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

blog Computerworld has published a fascinating article about the cloud computing strategy of REA Group, which operates the realestate.com.au family of websites. What I find fascinating about the company’s strategy is that it’s not using just one type of cloud computing technologies to deliver services — it’s using several.

Computerworld writes:

“The company opted for a hybrid Cloud model with a mix of both private and public cloud to enable staff to push code through a single deployment pipeline.”

It looks like REA Group is using VMware’s vSphere platform for private cloud (or call it advanced virtualisation), coupled with Amazon’s Web Services public cloud. And it appears as if it’s all a single pipe.

Of course, things get even more complex when you realise that REA Group also uses Microsoft’s public cloud email platform, marketed in Australia through Telstra as T-Suite. That deal was announced in September 2010, representing the largest T-Suite deal since the platform was launched in Aprile 2009 — with some 750 seats.

All of this represents another example of what I’ve been talking about recently with the new types of complex cloud computing deployments we’re now seeing in Australia. This isn’t a case of REA Group picking one cloud computing strategy and going with it. It’s a case of using the right technology to match the right problem.

And it’s this kind of strategy which makes me proud of Australian IT departments, whenever I see it being used. Because I think in Australia, particularly, people are thinking a little bit more advanced in this area than they are in many other countries. The cloud computing debate here is increasingly more granular and focused on outcomes, and that’s a great thing.

Image credit: Robert Michie, royalty free

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

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

blog Queensland Health has become the latest Australian organisation to ditch Novell’s ageing GroupWise platform in favour of Microsoft Exchange. iTNews, which broke the news, writes:

“Queensland Health has revealed it will bring the first of at least 50,000 users onto an Exchange 2007 email system early next year.”

This all sounds good and proper. After all, a stack of organisations right around Australia are currently migrating off GroupWise and IBM’s Lotus Notes platform onto Microsoft Exchange, or in some cases, Google Apps.

But what I can’t work out is why Queensland Health would move to Exchange 2007. As I’ve previously explored, Exchange 2010 comes with a number of features which are attractive to organisations. Better storage management (a key issue with Exchange), an improved Outlook Web Access platform and more. And it was released to manufacturing in October 2009, so it’s not exactly cutting edge code.

It’s not precisely clear at this point, but I’ll ping Queensland Health to ask the question. I guess it’s not outside the bounds of possibilities that the organisation is simply following the ‘N-1′ approach to software upgrades. We’ve seen this before … notably when the Federal Parliament deployed Windows Vista just last year.

news National broadband provider iiNet this week claimed Telstra was being heavy-handed with its treatment of wholesale customers in its new South Brisbane fibre area, virtually forcing them into signing up to agreements with its terms or facing the prospect of having their customers in the region cut off from broadband.

Telstra has chosen to replace the copper connections to about 20,000 premises in the region as its South Brisbane telephone exchange — where the copper cables terminate — is being closed in order to make way for the new Queensland Children’s Hospital in the area. The region is one of the first in Australia to receive fibre services to the home — but is not part of the Federal Government’s flagship National Broadband Network project, although the long-term plan is for the infrastructure to become part of the NBN.

The first customers recently went live on the network — including customers of ISPs who had gained wholesale access to the network.

iiNet has previously expressed its dissatisfaction with how Telstra is handling the switch for wholesale customers, with the company’s chief executive Michael Malone complaining in mid-August that Telstra wasn’t offering a multi-cast distribution option for IPTV, despite doing so on its copper network, for example.

However, in a post on broadband forum Whirlpool yesterday, iiNet chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby went further. “iiNet has now signed a fibre schedule after a lengthy and difficult process with the incumbent,” he wrote. “Our new customer plans are being finalised and we expect to commence the migration of our customers in the next few weeks.”

“The agreement is unsatisfactory and is signed with the knowledge that we have no choice, given Telstra’s massive power and the option of ‘sign before we cut your customers off’.”

