Disaster recovery specialist finds his place in the sun

Sam Mulholland of Standby Consulting

By Darren Greenwood, Auckland | Thursday, 19 May 2011
Sam Mulholland grew up wanting to be a farmer. But realising there was not enough land to support him on his family’s Norsewood farm in southern Hawke’s Bay, he set out on a 40- year career trajectory to business ownership and a home in Bahrain.

Mulholland, owner/MD of disaster recovery specialist Standby Consulting, began his working life at the local Post Office and later found a job with Databank Systems in Wellington, starting as a clerk, and working his way up from computer officer to shift manager.

After a number of transfers, Mulholland ended up in Dunedin, where he worked for Databank until the company was bought out by EDS and Mulholland was made redundant.

But his acquaintance with an IBM representative eager to start a disaster recovery business in the South Island soon led to the formation of Standby Computing Services, a Dunedin business that grew from exclusive IBM disaster recovery and continuity support, to providing services to more than 30 companies throughout New Zealand and Australia.

The company over the years added mores services, including clients data entry, academic research, software escrow, computer room design, project management and IT policy. The nature of its business evolved over time and several years ago the company rebranded itself as Standby Consulting to reflect the change.

In 2003, a Fortune 200 company based in Bahrain hired Standby to review its IT disaster recovery and strategy planning for a five-year contract, work that led to Mulholland’s relocation to the Gulf state.

Mulholland says Bahrain is tax free and relatively inexpensive, making it more “business-friendly” than neighbouring countries. Political troubles of late were not as serious as reported, but they have lead to customers reviewing disaster recovery plans.

“Recent events across the Middle East have shaken a lot of big companies thrust into this market. For Standby, this could be a good thing as we can provide consultancy in the IT and DR solutions,” he says.

Standby operates very much as a virtualised company, with three full-timers and four regular contractors in Dunedin, Abu Dhabi, Christchurch and Wanaka.

“Currently we are in talks with personnel in Warsaw and the UK,” Mulholland says. “We leverage off technology a lot, using services such as Skype and the timezone changes to turn around reports quickly.”

Mulholland says it has no trouble servicing its dispersed client base from its headquarters in Dunedin. Some Christchurch clients appeared to have survived the recent earthquake after adopting Standby’s DR strategies.

Mulholland says Standby is vendor independent and gives impartial advice on what clients should use. It does not supply hardware itself. Middle Eastern businesses are looking to cloud solutions for their disaster recovery, he says, while at home, the Christchurch quake is likely to encourage firms to go off-site for data storage.

“There is very much an attitude in New Zealand of ‘She will be right mate — we will cope,’” he says “Well, many probably have but it would have [cost] them about 15 times more ... than if they had had a good plan in place.”

In his spare time, Mulholland tries to watch the rugby and Super 15 games on satellite television, and he enjoys cooking, gardening and photography.

Mulholland has seen technology change from paper tapes and punch cards to the highly sophisticated systems of today. Disaster recovery is now also more than just restoring a few tapes.

“These days, IT systems are made up of a mish-mash of hardware and networks with applications and servicers interlinking each other. Add to this the instant updating of data through telecommunications networks, then it becomes more and more difficult,” he says.

“Failure of IT systems are instantly apparent to your clients and your stakeholders. This is what people must realise and why they should have plans in place. It is part of the senior management and Board of Directors responsibilities to protect the assets of their company.”