blog An interesting article published here by the Courier-Mail just before Christmas lays out yet another IT-related headache being suffered at the moment by Queensland’s favourite technological minefield, Queensland Health. The newspaper tells a tale of woe and completely unsupported IT systems:

“The system, known as RecFind, is charged with storing high-level records, including correspondence between the Health Minister and director-general … A leaked memo details a litany of “very high risks” within the system, which is no longer compatible with modern software and would “most likely” fail if other IT systems such as email were upgraded beyond 2003 releases.”

Nothing would truly surprise me about Queensland Health at this point, following its disastrous and ongoing payroll issues. However, this article does highlight just how deep the rot goes. Australian governments urgently need to get a handle on their technology operations. A priority for Queensland Health should be examining who made the decision not to upgrade any of this software and holding them accountable for it. IT systems are not static; they need to be kept up to date, or else they will cause problems down the track.

This much, at least, should be obvious following several decades’ worth of global experience regarding the matter.

news The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s ‘Kaching’ mobile payments app has been approved by Apple and is now available through the company’s iOS App Store, the bank said this afternoon.

Kaching is a new combination smartphone application and associated hardware accessory that allows customers to make quick payments from their mobile phone to anyone with an email address, phone number or Facebook friendship, as well as to merchants via near field communications (NFC). Dubbed ‘Kaching’ to mimic the sound of a cash register draw closing, the app will initially launch on Apple’s iOS platform, although a version for Google’s rival Android operating system is in the works.

Customers who download Kaching will be required to complete a fairly straightforward registration process to use it, utilising their online NetBank login details. They will then select an account to both receive and make payments from. The app will then allow the user to make payments to “anyone” via an email address, phone number or Facebook friendship. Depending on the format selected for payment, the transaction would either take place instantly, or generate a unique code for delivery to the recipient, allowing them to access their payment online “at a convenient time”.

Because Apple’s iPhone line does not support the Near Field Communications standard (unlike a number of rival Android phones), NFC payments — or ‘tap to pay’ at merchant terminals supporting MasterCard’s PayPass standard — will take place through the addition of an iCarte case to customers’ iPhone handsets. The iCarte case is only compatible with iPhone 4 and 4S models, while Kaching will require iOS version 4.3. The iCarte case is to cost $54.95 (including postage) and is available to order through the Kaching app directly. The app will also allow customers to check their balances and transfer money between their accounts, in addition to allowing bills to be paid through the BPAY system.

David Lindberg, Executive General Manager Cards, Payments and Retail Strategy, said the arrival of Commbank Kaching heralded the beginning of “a new and exciting journey” in mobile payments and NFC technology. “Commonwealth Bank is delighted and proud to lead innovation in this space, delivering a world-first app that we believe will help to transform the industry,” said Lindberg in a statement this afternoon.

“The anticipation and appetite for this app has shown that Australia is one of the earliest adopting markets in the world. We’re confident Commbank Kaching will become the most popular banking app in Australiam” he added. Some 18,500 people had pre-registered to download Kaching when it became available. “This is just the first step in an evolving journey. Commonwealth Bank plans to roll out regular updates, with further enhancements and functionality of Commbank Kaching in the coming months.” Lindberg added.

Along with similar apps such as ANZ Bank’s goMoney system and Pollenizer’s Pygg, Kaching represents a growing interest in the use of payments technology in Australia which do not directly require users to directly transfer money into each others’ accounts; focusing much more on social networking credentials than financial account details.

Image credit: Still from a CBA video

news The Queensland-based Courier Mail newspaper revealed this week that the state’s Labor Government has spent $46 million on its whole of government email platform, despite it so far catering to just 2,000 accounts.

Ros Bates, LNP Shadow Minister for Information and Communication Technology called Labor’s ‘IDES’ (Identity, Directory and Email Services) program a prime example of Labor’s long-term waste and mismanagement. “The Bligh government’s pattern of monumental waste continues. The $23,000 cost per user is the price of a family car,” said Bates.

The Courier-Mail reported on Tuesday that only 2000 people had signed up to use the system, which actually needs 81,000 users to break even. Still, Simon Finn, Information and Communication Technology Minister reportedly said that the project is within budget, and that the number of users, which is rising every week, is slated to reach 53,000 by the end of 2013.

