Super funds close to dumping $250m IT revamp

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If you have even a skin deep awareness of the structure of Australia’s superannuation industry, you’ll be aware that much of the underlying infrastructure used by many of the nation’s major funds is provided by a centralised group, Superpartners. One of the group’s main projects in recent years has been to dramatically update and modernise its IT platform — its version of a core banking platform overhaul. Unfortunately, the $250 million project has not precisely been going well.

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Tony Abbott still clinging onto the hallowed Blackberry

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For many politicians, the Blackberry would have been their first real experience of a smartphone that did much more than telephone calls and SMS. Times have changed, but some offices in Parliament House change slower than others.

Abbott thinks coding is a waste of time but Wyatt Roy still dragged him...

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In which Tony Abbott attends Startup Weekend Brisbane, flanked by LNP MPs Wyatt Roy and Teresa Gambaro.

Postponement

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In which Renai unfortunately calls in sick just days after Delimiter re-launches.

Aussie software firm Marketplacer grabs $10m

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It used to be that the most that early stage Australian software companies could pick up in capital raisings was a few hundred thousand to a couple of million. Complaints about the impossibility of raising a decent amount of venture capital were constant and loud. Wow. How times have changed over the past few years. Today's piece of evidence demonstrates that money is truly flowing in the streets for Australia's growing cadre of technology firms.

Kotaku alleges abuse, gross staff neglect at retailer EB Games

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In which Kotaku alleges an odious culture of gross staff neglect and out and out abuse at national retailer EB Games.

VCs want Govt help getting super funds into the water

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Should the Federal Government consider underwriting the management fees of venture capital firms to attract large-scale institutional investors like the superannuation funds?

Oops … Tesla enthusiast charges car on Qld windfarm

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Headline says it all, really. The future is here.

Gasp … Qld will fuel electric vehicle charging stations with solar

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It seems like it was only yesterday that a rebel Queensland resident was committing the heinous sin of charging his Tesla Model S electric vehicle (EV) using a windfarm up north. Well, today’s news is even more shocking — the Queensland Government itself has announced it plans to start deploying new EV fast-charging stations around the state, powered by solar energy. That’s right. Blasphemous. How dare they!

7:30 exposes Aussie Hacking Team industry

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It's not often we get a deep window into the inner workings of Australia's electronic spying operation, but this week the ABC's 7:30 program delivered just that in an expose on how the local industry is pitching solutions from the Hacking Team firm to Australian Government agencies.

Bronny Copter is here to save us from Bishop’s Choppergate

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Tired of reading article after article about how Speaker of the House of Representatives Bronwyn Bishop should resign? Bored at work on a Thursday afternoon and need some diversion while the boss isn’t looking at your screen? Bronny Copter — an online game in the style of Flappy Bird from Melbourne developer Ricky Sullivan — is here to save you.

Less talk, more action: Entrepreneur tells ‘Labor for Innovation’

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Not everyone in Australia's startup sector believes Labor has yet demonstrated it can walk the talk when it comes to the digital economy: Can these feel-good events actually translate into solid policy?

Four months later, data retention funding model still incomplete

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It turns out that four months after the legislation passed, the Government still hasn't quite worked out the funding model for its data retention package.

Google ploughs $1m into Australian tech education

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Good news from the Googleplex this morning. Google Australia has decided to take some of the hard-earned money that it's been piping through Singapore to avoid paying tax in Australia and decided to plough it back into directly funding the development of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) skills in Australia.

Legacy health software lands SA Govt in court

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In which the South Australian Government comes up with complex legal arguments as to why it should be able to continue to use a 1980's software package.

Sorry, ATO: The Senate hearts Bitcoin as a currency

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Those of you who follow the crypto-currency scene in Australia may remember that the Australian Taxation Office hasn't always treated the most popular type of crypto-currency, Bitcoin, the way that those involved in its trade would prefer. However, the long-running crypto-currency inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Economics may be about to disagree with the ATO.

Defence graduate allegedly leaked secret info to 4chan

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If you're a regular user of 4chan, then you're probably aware that the Internet board is notorious for the number of Internet subcultures and memes it has created. What you probably wouldn't expect to find on 4chan is classified Department of Defence documents.

Turnbull and Clare: Best of mates

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If you attended the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Melbourne over the weekend, you might have caught a most unusual sight: Australia's noble Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and his Shadow, Jason Clare, breaking bread together in a most congenial display of bipartisanship.

CSIRO + NICTA merger still not nailed down

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We can't imagine the staff morale at Australia's peak IT research group NICTA is fantastic at this point. The Federal Government cut all funding to the organisation in the 2014 Budget, the CSIRO merger plan to save the group has been in negotiations for six months, and even now the situation in terms of hundreds of redundancies continues to be unclear.

MyRepublic full of “bullshit”, says CommsDay publisher

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Your writer has been pretty supportive of the controversial comments made by MyRepublic chief executive Malcolm Rodrigues about the Coalition's version of the National Broadband Network. However, not everyone shares the same views. One very well-argued piece of detailed analysis comes from the founder of Communications Day, Grahame Lynch.

While the Coalition was tearing itself into marriage equality knots, Labor was partying with...

