Terabyte alumni on transtasman boom

By ADAM GIFFORD

Massive Media, a Sydney-based web development and multimedia company formed by three former Terabyte Interactive staff, is making a move back across the Tasman.

Chairman and chief executive Ron Downey, who was in Auckland over the weekend to talk to prospective clients, said Massive was keen to build up a New Zealand presence.

"It's crazy for us to have all this history in Auckland and Wellington and not capitalise on it."

Mr Downey was Terabyte's general manager for publishing when he, executive producer Louise van Rooyen and creative director Derek Ellis left for Sydney early in 1996.

"We decided to move to another market so we didn't compete with our ex-employer," Mr Downey said.

The trio wanted to create a company with a good internal climate so people stayed, offering premium services to "the top end of town."

The strategy seems to have worked, because Massive Media now has 70 staff in three divisions - the original Massive Interactive, Massive Technologies and Massive Television - and turnover "just shy of $A5 million." Staff turnover is less than 8 per cent.

Clients include Commonwealth Bank, Macquarie Bank, Telstra, 20th Century Fox, Nestle and Mars.

"The strategy has given us longevity ... when every one of our competitors has closed shop or reduced staff, we are still picking up clients and still strong enough to service them," Mr Downey said.

While most of the revenue comes from Massive Interactive's web development business, prospects for major growth lie in the other divisions.

In January 2000, the founders sold half the company to Austar for $A4.5 million, and set to work developing interactive television applications.

Mr Downey said the application it developed for the Austar regional network was the first commercial implementation in the world of the Oracle ISS system, the platform Austar has chosen.

Massive Technology, the software division, is building a middleware product called MetaWrap, an application server platform which allows web developers to create internet applications that can be accessed from a variety of platforms, including web pages, Wap (Wireless Application Protocol), PDA (personal digital assistant) languages, digital TV and set top box platforms.

MetaWrap is already used internally by Massive, and the company wants to have it available as a packaged application by September.

Mr Downey said the development tools would be free, but the licence for the application server was expected to cost about $A6000.

"It's designed to go up against products which require million-dollar software licences and $300-an-hour engineers to design applications."