Tasmania upgrades to Exchange 2010

0
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.

IBM suffers “catastrophic failure” at health dept

11
The Federal Department of Health and Aging has accused technology giant IBM of causing a “catastrophic failure” in its IT systems stemming from an update to its storage environment that took down a number of services for a period of time this week.

Meanwhile, at Linux.conf.au …

10
This year, Linux.conf.au is really getting stuck into the important things. We refer you to a 1,120 word blog post by the organisation on the details of how they're ordering t-shirts for attendees.

Telstra launches Cisco’s Android tablet

6
The nation's largest telco Telstra late last week confirmed it had started offering Cisco's low-profile Cius Android tablet to customers as a complement to their corporate unified communications platforms.

CHOGM delegates greeted with Windows Vista

12
The IT services company which provided the technology infrastructure behind last week's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth has revealed most of the desktop PCs supplied for the session were running Microsoft's poorly received legacy platform Windows Vista.

When mainstream media covers cloud startups

38
Hilarious video above of a segment broadcast recently on Channel 10 news about Australian cloud computing startup OrionVM.

Kill software patents, says Pirate Party

In a call for an overhaul of the Innovation Patent System, Pirate Party Australia has made a submission to the Advisory Council on Intellectual Property (ACIP), challenging the inclusion of software in the current patent system.

TechOne’s CRM package a hit

Australian software vendor TechnologyOne this week revealed it had landed five major local deals in the last quarter for its customer relationship management (CRM) software. The vendor's solution is set to replace a rival Microsoft platform at one of these sites, and believes its CRM solution be in use by over 10,000 people in the near future.

The Westpac dialectic: IT outsourcing and warring narratives

28
At a certain point, corporate-speak becomes more than an abstraction. It becomes more than a useful metaphor. It becomes something which is simply undesirable in the honest relationship between an employer and and an employee. It becomes something which is all-too pervasive in our media-saturated society. It becomes ... spin.

PIPE founder, Gordon Bell invest in OrionVM

7
Australian cloud computing startup OrionVM today revealed it had taken angel investment capital from two high-profile technology sector luminaries: PIPE Networks co-founder Stephen Baxter and US engineer Gordon Bell, of Digital Equipment Corporation fame.

CIO gives top seven tips for cloud adoption

0
Excellent blog post here from Altium chief information officer Alan Perkins, who gives his top seven tips for the most important things to consider when moving enterprise IT services into the cloud.

Amazon hiring Sydney datacentre manager

5
Cloud computing giant Amazon has advertised more than a half dozen new positions as it ramps up its operations in Australia, including a role for a Sydney-based datacentre operations manager, which will re-kindle speculation the company wants to roll out infrastructure locally.

Village Roadshow goes cloud with Interactive, NetApp

Village Roadshow, the Melbourne-based company that has been entertaining Australians since 1954 with theme parks, resorts and attractions, cinemas, music and DVD distribution, has moved its data storage to the cloud. The Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) data centre model for Village Roadshow was built on NetApp hardware and provided by service provider Interactive to manage Village Roadshow’s substantial data growth.

An insider’s look at Aussie app development

8
Australian iOS and Android app development house Shifty Jelly has published an extensive and heart-felt blog post detailing what it's really like to be an app developer in the cold, hard smartphone/tablet world.

VIC GOVERNMENT IT IN FLAMES: $1.4 billion over budget, all projects late or failed

16
Victoria's Ombudsman has handed down one of the most damning assessments of public sector IT project governance in Australia's history, noting total cost over-runs of $1.44 billion, extensive delays and a general failure to actually deliver on stated aims in 10 major IT projects carried out by the state over the past half-decade.

CIO McKinnon steps back from Westpac top role

A new organisation structure at Westpac means Bob McKinnon, who directed the rebuilding of technology capability as its IT chief, is stepping back from a major role in the bank.

Vic IT bungles Labor’s fault, says Liberal Minister

Victorian Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips has lambasted the past Labor Government’s “incompetence, mismanagement and waste” in its handling of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects in the state.