Bates said that a similar type of waste had occurred with the Health payroll debacle when Queensland Health had in effect declared themselves exempt from good project management disciplines, project governance and pragmatic business process reform. With no Minister having been held responsible, Bates said that costs and charges were being passed on to taxpayers who were already struggling with the Bligh government’s increasing costs of living.

“For every hundred thousand dollars wasted, there are frontline service people who cannot be employed in our communities, child safety, schools and hospitals; there are resources and equipment that cannot be purchased for operating theatres, classrooms, or youth detention centres,” stated Bates.

In June 2010, Queensland Auditor-General Glenn Poole had also slammed the handling of the three huge Queensland Government technology consolidation projects, including the state’s ICT Consolidation Program (ICTC), the IDES project and the Corporate Solutions Program. The IDES project had already been delayed in implementation from the first quarter of 2009 to August 2009, after its launch in July 2008, as reported in ZDNet.

Bates lambasted the Bligh government as being arrogant and careless about taxpayer funds after 20 years in power. She accused the government of having wasted numerous chances to get situations like these under control.

“The Minister’s comment that it doesn’t matter because ‘it’s all the Government’s money’ shows how out of touch this government has become,” Bates said. “It is not Government money, it’s taxpayer money and it’s part of the booming debt soaring toward $85 billion which has to be paid back through taxes and charges on hard strapped Queensland families. Labor got another chance last time. Not again. Not this time,” she added.

opinion/analysis
You would think — you would really think — that this was one project that the Queensland Government couldn’t easily stuff up. After all, what they are basically doing here is something fairly simple: Setting up a colossal Microsoft Exchange email platform so that individual government departments don’t have to manage their disparate email platforms themselves. But no, Queensland has managed to stuff even this up.

What this demonstrates, in my opinion, is two things. Firstly, as a number of noted Australian technology analysts have been saying for some time, the nation’s experiment with vast IT shared services projects has failed. These systems are best farmed out to external outsourcers; who are just much better placed to provide these kind of services.

Secondly, yes, I do believe that the Labor Government’s inability to keep any IT project on the rails — even one focused on basic infrastructure, as this one is — says somewhat about its ability to govern. I don’t know whether the LNP in Queensland could do any better, but I think it’s probably about time they were given a chance to. They certainly couldn’t do any worse when it comes to IT management.

Image credit: Theo Kleen, royalty free. Opinion/analysis by Renai LeMay

news Queensland’s Griffith University has become the latest educational institution to shift its staff email accounts into Google’s cloud, announcing yesterday that it would ditch IBM’s troubled Lotus Notes/Domino suite as it did so.

The university had previously shifted its 120,000 staff and alumni onto Google’s Apps platform in early 2010. However, up until now, the institution’s staff had still been using Lotus Notes/Domino, hosted on-premise in its own datacentre. According to a statement issued by the university last week, however, all that is about to change. Pilot groups of staff will move to Google Apps this month (October), the statement said, and most staff will move after the University’s examination period in November. All staff will be migrated by March 2012.

Google Apps will provide opportunities for staff and students to enjoy deeper, richer collaborations and tap into “the world’s latest communication innovations, according to Griffith’s pro vice chancellor (Information Services), Linda O’Brien.

“We were drawn to the fact Google shares similar characteristics to Griffith, with both organisations being innovative, youthful, fast moving, and committed to advancing knowledge — Griffith through its research and teaching, Google through making the world’s information and knowledge accessible,” O’Brien said. “Griffith is a leading research university that cares about its students and staff, so it makes sense to create an environment that places our staff and students in the same space, facilitating collaboration and learning.

“Our academics need the ability to collaborate globally, to communicate, share, and build strong research relationships if we are to advance knowledge and solve the world’s biggest problems. Google makes this borderless collaboration easy,” she said.

Griffith will give its staff access to the complete Google Apps suite, with 25GB of email storage space being unlocked and tools like Google’s Docs office suite, calendar and Talk collaboration suite being made available.

“We are very happy to see yet another leading University in Australia adopt Google Apps,” said Stuart McLean, Google’s Head of Enterprise, Australia and New Zealand. “Education cannot be restricted to the walls of a classroom, it is when ideas can be quickly expressed, shared and developed that learning takes a whole new meaning.” Google Partner Dialog IT will aid with the migration.

A number of major Australian educational institutions have migrated both their staff and students to Google Apps over the past several years. However, Microsoft has won more business than Google in the sector over that period, with its Live@EDU and Exchange platforms proving more attractive than Google Apps for most organisations.

