Online payroll boom sends Empower to new data centre

June 2007
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Empower Masterpay has moved its core business systems to a $3 million data centre with state-of-the-art security, power and fire prevention systems after a 10-fold increase in online payroll customers.

During 2006, Empower saw a massive increase in the number of customers using its Empower-HR online payroll services after it retired the two-decade-old, mainframe-based Masterpay payroll service, As a result, its online service customers increased from 20 to more than 200 organisations.

The new data centre provides sophisticated security for the data contained by Empower’s servers, failsafe availability in the event of major disruptions and high bandwidth capacity to ensure customers had a good experience when using the Empower-HR system.

The 1000-square-metre facility incorporates biometric access and a fire suppression system that uses gas to extinguish a fire without disrupting computer equipment. In the event of a power failure, massive batteries can transition the data centre, operating at full load, to a diesel-powered generator, which can operate for as long as six days with on-site fuel. Operated by national network services company Internode, the data centre contains dual fibre-optic links to provide fully redundant connectivity.

Empower CEO Alan Greig said it was critical for the company’s success to outsource its data centre requirements. “Locating customer-facing servers in our office is not an option,” he said. “We need to have full redundancy of our systems within a disaster recovery environment. Internode’s new facility gives us a lights-out secure data centre with all the capacity needed for our hosted services. None of the production systems that support our ASP customers are at our office – they’re all in the new data centre.

" It makes all the sense in the world to outsource our data centre requirements to an organisation with the ability to manage it for a large number of clients and then share the cost between them. You couldn’t afford to do it on your own.”

Empower provides Human Resource (HR) and payroll services for major Australian businesses such as Bendigo Bank, Sydney Turf Club, Port of Melbourne, Newcrest Mining, Thiess, Just Jeans, RM Williams, Reuters and Sun Microsystems. Its largest customer is the Tasmania State Government, which uses Empower-HR across all major departments.

Since 2002, Empower has offered its flagship Empower-HR software as either an in-house application, run on a customer’s computer, or as an online service provided by Empower –referred to as Application Service Provision (ASP) or Software as a Service (SAAS).

Mr. Greig said inquiries about Empower’s online HR/payroll service continued to grow. “I’d estimate that more than half the people we talk to are asking about an ASP-type payroll solution,” he said. “Where our systems are stored is very important to them. Customers want to know their confidential employee data is well protected in a secure centre.

“There is a huge potential for Software as a Service, so all the players are getting into it. It is highly acceptable to outsource payrolls. Years ago, outsourcing was done by TNT with armoured trucks. That entire process is now all electronically delivered by our servers and software from the Internode data centre.”

Empower Masterpay operates six HP DL380-class servers from the Internode Data Centre. It also uses a Finisar WDM (wavelength-divisional multiplexer), which allows it to manage and individually light up eight discrete communication channels down a dark fibre link provided by Internode between its data centre and Empower’s Kent Town head office.

Empower operates an HEVA 4000 Storage Area Network at both sites, replicating data across the fibre link to keep the locations synchronised. A VMware ESX server allows Empower to create and manage multiple virtual machines on a single physical server.

For more information about Empower’s online HR and Payroll service, contact Daryl Rasheed by calling on 08 8332 6988 or email daryl.rasheed@empower.com.au.

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