David Hirst (Macquarie Telecom)
Macquarie Telecom has promoted David Hirst to the position of group executive, tasked with a leading role in developing the company’s data centre expansion plan.
The move comes as demand for the provider’s data centres and cloud services experiences strong growth, across three existing data centres in Sydney and Canberra.
Furthermore, the appointment follows the recruitment of Bart Thomas as general manager of Government Cloud in late October, as well as the company’s recent Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) accreditation for protected cloud services in September.
The management reshuffle also arrives at a time when the business is examining whether to “build or buy” additional capacity, in a bid to keep ahead of customer demand for cloud services.
“The global mega trend to adopt hybrid IT is fuelling demand for our services,” Hirst said. “Including everything from co-location to back-up-as-a-service and private cloud.
“We have a clear focus on investing strategically to stay ahead of the market.”
Hirst has been a leading member of the Macquarie Telecom leadership team since joining the business nine years ago, working on the strategy for the existing data centres and cloud business.
“The combination of a good culture, focused strategy and an obsessive commitment to delivering world class customer service is driving our strong growth, and making Macquarie Telecom Group a dynamic place to work,” Hirst added.
“I am excited to be able to play a central role in driving the next phase of the company’s growth.
“The recognition of the quality and depth of the investment we have made continues, and is attracting more and more market interest as the uniqueness of Macquarie Telecom Group’s business model becomes better understood.
“The latest example of recognition was achieving certification from the Australian Signals Directorate to host Commonwealth data classified to PROTECTED level, making us the only scale cloud provider to achieve this distinction.”
Macquarie Telecom was the first local cloud provider to join the government’s Certified Cloud Services List (CCSL), which is maintained by the ASD, with the company’s GovZone infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering added in May 2015.
Initially the company’s cloud services were certified for use with Unclassified – DLM information (data that is not classified but is not intended for public release.)
However, and as reported by ARN, the ASD formally listed Macquarie Government’s services as having been certified for use with data classified at the PROTECTED level in September.
Just two other companies — Sliced Tech and Vault Systems — have services on the CCSL certified for use with PROTECTED data.