Image credit: Robert Scoble, Creative Commons

blog The problems just keep coming for Victorian IT shared services agency CenITex. Today’s damning report into the beleagured organisation comes from The Age, which reports the organisation left thousands of government staffers without email and other IT systems for up to a week:

“To cope with last weeks problems, senior staff from the Department of Business have been assigned to work with CenITex, as well as staff from Fujitsu, the private company which once provided the services now supposed to be offered by the troubled agency.”

Further information is contained in a second article by The Age here. To be honest, nothing would really surprise us about CenITex these days, but we do have a fair degree of confidence in the organisation’s chief executive, Michael Vanderheide, who seemed a very capable sort when we interviewed him in his previous short-lived role as chief information officer at Victoria Police.

news The Tasmanian Government has embarked on one of Australia’s largest known email platform upgrades, recently revealing plans to shift some 40,000 email accounts to the latest version of Microsoft’s Exchange platform as part of a wider shake-up of its communications strategy.

“The Tasmanian Government (Government) represented by TMD, (a division of the Department of Premier and Cabinet) is seeking to enter into arrangements with a suitably qualified and experienced Contractor to lead the upgrade of the Connect Email Service infrastructure from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010, with the final infrastructure serving approximately 40,000 mailboxes,” the department said on its tendering website.

“TMD commissioned a high-level design from Microsoft Consultancy Services (Architecture and Design for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010), which details TMD’s current technical environment as well as the end-state environment that TMD is seeking assistance to develop and implement.”

It’s unclear why the Tasmanian Government is pursuing the upgrade, although Exchange 2010 offers users a number of advantages over the previous version, Exchange 2007, including an improved level of integration with Microsoft’s Office 2010 platform, as well as more robust disaster recovery and storage configurations, integration with cloud computing platforms, and even new rights management features around who can access which emails.

Exchange 2010 was released in October 2009. However, many Australian organisations are believed to be ‘sitting’ on Exchange 2007, which many see as offering a modern enough platform for most. Some organisations, for example Queensland Health, even see Exchange 2007 as being modern enough for new rollouts, with the organisation recently flagging plans to dump its existing GroupWise system for Exchange 2007.

Other major organisations known to have completed the upgrade include Melbourne’s Victoria University (which partnered with systems integrator Dimension Data on its rollout) and brewer Lion Nathan, which expected to save about $90,000 through reducing storage requirements through its own implementation.

Tasmania has also recently kicked off a number of other tendering initiatives in the communications space. It also recently commenced a search for a supplier to deliver it traditional telephony, ISDN and IP-based networking services from March next year, when its existing contracts end. And in November 2010, the state sough submissions from companies interested in providing it with broader voice and mobile telecommunications services.

Tasmania’s TMD division currently manages more than 25,000 government end point devices — usually telephones — through its TASINET managed fixed voice service — with the majority being delivered through Telstra’s CustomNet Spectrum platform.

There are other platforms which deliver voice services to the State Government as well — for example, IP telephony installations. Around 500 services use Microsoft’s Office Communications Server platform within departments such as DPC and the Department of Education corporate offices. In total, TMD services over 30,000 staff across more than 1,200 sites in the state in total (including TASINET). The State also has some 10,000 mobile phones, of which a number are delivered by Optus, as well as Telstra.

“The Government expects that in the future, voice and data services will be provided predominantly over a single, convered multi-service network — supported by a Government-owned IPv6 address allocation,” the state wrote in tendering documents at the time.

Know of an organisation engaged in a major email platform migration? Lotus Notes to Exchange? Groupwise to Gmail? Drop us a line through our anonymous tips box. Even we won’t know who you are.

Image credit: Sigurd Decroos, royalty free

news One of Australia’s most high-profile technology entrepreneurs has just hit the accelerate button on his latest startup ZeroMail, winning entry to a global startup accelerator program operated by virtualisation giant Citrix.

In January, Bart Jellema co-founded ZeroMail, a startup which has the ambitious aim of ‘fixing’ what many see as a broken email paradigm through a variety of methods — dealing with automatic notifications in a streamlined way, intelligently adding task management features to aid people using their inboxes as ‘to-do’ lists, and cleaning up the traditionally cluttered webmail interface.

Jellema is well-known in the Australian startup community courtesy of his strong focus on building its foundations through events, as well as the successful exit of his own startup Tjoos in March 2010. Web developer Katrin Suess has also been involved from the start of the project.