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Last night, while Coalition MPs debated marriage equality in a small room in Parliament House for six hours straight, tech-focused Labor MPs Jason Clare and Ed Husic flew to Melbourne and were partying on, Silicon Valley-style.

Islamic State leaks ADF personnel data

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If you've been following international news overnight, you're probably aware that Islamic State has released a large amount of data pertaining to US military personnel. This morning, the Federal Government confirmed that a number of Australian Defence personnel and one Victorian MP had had their details included as part of the leak.

Microsoft jacks up Aussie Azure cloud prices by 26 percent

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Personally, I'd suggest that 10 percent is a figure chief financial officers can understand in this context. But 26 percent is likely enough to raise more than a few eyebrows.

Aussie banks reject Apple Pay costs in Australia

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Keen to use your iPhone and/or Apple Watch to pay for goods and services at EFTPOS terminals around Australia? You're right out of luck, with Australia's major banks standing in the way of Apple's Pay service launching locally.

A quick update on Delimiter’s changing use of social media

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When I first started publishing Delimiter back in January 2010, the Internet was quite a bit simpler. Fast forward more than five years and things are obviously drastically different. The Internet is a much more active, dynamic, fluidly updated place, and Delimiter has changed with the times.

$145m project collapse: AFP fails to upgrade 18-year-old case management system

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As regular readers of Delimiter will know, Australia's police forces have not precisely covered themselves in glory when it comes to upgrading their ageing IT systems.

Simon Hackett is selling his original Tesla Roadster for a cool $150,000

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But don't worry, Hackett's not short of speed, even though he's selling his original ride. He actually has another Roadster still in Australia and one in California, as well as a Tesla Model S. The Carsales ad for the car states: "Owner has too many Roadsters; this one is surplus to requirements." It's a hard life for a multi-multi-millionaire.

Govt “determined” to stick “head deep in the sand” on tech policy, says Atlassian...

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Much has been written about the general lack of understanding which Australia's political sector has when it comes to setting good technology policy. But few have put it as bluntly as Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes did last week in an interview with Business Insider.

ATO wants cloud HR platform

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We're starting to see this kind of SaaS/cloud computing deployment in the Federal Government. It's a slow process, but each kind of 'safe' deployment such as this one -- with data and processes which could be considered non-mission-critical -- increases the comfort level of mega-agency chief information officers and secretaries regarding cloud computing. We're getting there.

IBM and Queensland squabble in court over Health payroll disaster

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Remember that massive, billion-dollar payroll IT systems disaster at Queensland Health? Remember how the prime contractor IBM disavowed all responsibility for it? And how the Queensland Government subsequently sued the company and banned IBM from any further work with its departments and agencies? Yeah, good times.

Turnbull loses Rupert Murdoch’s favour over ‘unaffordable’ $56 billion NBN

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Leaving the Member for Wentworth off Murdoch’s list at this point, taken together with the NewsCorp mogul’s sledge at the NBN, may be a signal indicating where Murdoch’s views on the subject of leadership lie.

Introducing a new Friday profile: Delimiter’s Friday CIO

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When I think about the people that I personally most admire in Australia's technology sector, my thoughts usually go first to those working in chief information officer, IT director and IT manager positions. It's for these reasons that I'm planning to start a new regular profile for Delimiter.

Politicians flood launch of #fintech hub Stone & Chalk

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blog Sydney-based financial technology startup hub Stone & Chalk launched last night to great fanfare, with a solid wedge of politicians from both major...

Ashley Madison hacker may be Australian, likes AC/DC

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Pioneering US security journalist Brian Krebs — who has broken a number of major hacking stories over the past several years — thinks he may have tracked down one of the Ashley Madison perpetrators. The kicker? He appears to be Australian and may be a fan of local supergroup AC/DC.

Dyson Heydon doesn’t have a PC … but he does have an iPhone 5

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You may recall how earlier this week it was revealed that Dyson Heydon, former High Court judge and now head of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, had admitted he did not use a computer at either of his offices and did not know how to send and receive emails. Well, the plot thickens.

UK Govt flies Aussie tech startups to London in open bid to nick Aussie...

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So it's come to this. Other first-world countries are pushing so hard to attract lucrative technology startups to their shores to grow their own digital economies that they are actually paying to fly Australian entrepreneurs overseas to check out the local scene.

Dallas Buyers Club won’t appeal piracy ruling, but may still seek large damages

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In essence, what we’re seeing here is that Dallas Buyers Club and Marque Lawyers have decided to more or less accept Justice Perram’s ruling, but may be seeking to reword their approach to alleged copyright infringers to still target them for facilitating uploading of content online (as occurs in a BitTorrent situation, for example), rather than merely targeting them for downloading material.

NSW Education SAP ERP project turning from bad into Queensland Health-style “complete disaster”

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Here at Delimiter we've been tracking the NSW Department of Education and Communities' long-running Learning Management and Business Reform project for quite a few years already. And the project just keeps on going from bad to worse, by all appearances.

Richard Branson tells Turnbull OneWeb satellites could save Australian broadband

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Just when you thought Australia's broadband scene couldn't get any more absurd, along comes something which breaks the mold yet again.

