Sydney based managed service provider Virtual.Offis yesterday said the company has won a contract agreement to provide secure hosted services to one of the world's leading foreign exchange providers, OzForex. Launched in April 1998, OzForex, provides an electronic funds transfer service for businesses and individuals who need to move money from one country to another.

The company now has offices in Sydney, London and Toronto. Ozforex deals in more than 17 currencies and serves around 30,000 customers in more than 40 countries around the world. Rapid growth and increasing demand means that OzForex requires peak availability for online customers.

As a result the company outgrew services offered by its incumbent provider. Among OzForex's requirements was bank grade security, a demonstrable track record of near-zero downtime for high volume transaction based online clients and the ability to deliver a Disaster Recovery solution. OzForex met with Virtual.Offis and was quickly satisfied with the credentials of the team signing to a three-year contract for managed service provision. Virtual.Offis has started the migration of the OzForex site from the incumbent supplier and will deliver and manage services over two Web servers as well as a Disaster Recovery site.

Already at the test-and-release stage, the swift transition is backed up by free service provision until cutover is complete. Craig Allen, chief executive officer and founder of Virtual.Offis said billing for service will not start until OzForex is fully migrated and testing on the service has been complete.

"We will wait until the client is satisfied they're running at an optimal level," Allen said.

" We offer all new clients this because it protects their ability to maintain operations, contain costs and mitigates risk when setting up or cutting over. "For OzForex, transitioning to Virtual.Offis means they now have a complete Disaster Recovery solution in place as well as the ability to meet the massive demand and the continuing growth of the business," concluded Mr. Allen. Neil Helm, CEO of Ozforex, said enlisting the services of Virtual.Offis will help ensure the company can continue to provide a high level and efficient service to customers while still supporting business growth. The OzForex site is expected to go live next week.