The Onyx Group, the North East’s leading technology solutions companyhas officially opened the region’s largest Workplace Continuity Centre at Team Valley, Gateshead, at an event attended by over 80 representatives of the region’s business community.
Outlining his company’s reasons for establishing this new facility, Onyx Group CEO Neil Stephenson said: “According to statistics produced by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 80% of businesses affected by a major incident close within 18 months.
“The other alarming statistic is that currently, 73% of organisations do not have a business continuity plan.
“Onyx already has a significant Disaster and Workplace Recovery infrastructure with our data centres and workplace recovery facilities located in Newcastle and on Teesside,” added Neil.
“This £2m investment in Team Valley is a major move for the company, as well as the region, as it will strengthen its infrastructure and ability to provide resilience to businesses across the North East and beyond.
“This new centre will provide managed workspace for over 200 people at any one time and will create a total of 10 new jobs,” added Neil.
“We have also configured the building to accommodate the capacity, security and confidentiality requirements of our customers, providing both open plan and enclosed work areas that can accommodate widely varying numbers of personnel.
“This new facility follows on from our previous acquisition of DataBanx, our multi-million pound data centre on Tyneside, and will enable us to provide workplace recovery facilities to many more organisations from both the private and public sectors across the region.”
Reflecting on his own company’s experiences, Alan Dixon, CEO of Peters Bakery emphasised the value of having a recovery plan in place. “Our first fire in December 2003, which caused over £750k’s worth of damage, encouraged us to address the need to plan effectively for such an event.
“Once we had fully recovered from this first fire, we developed a business-wide recovery plan based upon the lessons that we had so painfully learned. However, before we had the opportunity to test it, a second fire in April 2004, which completely destroyed our Durham bakery meant that we had to put our plan into action.
“It is only because we had a plan and a team of people who were totally committed to putting it into action that we were able to survive a disaster that would have destroyed many other businesses.”
Also speaking at the opening was Crispian Strachan, former Chief Constable of Northumbria Police and currently a non-executive director of business consultancy OSL.
“Following the passing of the UK Civil Contingencies Act in 2004, it is now a mandatory requirement for many public sector organisations to have a formal business continuity plan,” said Crispian.
Amongst those attending the event was Ian Williams, Director of Business and Industry at One NorthEast, who said“This Onyx Recovery Centre is both impressive, innovative and will provide an invaluable addition to the growing business service proposition in the Region.”
“Facilities like this are so important to the future development of the region. If we are to stand any chance of meeting the ambitious targets outlined in the Regional Economic Strategy, we need our business communities to think more about self-development and that is exactly what Onyx has done”
“The world of technology is becoming increasingly important to businesses of all types and sizes, with data access and voice communication being a particularly crucial area,” said David Mattu of accountants and business advisers Ernst & Young.
“This new Business Continuity Centre is a fantastic facility in terms of layout and location and clearly a lot of thought has gone into its creation and operation.”
This latest development builds on the Onyx Group’s acquisition of the Business Continuity Centres business in late 2006, strengthening further the Group’s strategic aim of offering true resilience to its core business areas of ICT managed connectivity, hosting and disaster recovery and enterprise network security.
“This acquisition is a significant step in our previously disclosed strategy of building Group revenues over the next three years prior to floatation,” added Neil.
Onyx has also launched a website which will feature an online database and a Business Continuity Planning Tool providing a step-by-step guide to the creation of an effective Business Continuity Plan which organisations can store securely via an on-line portal. This website, which will provide advice and support suitable for a large number of businesses, will go live from the 1st of August.
For those businesses with a more complex business recovery planning need, Onyx has assembled a team of Business Continuity Institute accredited consultants who are on hand to provide the specific advice required.
The end product of this investment is that, regardless of the nature or size of a business or organisation, Onyx now has all of the resources, expertise and infrastructure required to be able to provide a data compliance solution tailored to its specific needs.
To arrange a tour of this impressive centre, call Onyx on 08457 715 715.