Agile, user-focused IT development getting results at NSW FaCs

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The Federal Government's Digital Transformation Office has been talking a lot recently about the need for more rapid technology development cycles in the public sector, but its' not the only home of innovation in government around Australia.

Tesla Powerwall to hit Australia first, in late 2015

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Reneweconomy reports that US car manufacturer and burgeoning battery giant Tesla is looking to launch its home and commercial battery storage solution Powerwall into Australia in late 2015, with retailers such as Canberra-based Reposit Power already going public with its plans to act as an integrator.

Fifield’s website goes down on first day as Comms Minister

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Spare a thought for Senator Mitch Fifield. Just as the new Communications Minister was being sworn in at Government House in Canberra this morning, his web developer was apparently knocking his website offline for maintenance.

Introducing Delimiter Membership

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This is just a quick post to let you know that today I introduced a new element to Delimiter — site membership. I want to tell you about it and how it will work.

Medibank Private dumps seven other telcos, keeps Telstra and … Skype?

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I've got a number of questions about this deal ... namely: How the hell was Medibank Private -- a huge corporation -- even using eight different telecommunications suppliers in 2015 to start with? Why has it taken the company so long to consolidate the numbers of suppliers down? And since when, as Telstra detailed in its media release, has Telstra been selling Skype for Business services (owned by Microsoft) as part of its service offering?

AFR camps out for days to get photo of secretive TPG billionaire David Teoh

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Always wondered what secretive TPG billionaire David Teoh looks like? Never been able to check out a photo of the executive? You're not alone. However, that changed this morning after the Financial Review published a photo of Teoh that a freelancer photographer had taken after camping out outside his house for days.

Banks dump accounts of Bitcoin firms

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Australia's growing cadre of Bitcoin trading companies have discovered that the mere nature of their business has been enough to get them blacklisted by Australia's major banks.

Salesforce.com is making in-roads into Australia’s banking sector again

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Cloud computing vendors such as Salesforce.com have had a bit of a difficult relationship with Australia's banking and financial services sector. This week from the company's Dreamforce conference in the US comes news that Salesforce.com is yet again making some headway.

TPG’s Teoh opens the FetchTV door for iiNet once again

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Remember how one of the first actions which TPG took upon acquiring its broadband rival iiNet was to dump the FetchTV Internet television product which iiNet and its subsidiary brand Internode had been such an evangelist for back in the early days? Well, that move, it turns out, may have been something more akin to a negotiating tactic.

Infrastructure Dept signs ASG for ICT services again

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If you were working in Federal Government ICT circles back in 2008, you may recall that the then-Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government signed a $30 million deal (PDF) with local IT services group ASP for a comprehensive range of services ranging from desktop support to servers, laptops, printers and more. Well, news arrived this week that the Department is so happy with ASG — after seven years — that it has re-signed the contract.

Watch Delimiter’s article on Turnbull read out in Parliament

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As you may remember, when Malcolm Turnbull seized the Prime Ministership from Tony Abbott two weeks ago, I took the chance to publish an examination of the Member for Wentworth’s history leading the Communications Portfolio over the past five years for the Coalition. What you may not have known is that it was also mentioned on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Another great Aussie IT company to go overseas? CSC makes offer for UXC

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I personally feel it would be a real shame to see UXC snapped up by CSC. UXC is a strong Australian business, with its Red Rock, Oxygen, Connect, Telsyte and other brands being very well-known in Australia. Of course, CSC would be likely to keep most of its staff intact. But the Australian IT services market would feel a lot less ... Australian without UXC existing on its own.

Following Atlassian, BigCommerce will also list in the US

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There is currently a great deal of debate and controversy out there surrounding the decision by Australian software giant Atlassian to go public through listing its shares on a US-based stock exchange rather than in Australia. Some successful Australian entrepreneurs, such as Freelancer chief executive Matt Barrie, have been trying to persuade Atlassian to list locally for years, in a move that they believe will help change the focus of Australia's financial markets towards the tech sector.

Wyatt Roy’s innovation policy hack day will be Saturday week in Sydney

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Remember how Assistant Minister for Innovation Wyatt Roy publicly discussed the possibility of holding an innovation policy ‘hackathon’ to generate new policy ideas to help develop Australia’s economy into an innovation powerhouse? Well it’s already organised, and it’ll be Saturday week in Sydney, with tech accelerator BlueChilli doing much of the organising.

DTO looking to create Govt cloud marketplace

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If you've been following public sector IT for a while, you're probably aware that Australia's Federal Government has not precisely set the world on fire when it comes to its adoption of cloud computing platforms. Most Government CIOs consider the cloud a little risky, both for control reasons, but also because of data sovereignty issues. However, much of that may change, if Malcolm Turnbull's Digital Transformation Office gets its way.

Turnbull wants whole Cabinet to use Slack

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We knew that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was a technophile, but I suspect many of us didn't quite appreciate how focused on technology the Member for Wentworth truly is.

Cisco hikes Australian prices by 13 percent

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It's not easy being a buyer of technology products and services in Australia at the moment. The continually sliding value of the Australian dollar means that vendor after vendor is hiking the Australian prices of their products. Australians are increasingly paying more Australian dollars for precisely the same product.

Lockheed Martin close to completing Defence private cloud build

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iTWire revealed late last week that Defence contractor Lockheed Martin is just now putting the finishing touches on private cloud infrastructure for the department, using hardware from storage giant NetApp.