Breaking Victoria’s IT fail cycle: What not to do

15
When almost every major IT project has broken its budget and its timeframe, and many have completely failed, after soaking up hundreds of millions of dollars of public money that could have been spent on health, education, cutting down crime or public transport, what happens now? Where does the Victorian State Governments and its technology workforce turn to?

Qld picks new whole of government CIO

2
The Queensland State Government has appointed a new whole of government chief information officer, with industry insiders naming former state CIO Peter Grant as the most likely candidate to have returned to the role.

Westpac appoints McKinnon lieutenant Whincup CIO

0
Top tier bank Westpac has appointed one of Bob McKinnon's top lieutenants, UK import Clive Whincup, to succeed him as chief information officer.

iiNet enters SMB cloud computing market

National broadband provider iiNet announced this week that its newest business product Business Cloud would enable small and medium businesses (SMBs) to develop privately hosted IT infrastructure. Business Cloud aims to spare customers the bother and expense of setting up and maintaining their own IT installations.

Mills slams ‘failed re-run’ Qld CIO appointment

Bruce Mills' Outsourcing Council Asia Pacific (OCAP) has severely criticised the Queensland State Government’s appointment last week of Peter Grant as the new whole-of-government Chief Information Officer.

Novell to boost “best product” SuSe in Australia

21
If you're after a good belly laugh, I recommend you check out CIO Magazine's interview here with the Australian sales director for Novell's SuSe Linux distribution.

Victorian high school deploys Android tablets

Students and staff of years 9–12 at Brighton Grammar School, Victoria will each be provided with an Acer Iconia Tab A500, from this week onwards, Acer revealed in a statement yesterday. The move is part of what is being publicised as the first large Android program for an Australian school.

Government reveals new IT services panel policy

The Australian Government’s Special Minister of State Gary Gray has announced a policy that will halve the number of IT panels servicing Government agencies.

Breaking Victoria’s IT fail cycle: First steps to take

11
With its IT governance reputation in tatters and all of its major projects late, over budget and in many cases having simply failed to deliver, what steps can the Victorian State Government take next to get things back on track? Where can it turn for inspiration?

Coalition slams computers for schools delays

The Coalition has heavily criticised the Federal Labor Government's Computers in Schools program, claiming the project is behind schedule to the tune of hundreds of thousands of machines.

Turnbull’s credit card details exposed in Stratfor hack

3
By now many of you know that a number of Australian organisations have had their credit card numbers compromised by a major hack of the US security intelligence firm Stratfor, with Australian victims including ANZ Bank, BHP, HSBC, Westpac, Woodside and so on. But did you know that Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull's security has also been compromised?

Qld Health’s IT woes just keep coming

4
An interesting article published here by the Courier-Mail just before Christmas lays out yet another IT-related headache being suffered at the moment by Queensland's favourite technological minefield, Queensland Health.

HP issues waffle statement on job cuts claim

10
Help us decipher HP's waffle.

E*Trade flooded with DDoS before Christmas

ANZ Bank's stockbroking service E*Trade was hit by a distributed denial of service attack in the lead-up to the 2011 Christmas season. After initial denials that the site had been attacked, the company sent its customers a letter informing them about the attack yesterday.

SAP loses Aussie MD Ebbeck

1
The long-serving leader of German software giant SAP's Australian business, Tim Ebbeck, has unexpectedly resigned, with the company currently conducting an executive search to find a replacement.

UTS creates new CIO role

0
The University of Technology, Sydney, has kicked off a hiring process for a newly created chief information officer position to help it with a substantial investment program associated with its campus located just outside the Sydney central business district.

New Qld CIO defends Govt IT debacles

2
Queensland's new whole of government chief information officer Peter Grant has defended the state's record on major IT projects in his first interview since taking the position in December last year.

Atlassian doubles staff, revenues in 18 months

0
Australian enterprise software group Atlassian overnight revealed it had approximately doubled its headcount and revenues over the past 18 months, as it rapidly expands its operations internationally on the back of the $60 million in venture capital investment it took in mid-2010.

iBooks textbooks? Sorry, not for Australia

15
Apple has limited access to the broad range of new educational textbooks announced through its iBookstore overnight to students in the US, locking Australians and those in other countries out of accessing the new content from publishers such as McGraw-Hill and Pearson.

