite impressive," he noted. "And this is not just a number - this is a customer actually using that amount of power in a small space. That's really a difference."

Business continuity is also top of mind for the company's customers. In addition to traditional data centre services, Interactive has integrated disaster recovery and business continuity into its core model. "Our data centres are co-located with our business continuity service, which allows customers to recover their office to our site and be close to where the data centre is when you do that," Richards said.

This unique proximity allows for a seamless transition in the event of disaster. "Our business continuity offering is a product; we offer office suites in our locations that allows you to recover your business in the event of an issue at your main office where you're running your business. That might be a flood, a fire, some kind of building evacuation, and this sort of thing. You can recover your people to our locations into what we call a business continuity suite, and this allows you to keep your business running in the event of a disaster," he explained.

It is, Richards says, an essential service for organisations seeking to avoid disruption. "It's really important for keeping things up and running and no interruption to your business," he added.

Another advantage, he mentions, is the resilience inherited from being on the same site as the data centre. "Our business continuity suites are co-located where our data centres are, so by using our business continuity suite you actually get the benefit of all that resilience that I just spoke of. You get access to uninterruptable power, great cooling systems - these sorts of things that come with our data centre being located at the same spot as your business continuity suite," he said.

Although Richards declined to discuss specific customer names or sectors, he confirmed ongoing interest from enterprises that regard data centre resilience and disaster recovery as non-negotiable aspects of digital transformation and risk management. "We're seeing more and more businesses looking for high density computing, for more reliability, and for stronger disaster recovery planning," he said. "These aren't just IT decisions; these are business decisions with real consequences."

Asked how enterprises or end users could access Interactive's services, Richards pointed to their website: "On there you can find an inquiry form which you can get through to us that way. Also plenty of information on the website - we've just done a recent refresh of it and we're pretty proud of how it looks," he said.

For a business so focused on digital resilience, Richards maintains that the people remain the difference. "Ultimately, it comes down to the skill and dedication of our technicians and engineers," Richards said. "That's really what helps us stand apart."