Watch Steve Baxter interview Wyatt Roy about #policyhack

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By all accounts the innovation policy hackathon held by new Assistant Minister for Innovation Wyatt Roy in Sydney over the weekend went quite well.

Switkowski worried about “heroic” effort needed to meet NBN targets

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Some of you may recall that then-Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull was fond of using the word "heroic" with reference to the NBN company's rollout targets and revenue assumptions under the previous Labor Government, indicating that he did not believe they were realistic. With this in mind, we were surprised this week to read in the pages of the Financial Review that the NBN company's chair Ziggy Switkowski has chosen the same word to apply to the NBN's rollout plans for the next five years.

Vic Police to get computer hacking power

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Those with a close interest in electronic surveillance may recall that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was given new powers last year that would allow the agency to hack into computers remotely for investigation purposes -- and even break into the computers of completely innocent Australians on the way. Well, now they're not the only ones.

Outsourcer Salmat dumps Microsoft Office for Google Apps, Chromebooks

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Last month Macquarie University generated quite a lot of headlines when it confirmed it would ditch Google’s Gmail platform and migrate instead to Microsoft’s Office 365 ecosystem. Well, now the shoe is on the other foot, with CRN reporting that Australian marketing outsourcer Salmat is in the midst (with the assistance of Accenture-owned Cloud Sherpas) of removing Microsoft Office from its operations and deploying Google Apps with Chromebooks instead.

Police unions want $100m national case management IT system

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Police unions nationally have called for a mega-IT system to allow them to collaborate more effectively.

Qld Govt fires bureaucrats over OneSchool IT nightmare

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When major IT projects go wrong in government departments, often nobody loses their job. Public servants have significant tenure in their positions, and they're very difficult to fire -- even if it can be comprehensively demonstrated that millions of dollars have been wasted. However, in the unfolding case of the OneSchool IT systems glitch in Queensland, it appears the Queensland Government is taking the matter seriously enough that heads are rolling.

Three Australian corporate tablet case studies … and will the Surface boost adoption?

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CRN has come to the rescue and has published a series of three case studies on the topic of tablet deployments from a number of different organisations.

Telstra offshores 34 Tasmanian jobs

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Your writer can't imagine that it's easy working at Telstra. Although Australia's biggest telco has an extensive workforce with many career opportunities, it also conducts regularly redundancy rounds as part of its ongoing drive to become more efficient and cut costs.

Apple Pay to hit Australia by end of 2015

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Overnight in the US Apple revealed it is still planning on bring Apple Pay to Australia -- and the launch could happen sooner than you expect.

Julie Bishop wants to store Australian passports in “the cloud”

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With Malcolm Turnbull's ascension to the Prime Ministership, sometimes your writer feels as though the whole Federal Government has gone technology-mad. It's a good feeling -- so much is being discussed at high levels that the technology sector has been trying to get on the table for years -- but things are also getting deeply, deeply weird.

Women in IT: Govt action only part of the solution

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From my point of view, although this is an important policy debate, and I am glad that we are having this debate on Delimiter, I don’t personally want to weigh in too heavily into it. The reason is pretty basic: I am male, not female, and I don’t feel that it’s my place to set policy for women or to preach to women how they should engage with the IT sector.

Data Retention requests almost tripled in 2015

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Well, we knew Australia's law enforcement and government agencies were keen on accessing Australians' metadata, but until this week we didn't know quite how keen they were.

Square Peg launches Australia’s second $200m VC tech fund

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Honestly, sometimes it feels at the moment as though there is just a huge stack of pure cash money flowing in the streets for Australia’s technology startups. Several weeks ago the Queensland Government announced a $40 million co-investment fund for startups, last week Victoria followed with a $60 million effort, and of course who could forget the new $200 million fund unveiled by Blackbird Ventures in August. Well now there’s another $200 million fund targeting Australian technology startups.

Turnbull to restore some NICTA/Data61 funding a year after it was chopped

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According to Financial Review correspondent Phillip Coorey — currently travelling with now Prime Minister Turnbull on an extensive overseas trip stopping off at Germany — Turnbull is set to reinstate at least some of the funding chopped from NICTA.

NSW Police illegally hacks Facebook page

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In a court case last week, it emerged that the NSW Police Force has had a ... less than legal relationship with the Facebook account of an individual who had been making fun of police officers online by posting extremely poorly doctored images of police Photoshopped with other images.

Now banking data retention legislation is being developed

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It's not enough, it seems, for Australia's law enforcement agencies to have unwarranted access to our telecommunications metadata. Now they're going after metadata held by banks and other financial services companies as well.

[ad] Today’s Delimiter webinar has been postponed

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As you may recall, Delimiter was planning to hold a webinar this morning on transitioning to Office 365. This is just a quick email to let you know that, due to events beyond our control, the webinar has been postponed for a couple of weeks. It's unfortunate -- I was looking forward to it, and we have some great content.

NBN revamps CVC pricing scheme

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As you may have seen last week, the NBN company announced that it would conduct a trial of revamped pricing on its CVC product -- the structure through which the NBN company actually charges retail ISPs for downloads over its network, rather than customer connections.