Dalby said iiNet hadn’t been able to secure ‘like for like’ services on the network. “Telstra simply refuses to our request for equivalent services to those available over the regulated copper,” he wrote. “Instead of a state-of-the-art fibre to the home service being built, we have a fibre network that won’t cater for products currently being delivered on 50 year old copper.”

The executive claimed iiNet’s contract with Telstra had been signed “under duress”, and said iiNet would continue to oppose what he described as ‘anti-competitive’ practices and seek a better solution. “This is a clear example as to why Telstra must never again be allowed to operate the national telecommunications infrastructure, it’s why the ACCC must be hard-nosed about the structural separation undertaking and why I will never recommend Telstra to anyone,” Dalby concluded.

Telstra’s wholesale division has been invited to respond to the comments, but has not yet done so.

In an interview several weeks ago, Telstra’s general manager of wholesale products, Graham Bate, said that the telco had originally planned to start migrations in March, but after feedback from telco customers, decided to defer the shift until August this year.

The product suite available over the telco’s copper network — including features such as multi-cast and naked DSL — has evolved over a lengthy time period over the past decade. Bates said at the time that Telstra viewed the rollout as “the perfect opportunity for the industry and Telstra to derive some learnings about fibre”. And with respect to the complete suite of services available over copper: “The challenge is for us to replicate in our fibre product, something which customers have implemented in their own network — something which we haven’t implemented in our own network previously.”

opinion/analysis
There’s two sides to this story — and to be honest, I sympathise with both in fairly equal measure.

In the context of the wider Telstra network, South Brisbane is a fairly small project for Telstra, and it’s not clear to what extent the telco will have to modify its existing internal systems (such as billing) to be able to deliver similar services on fibre as it currently does on copper. I’m sure iiNet would like to offer its customers the equivalent of naked DSL — fibre without a telephone line, for example — but Telstra doesn’t even offer that to its own customers on its copper network at the moment.

In addition, I’m not sure to what extent multi-cast, for example, has been worked out as a technology on fibre. What internal development would be required for Telstra to get this working in a similar way as it works on copper? We just don’t know.

However, iiNet also has a point. Telstra must not be allowed to use its new fibre development in South Brisbane to set extortionate terms with its wholesale customers (who are also, obviously, competitors with its retail division). Are the terms it’s setting with iiNet extortionate? It’s not clear, as obviously neither party will release the fine details of their contract, although the ACCC may be able to get a hold of that information.

However, iiNet has been a great deal less vocal than other ISPs such as Internode recently on the matter of Telstra pricing and terms. I can only assume that this means when iiNet does get vocal on the issue, it is serious about pushing for a solution. This kind of push has become fairly normal in the telecommunications industry over the past decade — Telstra tries for terms which are a little too far, other ISPs complain to the regulator, and then we end up with a fairly decent middle-ground solution after arbitration. Let’s hope South Brisbane turns out well — or at least makes some progress before it is eventually handed over to NBN Co ;)

Image credit: Dr Stephen Dann, Creative Commons

news The nation’s largest telco Telstra last week carried out the first copper to fibre customer migrations in its South Brisbane exchange area — including those of customers belonging to other ISPs — as it continues its project to replace its copper network in the region.

Telstra has chosen to replace the copper connections to about 20,000 premises in the region as its South Brisbane telephone exchange — where the copper cables terminate — is being closed in order to make way for the new Queensland Children’s Hospital in the area. The region is one of the first in Australia to receive fibre services to the home — but is not part of the Federal Governent’s flagship National Broadband Network project, although the long-term plan is for the infrastructure to become part of the NBN.

The telco said in a statement that last week three customers who had been using traditional fixed-line telephone services through its Wholesale Line Rental product (which other telcos use) had been migrated from copper services to the fibre. One of these customers was actually previously using Telstra as its retail provider, but migrated to another provider.

