Microsoft partner Ignia diversifies outside of mining industry
The diversification outside of the mining industry continues throughout the country.
Business Review Australia recently reported how Century Iron Mines turned its attention from mining to selling Australian eggs to China. Now, Western Australia IT provider and Microsoft partner Ignia has found a road to prosperity after it once called mining companies as the majority of its business.
Ignia specialises in transforming business processes and performance through Microsoft technologies. Its top clients include the Federal and State Government, utility companies, financial institutions, household brands and global corporations such as mining giant Rio Tinto.
Prior to the downturn of the iron ore industry, about 40 per cent of Ignia’s customers were in mining. Although that number is now down to 10 per cent, new construction and engineering customers have made up for the difference.
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Coming off a successful 2014 in which it won Microsoft enterprise partner of the year, was ranked No. 8 in the BRW Best Places to Work and made the CRN Fast50, Ignia’s ability to diversify its customer base has led to another great year for the Perth-based company.
After arriving at No. 22 in the 2014 CRN Fast50, Ignia director Joshua Boys believes the company’s 40.8 per cent growth could be topped this year behind several new projects.
“Our big push this year has been around data,” said Boys. “We’re heavily going after advanced analytics and big data science. It’s a big driver for savings and cost reduction, and it’s something we already do very well.
“Mining has been in big data for a while, but other industries are catching up now. We’re using it to drive new innovations, and they aren’t very expensive.”
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In addition to increased focus on the public sector, Ignia has shifted from an apps company to an end-to-end cloud provider. This has helped customers transfer their core infrastructure into the cloud, such as a $1.6 million deal to move the WA police website and CMS system to Microsoft’s Azure data centers.
The company has also expanded to the east coast into Sydney and Melbourne in the past year in an effort to build upon its origin in Perth, as Ignia has doubled in size.
"Maintaining the same family friendly culture whilst growing rapidly across a region as large as Australia has been challenging, but we see this as a critical ingredient to our continued success," said Boys.
Source: CRN.com
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