The AFR turns on Turnbull’s MTM over $800m Optus HFC issue

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Could the mainstream media tide be turning against Turnbull when it comes to the NBN? Andrew Bolt has already expressed his reservations. It will be interesting to see if the AFR continues in this line of criticism of the Prime Minister over his handling of Australia’s largest ever infrastructure project.

Teenage hacker evaded police and left Australia under own passport, now appears on national...

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Last week the ABC's flagship current affairs program 7:30 covered the somewhat extraordinary story of Dylan Wheeler, an Australian teenager. According to the program, Wheeler has not only been charged by Australian police on hacking offences, but he has also been highlighted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for his activities. None of this, however, appears to have stopped Wheeler from leaving Australia on his own passport or subsequently appearing on national television.

Delimiter needs you: Help convince Conroy to open up about tech policy

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In which I request the help of Delimiter's readership in convincing former Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to speak to me about technology policy.

ABC claims “massive” Chinese IT attack on Bureau of Meteorology supercomputer

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The ABC this morning reported that the weather boffins at the Bureau of Metorology had suffered a "massive" IT attack on its systems, including the supercomputer which it uses for weather forecasting, with the source reportedly being based in China.

Judge sides with IBM in Qld Health payroll lawsuit

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This week it appears as though Queensland's actions have blown up in its face again with respect to its botched payroll systems upgrade at Queensland Health.

NSW Cancer Council ditches desktop PCs, phones forever

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'Mobility' has been one of the hottest buzzwords in Australian IT departments for some time now. Smartphones, tablets, laptops -- and allowing users to access their corporate data wherever they feel is the most appropriate place and time and in the most appropriate format -- these are all the hallmarks of the new evolving mobility landscape inside major and minor organisations. However, few have taken it to the extremes that the NSW Cancer Council has.

Australian Craig Steven Wright may be the creator of Bitcoin, and a billionaire

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If Wired is to be believed, Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto may have been unmasked overnight. The magazine has presented a great deal of evidence in this article that Nakamoto is actually Craig Steven Wright, an Australian cryptology expert living in 'Eastern Australia'.

Gizmodo has been chasing people around Sydney that might be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto

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Gizmodo has revealed that it, too, has been tracking Craig Wright and his friend Dave Kleiman for some time regarding the claim that they may jointly be the creator of Bitcoin. The media outlet has gone as far as visiting people associated with Wright and Kleiman in Sydney and asking them for further information.

Police raid alleged Bitcoin founder’s home in Sydney: ATO investigation

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This afternoon, The Guardian reported that police had raided the home of alleged Bitcoin creator Craig Steven Wright's home in Sydney on the basis of an investigation by the Australian Taxation Office.

Delimiter Membership Christmas special: 15% off (limited stock of 30)

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I just wanted to publish a quick post to let readers know that we have just launched a brief Christmas discount special on Delimiter site Memberships. Normally they cost $129, but we're taking 15 percent off for a brief window this month, bringing the cost down to $109.65.

The ATO raided alleged Bitcoin ‘billionaire’ over a paltry few million dollars

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To your writer's mind, the amount of money the ATO is chasing from Wright severely diminishes the case that Wright is Nakamoto. If this is indeed true, there would be no need for the cryptologist to get involved in a legal case with the ATO over a handful of millions.

Lockheed Martin spin-off to create new IT services firm with giant Defence, ATO contracts

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From The Wall St Journal earlier this month comes confirmation that military equipment specialist Lockheed Martin still expects to sell or spin off the IT services business which the company has long had tacked on to its manufacturing operations.

Delimiter’s Membership Christmas special (15% off) is almost sold out: Get in quick

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Yesterday we launched a limited stock Christmas special for Delimiter Memberships, but it's almost sold out already.

Australia’s biggest ever global float: Atlassian worth US$5.8bn

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Great news from the US, where Australian software firm Atlassian has at long last started selling its shares on the NASDAQ, under the ticker TEAM. The Guardian reports that the share price of the company has already soared on its first day. The share sale apparently represents Australia's biggest ever share float on the international market.

Great example of how politics can destroy necessary IT projects

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To my mind, this situation reflects the perfect example of politics interfering with sensible IT project delivery.

Merry Christmas! And a quick update from Renai

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just a quick post to note that Delimiter will today enter a reduced publishing schedule that will last throughout the Christmas and New Year period.

In which a Microsoft fan ends his Apple iPhone experiment

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I always enjoy Strant's posts. He's primarily a Microsoft-focused technologist, but he has an open mind. And that can sometimes be a rarity in our idealistic industry.

Defence kicks off mammoth ERP transformation program

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Those of you who got too deep, too early into the silly season around Christmas time may have missed the fact that the Department of Defence has taken a strong step forward in the mammoth ERP consolidation program known as "Defence Insight".

Qld eHealth agency reportedly stands down CIO after just one month

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In mid-December 2015, the Department promoted the fact that it had appointed a new chief executive and chief information officer of eHealth Queensland -- the agency within the Department which is responsible for resolving the state's ongoing eHealth mess. Less than one month later, the executive has reportedly been stood down as part of an internal investigation.

