Ignition Bermuda Ltd is expanding and looking to hire information technology (IT) professionals as it strives to keep up with rising demand for outsourcing services.The company which has 87 staff based in four countries, has 22 employees in Bermuda at its Burnaby Street base in Hamilton.Ignition senior vice-president Michael Branco said the company had significantly increased its “cloud” computing capacity in recent months with the acquisition of consultants from the Omni Group.The company also has operations based in the Cayman Islands, Halifax and Atlanta.“We are growing as a business, both in Bermuda and other jurisdictions. As we see more customers come to us in Bermuda, we’re looking for more and more staff with a high level of IT skills to augment the team we already have.“In the economy, we are seeing a lot of contraction, but because we are seeing a trend toward outsourcing in IT, we have to grow with it, so we are looking for talented IT staff.”More companies have sought outsourcing solutions for their IT services as tough economic conditions have forced them to seek ways to cut costs.A company building its own IT network would have to lay out capital on servers and equipment, Mr Branco said. Ignition could hook them up to the cloud for a monthly fee, thus offering an operating expenditure model, instead of one that involved spending capital upfront.But cost is not the only reason for the IT outsourcing trend, according to Mr Branco.“There are a lot of components to IT,” he said. “Say you’re an insurance company outsourcing to a company like Ignition. They want to deploy their IT staff to carry out work of strategic value, like working on insurance models. They don’t want them to spend their nine-to-five hours jiggling cables under people’s desks because their PCs aren’t working.“Outsourcing allows them to work on projects and us to concentrate on keeping their core infrastructure in order.”The “cloud” refers to internet-based resources that can allow software and data to be shared. Mr Branco has been building private clouds since 2005 when companies felt less comfortable about moving away from physical servers, he said. Now cloud-based managed IT services have become a mainstream product and demand is rising.Delano Seymour, one of the former Omni team who joined the Ignition operation last year, was another early cloud builder.Having a track record of experience in the managed services provider field gave them a competitive advantage over rivals who had come into the business more recently, Mr Branco argued.Mr Branco is upbeat about Ignition’s future and sees it expanding further internationally.“I see us growing with our customers,” Mr Branco said. “As we see companies that are based in Bermuda opening offices in places like Singapore or Malta, we will expand with them.“We now have a staff memThe company, which has about 5,000 users in 32 countries, is considering expanding its footprint in Asia, much of which is experiencing strong economic growth.For more information, go to the Ignition’s website at www.ignitionmsp.com