Interactive headquarters in Melbourne
IT services provider, Interactive, has acquired data cleansing and asset disposal services provider, Erase IT, for an undisclosed sum.
Both Interactive and Erase IT have two shareholders in common and have previously directed customers one to the other in an informal manner.
Interactive, who claims to be Australia’s largest privately owned IT services provider, offers business continuity, cloud services and hardware maintenance, the latter accounts for roughly 50 per cent of the company’s revenue. Erase IT will be incorporated into the hardware maintenance division.
The integration will allow Interactive to manage hardware to the end of its lifecycle.
Erase IT has 650 customers across Australia, according to Interactive, and provides data erasure that meets US Department of Defence and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) standards ensuring there is no risk of an accidental data breach.
“As customers across Australia develop their responses to the new Mandatory Data Breach reporting, it is critical that they consider the decommissioning and destruction of hardware as part of their plans,” Erase IT general manager, Christopher Atamian, said.
“The capability we bring to the Interactive hardware maintenance portfolio enables clients to incorporate secure and environmentally safe destruction of obsolete or redundant hardware in their maintenance plans.”
Erase IT is headquartered in Melbourne and employed 28 staff at the time of the acquisition. All staff will join Interactive.
“Companies of all sizes have growing responsibility to ensure their data is effectively and efficiently deleted from devices that have reached the end of their useful lives,” Interactive CEO, Mal McHutchison, said.
“Adding the capability provided by Erase IT to our already substantial hardware maintenance capabilities ensures our customers need only deal with a single supplier for their critical infrastructure support and decommissioning and destruction requirements.”
Interactive was established in 1988 and claims more than 2,000 customers and 400 employees. The company is headquartered in Melbourne and also has offices in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth and Auckland, in New Zealand.
Currently, Interactive counts Dicker Data as its only distributor.