Google and JB Hi-Fi cut Australian price of Nexus 5X, 6P by $100

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Google's Nexus 5 is now available with a $100 discount in the Australian market, with both the company itself and retailers such as JB Hi-Fi applying the discount.

New six monthly and concession Membership options, plus PayPal

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Along with our yearly $129 option, we now also offer a $75 six monthly option. In addition, I have also added a 20 percent discount coupon for full-time students or pensioners, which can be applied to either plan. I've also added PayPal as a payment option, alongside our existing secure credit card payments platform, Stripe.

Tech MPs Ed Husic + Wyatt Roy are engaged in a bipartisan beard conspiracy

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In their day jobs, Assistant Minister for Innovation Wyatt Roy and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Digital Innovation and Startups Ed Husic are supposed to be at each's necks, as they cover the same innovation portfolio from opposing sides of politics. But in practice the pair -- two of the most tech-focused MPs in Federal Parliament -- appear to be sometimes thinking along the same lines.

Federal Govt explicitly explores IT offshoring in landmark move

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If you have spent any time working in IT in Australia's public sector, you are probably aware that there is something of a taboo in government departments and agencies using offshored IT services such as are provided from countries such as India, as well as increasingly Malaysia, the Philippines and other countries. However, this may be about to change.

Communications Minister grows glorious beard over Christmas

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If there was ever any doubt about the manliness of Communications Minister Mitch Fifield, let that doubt be dispelled right now. This morning it was revealed that the Liberal Senator grew what Delimiter can only describe as a glorious beard over Christmas.

Windows XP virus takes down Royal Melbourne Hospital

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You would think, you would really think, that pretty much every organisation Australia-wide would have gotten the picture by now that Windows XP is an outdated platform and needs to be replaced. But sadly this is not the case. From Victoria comes the news that the Royal Melbourne Hospital has had its operations knocked offline by a Windows XP virus.

Report: Oracle may be dumping its Australian support centre

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Spend a lot of time calling Oracle's Australian support centre for those pesky database support enquiries? Well, if a report late last year and mutterings this week around the traps are any indication, you could shortly be speaking to someone in somewhere like Romania instead.

Turnbull’s DTO may take over governance of the Govt’s pathetic myGov site

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Those of you who run your own business and thus have had the unfortunate experience of being forced to interact with the Government's myGov website will be aware that the site is, to put it rather bluntly, something of a piece of crap.

Royal Melbourne Hospital still has not fixed its Windows XP virus problem

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As it turns out, two weeks on, the hospital still has not quite got control of the IT infection

“Grow a spine” and get off Windows XP: An epic “intervention”

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Perhaps one of the most irritating pieces of legacy software that is still kicking around is Microsoft's most famous operating system, Windows XP.

Sources claim Oracle has completely dumped its Australian support centre

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Delimiter has been contacted by several sources who have stated that The Register's report is accurate, and that Oracle has indeed completely offshored its Australian support centre in the past month.

Oracle CEO jets into Australia to reassure customers on support offshoring, flag huge sales...

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Fresh off the back of claims that Oracle has just dumped its entire Australian support operation, news has arrived from the Financial Review this week that global Oracle co-chief executive Mark Hurd has landed in Australia.

Watch/Check out the photos: Twitter Australia’s new HQ

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This morning Twitter Australia opened its new Australian headquarters in Sydney. The facility was opened by NSW Premier Mike Baird, and according to Twitter, has "a distinctly Australian flair", which includes meeting rooms named after Australian beaches, a "muted green and golden colour scheme", a "local beach design" and an open plan. Presumably they also have a fantastic expresso machine.

Telstra hires Turnbull’s sacked, foulmouthed MTM policy mastermind

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Those of you who've been around the traps for a while may recall the name of Stephen Ellis, a former advisor to Malcolm Turnbull

NSW Education Dept’s SAP-based billion-dollar LMBR system is still malfunctioning

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Those of you with an enduring interest in State Government IT projects will recall that Delimiter has covered the NSW Education Department's Learning Management and Business Reform (LMBR) project on many occasions.

Hospital’s Windows XP virus has spread into other facilities: Read the internal email

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Sounds like there is still quite a bit of work to do in nailing this one down, and making sure this kind of situation never happens again.

Now Toll dumps Google Apps rollout, reconsiders SAP plan

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Toll has reportedly stopped the rollout of a Google Apps deployment to its staff and is developing a new plan for its proposed SAP-based finance transformation.

Trojan takes down entire WA Parliament IT, phone system

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Bad news for the Western Australian Parliament, which, it appears, didn't have the most hardened IT security systems on earth. The ABC is reporting today that a "trojan virus" has knocked the Parliament's IT and telephone systems offline.

Solar Movie is the content industry’s first site blocking target

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As revealed by the Sydney Morning Herald and a number of other media this morning, the content industry's first target will be Solar Movie.

IBM’s Watson is reportedly expanding into Woodside’s desktops

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For most of the time that IBM's Watson artificial intelligence (for want of a better word) system has been around, I suspect many technology journalists such as myself have viewed the platform as something of a toy -- a pet project which Big Blue can use to demonstrate its deep technology research credentials and wow live quiz shows on television. But if this article by iTnews is any indication, Watson is moving past that into something rather more functional.

