The share registry bureau service is a specialised industry in which Computershare is the clear market leader. Computershare's SCRIP system provides computer bureau services to professional share registrars who in turn service corporate clients who maintain their own share registry.
Over the past year we have focussed on bringing about improvements in both the capacity and availability of our system. The adoption of vigorous quality and change control procedures have resulted in an uptime on the system of 99.7% (excluding scheduled downtimes).
At the same time we have also significantly increased our capacity by upgrading CPU memory and improving the bandwidth of the I/O sub-system. These upgrades were achieved with minimal impact on Computershare's clients and have resulted in an infrastructure that is capable of handling in the region of 20 million holders (double the current level) with the simple addition of more disks.
These upgrades have been structured to facilitate further expansion beyond these specifications by enabling us to add additional hardware to the current configuration without causing any disruption to our live services.
The large number of users and their geographical spread throughout Australia, together with our sites in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, combine to make it imperative that we have a robust and reliable communication network.
In this context, we have established an international corporate network using the latest technologies. This network is based on Telstra's Global One Frame Relay service and will provide Computershare and its clients with a network infrastructure that will meet our international communication requirements as well as the increased communication needs of Computershare Cosmos. Our international offices in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and our large registry clients have already been upgraded to this network.
Full disaster recovery procedures have been in place for some time now, utilising our established and operational hot-site.
This year has been both significant and rewarding for our bureau business. During the course of the year our major clients were awarded the maintenance and management of the share registers for the recent two demutualisations and in both cases we worked in close liaison with our clients to ensure a smooth and trouble-free transition. Our offices in New Zealand and London were also able to provide our clients with on-site support during the critical early stages of both de-mutualisations.
Last year we reported that BHP had elected to become a direct corporate client. Computershare set up a project team dedicated to this significant conversion. The combined teams of BHP and Computershare worked closely together throughout the year and the final transition of this register was achieved on schedule and without any disruption to the management of the share registry.
The addition of these registers has contributed to a 36% increase in security holders from 7.2 million at 30 June 1996 to 9.8 million as at 30 June 1997.