Up until now, it appears ZeroMail has been funded primarily out of Jellema’s own pocket. But in a statement yesterday, the entrepreneur revealed ZeroMail had been accepeted into Citrix’s Startup Accelerator program, a global investment operation which offers startups up to $400,000 in seed capital, access to its own products, technology and executive advice, and a home, if they want it, at its Silicon Valley facility.

The number of opportunities for Australian startups to raise capital at the moment are rapidly growing — with a number of startup accelerator programs launching locally and international investors rapidly throwing money at fast-growing Australian companies. The level of interest from venture capitalists also appears to be growing, and private equity firms have also invested in a number of large Australian technology companies recently.

However, Jellema said over email that he was attracted to Citrix’s program because the funding available from most providers in Australia was “too small” for ZeroMail. “We did pitch to some angels in Australia, but in the end Citrix came through. On the choice of a corporate incubator rather than a more independent organisation, Jellema said Citrix’s setup was designed to operate as an independent group.

“From all the incubators that I’m aware of I think the Citrix Startup Accelerator is the best option out there,” he said.

Jellema acknowledged it would be easy to invest in his own company himself, but said that entrepreneurs who did so might not be “critical” enough. “With external investors, just thinking it’s a great idea isn’t enough, you need to convince them,” he said. “This makes you think a lot harder about the viability of your business. Investors also bring more than just money, such as connections, an outside perspective, accountability, etc.”

Citrix’s investment in ZeroMail won’t close yet for another two to three weeks, Jellema said, and he wouldn’t immediately disclose how much the company was investing, but noted Citrix would fund startups to the tune of anywhere up to $400,000 via a convertible note structure.

Although the Silicon Valley facility is available to ZeroMail, Jellema noted he would keep his company in Sydney for now — although he noted he might go over to the San Francisco centre from time to time. One of the reasons for staying in Australia, Jellema added, was the Federal Government’s new research and development tax incentive, which could make Citrix’s investment quite a bit more valuable locally.

Some screenshots of ZeroMail:

opinion/analysis
If anyone had any doubt before, let that doubt now be dispelled. There are now a huge amount of funding opportunities available for Australian startups. The rapidity with which Jellema and ZeroMail have attracted the interest of global incubators such as Citrix’s Startup Accelerator program bears witness to that fact.

Sure, Jellema’s an experienced and successful entrepreneur who’s already had a valuable exit with his previous company Tjoos. But both as a company and as a product/service, ZeroMail also seems relatively immature at this point — certainly I haven’t seen much hype around it, and I don’t believe the company quite has a business model organised for it just yet.

What this investment by Citrix says is that the company is prepared to back a startup like ZeroMail which is taking a long-term view on solving one of the IT industry’s biggest headaches — out of control email inboxes — going up against the resources of massive incumbent providers like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to do so.

One last thing: For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be surprised if much of Citrix’s confidence in ZeroMail is based on the company’s awesome user interface for its email platform. You can view a demo online here. I’ve been playing around with it this morning, and ZeroMail reminds me of nothing so much as Google’s Gmail platform — but a bit more streamlined in places, and with Gmail’s smart spam handling intelligence extended to other areas such as newsletters and notifications from Facebook.

There is the gem of something awesome here — and I think that’s what Citrix has seen in ZeroMail. The IP which the company is building up would lend itself well to an acquisition by a larger company which wanted a great way to boost its email handling capabilities instantly — and I am pretty sure this is what Jellema is betting on long-term.

There’s always going to be value in creating something which reminds people of Gmail and seems to have much of the same style and functionality. It’s about time a smart startup realised that.

blog Fascinating news arrives from the Australian today that packaging company Visy has ditched its existing Microsoft email platform and migrated to Google Apps. The newspaper reports:

“Packaging giant Visy will migrate about 5,000 users to Google Apps, the internet giant’s productivity suite, as it replaces Microsoft enterprise-wide.”

There aren’t any direct quotes from Visy in the piece, and it appears to have been sourced on the sidelines of Salesforce.com’s giant Dreamforce conference in the US over the weekend. There is a strong collaboration going on right now in the enterprise between Salesforce.com and Google, as they don’t substantially compete, but do offer complementary software as a service products.

In addition, I haven’t been able to get in contact with anyone from Visy today for further information.

But what really interests me about the fact that Visy has chosen Google for its collaboration suite is the question of why the company didn’t go with Telstra’s version of Microsoft’s Office 365 offering instead.