In addition, one customer using broadband through the telco’s Spectrum Sharing Service had been migrated to its Fibre Access Broadband product, which represented the first customer to use the FAB service — and the first mixed service, as they were using Telstra as their retail fixed line telephony provider, and another provider for broadband.

Overall there are about 20,000 customers in the region, with about a third of those (some 7,000) being customers of other providers which Telstra serves through its wholesale division. About 4,500 are accessing broadband through Telstra Wholesale’s unbundled local loop service (ULLS).

In a separate interview, the telco’s general manager of wholesale products, Graham Bate, said it had originally planned to start migrations in March, but after feedback from telco customers, decided to defer the shift until August this year. Customers in the area using the copper network will be progressively migrated to the fibre throughout the rest of this year.

At some points, as the network has been rolled out, Telstra has faced a few bumps in the road with respect to the fibre deployment, with ISP customers such as iiNet criticising the company for not providing exactly the same services on the new fibre as it had through its previous copper network — such as naked DSL and multi-cast IPTV broadcasting.

Over the past decade, the product suite which Telstra Wholesale offers and the processes by which other telcos connect to its network have become increasingly refined, due to both sides working together on the matter, as well as dispute resolution processes through regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

However, it’s only over the past several years that fibre rollouts have been hitting Australian residences, primarily in greenfield development zones and early NBN rollout areas.

Bate said the rollout was “the perfect opportunity for the industry and Telstra to derive some learnings about fibre”. And with respect to the complete suite of services available over copper: “The challenge is for us to replicate in our fibre product, something which customers have implemented in their own network — something which we haven’t implemented in our own network previously,” he said.

opinion/analysis
Ah, the love/hate relationship between Telstra and the clutch of ISPs which it both services (through its wholesale division) and competes with (through its retail arm). Enough ink to float a yacht on has been wasted on the ins and outs of this complex dance over the past decade — and I’m sure that much and more will be used up in pixels on computer screens over the next.

To be honest, I think Telstra has done quite a good job with its South Brisbane fibre migration. Sure, there has been the odd complaint from ISPs, and I’d personally still like to see a service similar to naked DSL implemented (where you don’t have to pay for a telephone line on the side), but it’s also true that such things only evolved on the copper network after years of work on both sides anyway, and that even NBN Co itself is requiring customers sign up to buy a telephone line as well as a broadband service. While Telstra’s fibre offering isn’t perfect, it’s hard to argue that it’s not standard.

The South Brisbane fibre upgrade was always a bit of a bastard child — born halfway between Telstra’s copper past and the nationwide NBN fibre rollout which is designed to replace it. However, I don’t think going through the process has been a bad one, for either Telstra or its ISP customers. The feedback I have gotten from network engineers is that there is quite a lot involved in rolling out fibre — especially in such a mass rollout — and both Telstra and the industry would have, as Bate points out, learned a lot through this one.

Image credit: Clix, 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

Perth’s Curtin University has flagged plans to deploy Microsoft’s Office 365 software as a service productivity suite, in one of the first major known local implications of the technology and ahead of what is expected to be a substantial push by Microsoft of the service in Australia.

The university’s chief information officer Peter Nikoletatos first flagged the shift on his Twitter account several days ago, noting the migration was “underway”, however iTNews has also posted a more extensive account of the upgrade.

Nikoletatos noted the project was being led by the institution’s director of IT infrastructure Kevin Manning, as well as director of the project management office for the university’s IT division, Janice Cowan. Microsoft partner Dimension Data is also assisting with the migration, with Nikoletatos noting he wanted to acknowledge the company’s work in assisting with the preparation to shift the uni to Office 365. “Great team to work with!” the CIO wrote.

Its most recent figures published in 2009 show that Curtin is one of Australia’s largest universities, with a student base of almost 45,000, and staff numbers in excess of 3,400. The institution also has some nine different campuses. It migrated students to Microsoft’s hosted Live@EDU email platform (and off Sun’s iPlanet solution) back in late 2009, in a shift that affected about 192,000 students and alumni.
At the time, Nikoletatos was considering using Microsoft’s hosted email platform for staff as well.