Federal Govt cloud computing use is exploding

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The Federal Government's adoption of cloud computing technologies has been quite a slow one. However, according to an article published this week by ZDNet, the situation may be drastically changing.

SA Govt follows WA, Qld away from ICT shared services

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One would hope that the Federal Government will be closely examining the experiences that states such as South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia have had with shared services, before it commits to its own shared services approach. Because to rush in haphazardly would be dangerous indeed.

Delimiter is giving away an Apple Watch!

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Delimiter is about to hold our first reader giveaway of the New Year! This time the prize will be an Apple Watch!

Even major banks still use archaic Excel spreadsheets for complex tasks

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I hope this Suncorp example can serve as a stimulus for other organisations to shift off Excel for these kinds of complex tasks as well.

Defence brings massive IT services deal back to the market

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The tender was put on ice some two years ago, as it was undertaking several other major IT purchasing efforts at the same time. However, iTnews reported today that the contract had been brought back.

“Pure noise”: The backlash against Slack begins

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Recently I've begun to detect a wave of dissent against Slack. The platform opened up a great deal of communication and collaboration options for corporations ... but at the same time, it has also created yet another distraction into our modern workplace. It may end up creating as many problems as it solves.

Deakin Uni first in Australia to get Cisco’s new SDN gear

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I'm attending Cisco Live in Melbourne this week, and I have to say that while there is a lot of marketing hype out there about software-defined networking and the kinds of complex network/app/processing integration that Cisco is hyping up, there is also a lot of real-world activity building out there with respect to this new paradigm.

Cisco is quite obsessed with Apple Macs at Cisco Live

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Walking around Cisco Live in Melbourne over the past several days, it is quite hard to escape the fact that Cisco appears a little more ... obsessed with Apple iMacs and MacBooks than one would expect.

NBN staff nickname for HFC upgrade is “Operation Clusterfuck”, says Conroy

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According to Labor Senator Stephen Conroy, even the NBN company's own staff have their doubts about the upgrade project.

There is a cold war going on between Govt CMS platforms

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The new kids on the block may do well to remember that the DTO has only been around for a very short period of time, and could easily be deleted again by a hostile Federal Cabinet during tough budget times. The folks who set up GovCMS paved the way for an agency like the DTO to do great things.

Stephen Conroy plays Candy Crush on his iPad during Question Time

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It is Conroy's habit to play Candy Crush on his iPad instead of doing, you know ... actual work.

Interesting thoughts on IT outsourcing in the cloud era

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It's now been several years since cloud computing became mainstream in Australia. Small businesses are using it. Major corporations such as Australia's largest banks and insurers are using it. And even the public sector has started using it. With this breadth of adoption has also come a deepening of our understanding of how large organisations should use cloud computing.

WA public transport agency downed by hack attempt

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It appears that IT staff at Western Australia's Public Transport Authority had a rather different kind of weekend: One in which they descended into the hell of trying to clean out hackers from their IT systems.

auDA dumps CEO Chris Disspain after 16 years … but why?

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What I can't understand at this point is why the auDA board itself would turf Disspain from the position he has done an admirable job in. Was it a personality conflict? A professional disagreement of opinion? The statement says auDA is looking for "new leadership", but isn't the essence of auDA that it needs to remain stable -- something which Disspain has certainly been able to deliver to the organisation?

“Waste of money”: Sydney Grammar School bans laptops in class

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According to at least one school, these new-fangled devices are a "waste of money" and should be banned.

Announcing the winner of Delimiter’s iPad mini draw!

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I'm pleased to announce that the winner is Nicholas, an account manager from WA. The iPad mini 4 (Nicholas picked the gold colour) has been dispatched and should arrive shortly. Congrats!

ISP and content industries ask Govt to place piracy code on ice

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Remember that pesky Internet piracy industry code? The one that Attorney-General George Brandis and then-Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull asked the ISP and content industries to develop, on pain of having one developed for them? Well, it appears as though the code has more or less been permanently shelved at this point.

Now Qld Govt has to pay IBM’s costs in failed litigation

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Things are not going well for the Queensland Government in its lawsuit against IBM over the incredibly botched payroll systems upgrade project at Queensland Health.

The plot thickens in CBA/ServiceMesh IT bribery scandal

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There have been a series of new revelations in the Commonwealth Bank's IT bribery scandal over the past several days.

Investigation reveals significant problems in Defence’s Telstra deal

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In April 2013, the Department of Defence signed a massive new contract with Telstra. With a value of $1.1 billion, the deal was one of the largest telecommunications services contracts signed by any customer organisation in Australia. However, as iTnews reports today, the deal is suffering significant problems.

Victoria Police … plastering over underlying IT disasters with sexy gear?

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The boys in blue are in line, apparently, for hot new gadgets such as body worn cameras, tablets and more, in an effort to modernise the force. Not mentioned, of course, are the significant problems which Victoria Police faces with fundamental IT service delivery.

Farce: WA Health can’t manage to find a CIO after six years

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Every major organisation in Australia needs a senior executive to hold its top technology role. The minute you abandon that concept, is the minute you invite the kind of IT disasters and cost blow-outs that are already rife within Australia's state-based public sector.