Seasoned Australian cloud-watchers will remember that Visy was one of the first organisations to sign up to Telstra’s infrastructure as a service cloud offering back in mid-2009. Given Visy doesn’t appear to be worried about hosting its email in an offshore cloud, and taking into account the fact that it was already using Exchange in-house, one wonders why the company didn’t simply bolt on the Telstra Office 365 offering and be done with it.

Image credit: Robert Scoble, Creative CommonsImage credit:

Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has reportedly proposed a policy which would see every Australian allocated a limited email-like inbox to receive communications from governments, if the Coalition took power in the next election.

Computerworld today reported that Turnbull proposed the paper-saving system would see citizens use their name and date of birth to log into the system, which would be hosted on the australia.gov.au domain. The Liberal MP claimed the system could save millions — “if not billions” — over time.

Australian Governments are known to spend at least tens of millions of dollars each year communicating with citizens, through avenues such as the Australian Taxation Office, advertising services to promote initiatives such as the proposed tax on carbon emissions, drivers’ licence renewals and more. Increasingly, some of these communications are electronic — such as the online portal which allows businesses to report their financial details to the ATO on a regular basis. But many are still paper-based.

opinion/analysis
Turnbull has proposed an interesting idea here, which has merit. One unified government inbox, which could collect notifications from Federal, State and Local branches of government, would solve a lot of problems and cut costs.

However, as with university mailboxes, we suspect the first thing the Australian population would request is an option to be able to forward these messages straight on from their official government inbox to their personal email, or God forbid, Facebook accounts. It’s an interesting idea, Mr Turnbull. But Australia doesn’t need another email system. We just need to be able to register our email addresses somewhere central.

Image credit: Sigurd Decroos, royalty free

It was only five years ago that diversified Australian company Amalgamated Holdings (AHL) caused controversy in Australia’s IT sector by becoming one of the few major groups to dump Microsoft’s Outlook/Exchange platform in favour of IBM’s troubled Lotus Notes/Domino suite. But now the company has gone back to Microsoft.

In December 2006, AHL revealed it would ditch an Outlook/Exchange install which was being used by parts of its business, as part of a wider consolidation plan. At the time, the company said it made sense to standardise the entire company on Notes, given the fact that it had dedicated business applications running on the IBM suite, as well as the more standardised collaboration tools.

AHL operates a number of entertainment and leisure facilities around the country and overseas — over 50 hotels and resorts, some 60 movie cinemas, the Thredbo Alpine Resort and more. Back in 2006, some of its core businesses — for example, the Rydges Hotel chain — was using Notes, and over the next year or so the company would, with the assistance of systems integrator IMC Communications, extend that install to the rest of its operations.

However, in a media release issued this week, IMC revealed AHL had gone back to its Microsoft roots.

“Due to the increased use of new technologies such as iPhones, PDAs and other smartphone technology, it became imperative that AHL update its Lotus Notes email collaboration platform,” a case study published by IMC this week states.

“The business decided that it needed to migrate over 2,000 mailboxes and users from Lotus Notes to the Microsoft Exchange platform,to further enhance business functionality and take advantage of easier ways to connect staff and enable staff productivity.”

“AHL investigated the options of managing the migration to Microsoft Exchange in-house, however it was deemed that the cost, time, skills and resources required, were too large for the business to independently cover. The answer was to outsource the migration process to IT specialists.”

In the end, as a number of other large Australian organisations have recently done, AHL and IMC decided to shift the company’s collaboration system onto Microsoft’s hosted Business Productivity Online Suite.

The decision meant the company’s several thousand email accounts were transferred across to Microsoft’s BPOS server farm, which IMC noted was based in Hong Kong. Microsoft has never directly disclosed where Australian BPOS customers have their data hosted, but the company does not maintain a BPOS datacentre in Australia.

The company’s closest BPOS facility geographically is believed to be located in Singapore.

The news comes as Australian organisations are increasingly migrating off platforms such as Lotus Notes and Novell GroupWise, which were popular throughout the past several decades but have not been able to maintain their position in the market compared with Microsoft’s popular Outlook/Exchange ecosystem, which is now extending into cloud computing services.

Google’s Apps platform is currently seen as the main competitor to Microsoft’s offerings for new email system installations, but the search giant has so far failed to make major in-roads into either the financial or public sectors in Australia, despite building a strong presence in small business and firms with distributed or franchised operations.

Image credit: Aidy Spencer, Creative Commons