Developers prefer Android, says survey

9
Google’s Android operating system has replaced Apple’s iOS in terms of importance to developers in the Asia-Pacific region in the last 12 months, according to a new survey by independent technology analysts Ovum. However, both still form the core of developer support and almost all developers support both platforms. The survey also reveals that there is increasing interest from developers in Blackberry OS and Microsoft’s Windows phone.

Suncorp picks Oracle to replace core

0
Tier two banking and insurance giant Suncorp has picked Oracle's next-generation banking platform to replace its aging Hogan core banking system, as the momentum around core banking replacement projects accelerates in Australia.

Farr, Boreham, Wood, Skellern win Australia Day honours

6
Former IBM Australia leader Glen Boreham, Defence chief information officer Greg Farr, Wotif.com founder Graeme Wood and former NICTA chief David Skellern have all picked up Australia Day honours this week for outstanding service to the nation.

Improving technology’s grades in Australian education

3
In Australian society, so much of the ongoing narrative about the current generation of students in our schools is focused around the different way that they understand and use technology; and so much of that narrative is focused around fear. But it doesn't need to be, and there's more than one side to the story.

Westpac still running IE6

14
iTNews has published an excellent article today detailing how almost all of Westpac's staff are still running Internet Explorer 6, and, presumably, Windows XP).

Govt still hasn’t certified Apple iOS devices

16
Apple's iPhone 3G was first released in Australia three and a half years ago, and its flagship iPad tablet 18 months ago. But the Federal Government still hasn't certified the devices for use in government agencies, despite having pledged to do so by September last year, and despite approving Research in Motion's unpopular rival, the BlackBerry PlayBook.

Defence hasn’t tested IBM contract since 1999

0
The Federal Department of Defence has revealed that it renewed a major IT hardware and software contract with IBM in late 2008 to the tune of $342 million, despite not having put the work out to public tender since 1999.

More major IT contracts up for grabs in SA

1
The South Australian State Government today revealed that it would shortly be kicking off a huge new round of IT purchasing initiatives which would affect a string of major whole of government contracts, as part of its long-running Future ICT Services Arrangements program.

Former US Govt CIO in Aussie speaking tour

4
Former US whole of government chief information officer Vivek Kundra will hit Australia over the next several weeks for a speaking tour that will include events for his new employer Salesforce.com, as well as the Australian Information Industry Association.

Wells quits Avaya for SaaS firm Workday

Australian IT industry stalwart Rob Wells has quit his post as the managing director of Avaya's Australian operations and will instead establish the local division of Software as a Service business software group Workday.

Australian Govt re-kindles office file format war

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The Federal Government's peak IT strategy group has issued a cautious updated appraisal of currently available office productivity suite file formats, in what appears to be an attempt to more fully explain its thinking about the merits of open standards such as OpenDocument versus more proprietary file formats promulgated by vendors like Microsoft.

New Qld Govt CIO a chance for ‘industry unity’

2
There is the chance for a fresh start in Queensland at the moment. And if the various CIOs, politicians and industry players can get behind that, perhaps the state can avoid having virtually every major whole of government technology project, and many others, savaged by its auditor-general in a few years' time when the next round of audits comes up.

Cloud could help fix Govt IT paradigm: Hodgkinson

Independent analyst firm Ovum said this week that developing and maintaining ICT capabilities constitutes an ongoing challenge for government agencies, with one of the organisation's Australian public sector specialists noting that the utilisation of cloud computing services could provide an edge in an “unsustainable game of ICT snakes and ladders being played by many government agencies”.

DiData lands Aussie customer for new cloud

0
Global IT services outfit Dimension Data has announced a new range of global cloud services, simultaneously revealing it has signed up the Australian Centre for Advanced Computing and Communications to use the platform.

Hacks focus CIOs on IT security

After the spate of high-profile hacking incidents in 2011, Australian CIOs and IT and security managers are taking no chances this year. According to new research by local analyst firm Telsyte, Australian enterprises will increase their security spending and change their information security strategies in 2012.

Leap year outages: Nostalgia for Y2K?