The news comes as Microsoft is expected to launch Office 365 formally in Australia next week, in partnership with Telstra, which has acted as the main local presence for a number of Microsoft hosted software solutions in Australia over the past several years, re-branding Redmond’s software as a service platform under its T-Suite banner.

Journalists have been invited to a Sydney event hosted by Oscar Trimboli, the director of Microsoft Australia’s Information Worker division, as well as several Telstra executives. “Join us for news about Office 365 and hear how Microsoft and Telstra’s customers and partners, small and large, are using Office 365 to run their businesses better,” the event invite states.

Office 365 represents the evolution of Microsoft’s online services into a single proposition, unifying the company’s previous Business Productivity Online Suite and other offerings together into a single online brand and going up against other rival online suites such as Google’s Apps platform. A number of major Australian organisations — such as Coca-Cola Amatil — have shifted to the BPOS platform over the past several years.

Image credit: Curtin University

Westpac Banking Corporation, one of Australia’s largest users of IBM’s besieged Lotus Notes/Domino ecosystem, has finally confirmed it is ready to dump the platform in favour of Microsoft’s rival Outlook/Exchange system, in a move which constitutes the latest nail in the coffin for Notes in Australia.

The bank has been a Lotus user for more than a decade, backed by its lengthy comprehensive technology outsourcing agreement with IBM. But despite renewing its vows with Big Blue for a further five years last November, Westpac today confirmed it had filed divorce papers with its troubled email platform.

“Westpac is currently reviewing its email requirements,” a bank spokesperson said in a brief statement this afternoon, “and looking forward to migrating all Westpac staff to Microsoft Outlook.” The bank could not confirm any further details, but people with knowledge of the situation said it intended to migrate to the latest version of Microsoft’s platform — Exchange 2010 — over the next 18 months with the support of both existing partner IBM and Japanese IT services giant Fujitsu.

The move will constitute one of the largest Lotus to Exchange migrations in Australia’s history, as the bank has some 39,000 staff — dwarfing even the shift by Qantas in 2010 of its 20,000 staff to Exchange, and other rollouts such as the ones conducted by financial services giant AMP and Coca-Cola Amatil.

It is not known to what extent Westpac uses Notes’ broader functions in its operations beyond email. Many organisations who have been using the platform for years, as Westpac has, have taken advantage internally of the all-encompassing development environment which Notes provides. It can be a complex exercise for much of that functionality to be migrated onto Microsoft’s platform — often involving the use of the software giant’s SharePoint collaboration portal, for example.

Some organisations are still happy with Lotus, however — such as Australian youth charity BoysTown, which has remained with Notes/Domino and even upgraded the platform, citing the extensibility of IBM’s solution compared with that of rivals.

The next major known shift from Lotus Notes/Domino to Exchange will likely take place at new super-agency the Department of Human Services, which in June last year revealed it was likely to end the long-running relationship which some of its component agencies have had for years with Notes, as part of its massive technology consolidation — which recently received a funding boost worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the Federal Budget.

Various agencies to be consolidated — especially Centrelink and Medicare Australia — have used the ailing Notes platform for years. But in an interview last year, the department’s technology chief John Wadeson said it was likely that the new super-department would standardise on Exchange.

“I couldn’t say that it was set in stone, but we are at this minute certainly looking at moving to a Microsoft platform in that layer,” he said.

Opinions differ vastly between technology sector workers about the merits of the two platforms, with many preferring either one — or even Google’s Apps suite. However, common reasons cited by chief information officers for the ongoing migrations from Notes include the belief that it doesn’t support third-party devices such as mobile phones as well, and the powerful integration between Outlook/Exchange and the rest of Microsoft’s enterprise software stack and unified communications platforms built by vendors like Cisco (which Westpac also uses).

Image credit: Winam, Creative Commons