Woodside connects 200k IoT sensors to Amazon

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There are some fascinating case studies coming out of Amazon Web Service's Summit in Sydney this week. One of the ones that we found the most interesting was a story regarding resources giant Woodside, which has conducted one of the largest Internet of Things projects we've seen yet in Australia.

Worst of the worst: Send us all your FTTN node photos

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Right around Australia, right now, the NBN company and its contractor are deploying thousands upon thousands of brand Fibre to the Node cabinets and micronodes. But sometimes it stuffs up and places them in terrible locations. So send us all your node photos and we'll publish the "worst of the worst".

NSW Govt to appoint yet another whole of government CIO

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I'll be the first to admit if -- and I'll be happy about it -- I am proven wrong. But all the evidence from the past shows that this appointment will ultimately amount to little.

Qantas’ Amazon website cloud move will save it $30m

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Over the past several years it has become a very common story to see major organisations shifting IT infrastructure, particularly their public-facing websites, into cloud computing facilities. Major banks have done it. Government departments have done it. And now, as has been outlined in a slew of articles over the past week, has Qantas -- well, at least it's in the throes of the migration.

They served the public interest

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I have one message to the NBN whistleblowers: You're not alone. We're with you. I, many Delimiter readers, many of your fellow NBN employees (past and present) and many Australians in general, are with you. Because you have honour. You have integrity. In a time of great darkness, you stood up for what was right and good. So remember this, and stay strong. Hold your head up high.

Telstra reportedly turfs CTO Nandlall

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I'm not sure what has precisely happened here, but it appears that there is more than one side to this story. While there may have been some irregularities with regard to Nandlall personally, it also appears that Telstra is scrapping the CTO role from its executive line-up. This isn't a surprise, given that the role has always been a bit nebulous. I'd encourage readers to keep an open mind as to what is going on here.

Victoria Police gives up trying to replace 25-year-old IT system

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I strongly urge the Victorian Government to address this issue as a matter of urgency. It will require not only a substantial funding increase for this area to Victoria Police, but also a number of senior appointments and strong Ministerial support to get this project moving and delivered.

Delimiter Membership Election special: 15% off (limited stock of 50)

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We've just launched a 15% discount Election Special on Delimiter Memberships, to make sure people don't miss out on all the great content we've got coming in over the next three weeks until the Federal Election.

Amazon UPS design at fault in Sydney outage

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As you may have noticed, Amazon Web Services is not precisely having a fantastic week in Australia. And now we know why and how.

Oracle Australia reportedly loses MD Ebbeck

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Larry Ellison's baby hasn't yet confirmed precisely what is going on here, but several outlets have this morning reported that Oracle Australia managing director Tim Ebbeck has resigned from his post and is currently on gardening leave.

New IT system causes chaos at Cairns Hospital

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There is absolutely no doubt that electronic health records system implementations have an extremely chequered history in Australia. Now a new catastrophe along these lines has appeared in Far North Queensland.

Delimiter Membership Election Special: Almost sold out

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I just wanted to post a quick update to let you know that the 15 percent off Delimiter Membership Election Special which we launched on Monday is progressing pretty quickly towards being sold out: Better get in quick if you want to take advantage of the discount!

Five years later, Salesforce is still promising an Australian datacentre

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Salesforce has been promising Australian customers for many years that it would start delivering some of its popular cloud offerings from a local datacentre for many years. So where is it?

Still in the doghouse: IBM’s Qld Govt ban very much alive

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You'd have to expect that IBM has been able to come in from the cold with the Queensland Government. However, according to iTnews, this is not the case.

Qld Health CIO reportedly poached by IBM

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Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Queensland Health CIO Colin McCririck has reportedly resigned for a job with IBM in the US.

$752m: NSW Education Dept’s SAP-based LMBR system doubles in cost

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Those of us who've been around the traps for a while know that it's extremely common for major IT projects to go over budget. 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent ... these are all normal amounts for a project's costs to blow out by, and of course delays to projects' delivery schedule are also common. However, what would you think of a project which doubled in cost over its lifetime?

For the tragedy of the NBN, Turnbull must go

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The NBN stands out strongly amidst a slew of other issues in this Federal Election. Because in ten years, in twenty years -- in fifty years -- most of those other issues will have ceased to matter. But the problems with the NBN will remain. The only way to deal with these problems is to cut them off at the source: And vote against Malcolm Turnbull.

ANZ Bank says no business case for core banking IT overhaul

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Right now, there is a 'halo' effect that surrounds CommBank's core banking overhaul project that gives strong credence to the business case for its first mover advantage in the core banking IT race. I'm not sure that ANZ really understands just how powerful this overall effect can be. If it did, I would suspect it would be quite worried indeed.

Delimiter is giving away another Apple Watch!

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Just a quick post to let you know that Delimiter is about to hold a new reader giveaway. Our previous Apple Watch giveaway was quite popular, so it feels like the right thing to do to do another :)

Announcing the winner of Delimiter’s Apple Watch draw!

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Today I'm pleased to announce that the winner is Allan, who works in supply chain and IT. The Apple Watch will be dispatched shortly. Congrats!

I’m leaving Delimiter

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Today I have some rather sudden and important news for you all. I am leaving Delimiter.

Delimiter has shut down

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Delimiter has now gone into cold storage.