10
Call us nostalgic, but today's news that the Health Industry Claims and Payments Service (HICAPS) system owned by the National Australia bank was taken down by faulty programming associated with today's leap year date takes us back to the good old days of Year 2000 bugs.

Victoria Police lacks ability to deliver IT projects

In a broad-based investigation of the Victorian police force, the State Services Authority (SSA) has found that the organisation has no ability to deliver major IT projects.

Gillard’s PC hack surfaces in Stratfor leaks

9
A document published by Wikileaks on the public Internet appearing to be an internal briefing document from global intelligence firm Stratfor has mentioned the alleged security breach on Prime Minister Julia Gillard's parliamentary computer and has alleged that similar hack attacks have occurred before.

E-health record will be hacked, says AusCERT

One of Australia's top IT security organisations has warned that the Federal Government's flagship e-health records project is likely to be broken into, with Australians' medical and identity information to be used for fraud and other criminal activities.

Passion for Human Services: DHS CIO outlines vision

0
New Department of Human Services chief information officer Gary Sterrenberg gives a wide-ranging interview following his appointment and shows that the IT portfolio within DHS still has a powerful voice.

Executives carry more tech devices than ever

Corporate executives are increasingly carrying around multiple devices at work, new research from the University of Sydney has revealed.

Buzzword bingo

14
This afternoon I received the following media release from NEC Australia. However, unfortunately I have no idea what it means. Can anyone tell me? The problem appears to be the sheer number of buzzwords inserted into the one press release -- I can't tell the content from the buzzwords.

Microsoft Hyper-V wins huge Coles rollout

Microsoft has revealed that a virtualisation solution built on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Enterprise with Hyper-V technology has been implemented by retail giant Coles, at each of its 741 supermarkets, to tackle an aging, in-store fleet of server hardware.

Mapping out the NBN Co IT paradigm

1
When it comes to selecting IT platforms and partners to support its business mission, the Federal Government-owned National Broadband Network Company faces a somewhat unique set of problems and opportunities.

Companies forgoing corporate UC for Skype

9
Australian enterprises have started using more public telephony and softphone services as part of their voice and video communications mix, analyst firm Telsyte has found -- with commodity platforms like Skype winning out ahead of more premium enterprise IT-focused offerings from the likes of Cisco and Avaya.

Questions & answers: Oracle Australia MD Ian White

0
Long-serving Oracle Australia managing director Ian White is one of the most senior figures in Australia's technology industry, leading the local operations of a company which has been involved at some level in virtually every major Australian IT Project. In this interview, we asked White a series of questions about the company's local operations, the industry, and his time with the company.

Offshore cloud providers popular in Australia

A study has found that two-thirds of Australian enterprises which utilise cloud computing services, do so from offshore providers whose servers are located outside Australia rather than opting for a local provider.

Hudson reveals major virtual desktop rollout

0
If there is one enterprise IT trend which is taking off in Australia in a strong way right now, it's the move towards virtualisation on the desktop. Finally, enterprises are doing away with the ageing dedicated desktop PC rollout paradigm and replacing it with something which has the potential to be much more flexible and manageable.

Westpac delays shift off Lotus Notes

19
Remember in May 2011, when we broke the news that Westpac confirmed it would finally shift off IBM’s troubled Lotus Notes/Domino platform, in favour of an organisation wide shift to a hosted version of Microsoft Outlook/Exchange? Well, it appears that shift isn’t going too well.

RTFM: How to keep CIOs under control

10
Chief information officers never seem to understand. It doesn't matter if the servers are up or down -- that's a user problem. The real issue is whether they are configured properly in the first place. The system must be perfect, pristine. Users pollute that nirvana.

US slams Australia’s on-shore cloud fixation

The United States' global trade representative has strongly criticised a perceived preference on the part of large Australian organisations for hosting their data on-shore in Australia, claiming it created a significant trade barrier for US technology firms and was based on a misinterpretation of the US Patriot Act.

Questions & answers: Zendesk Australia

2
Michael Hansen is the Asia-Pacific managing director of software as a service firm Zendesk, which offers a Web 2.0-style hosted helpdesk solution. Zendesk has recently expanded strongly in Australia, hiring staff and announcing that it has 1,000 Australian customers. In this interview, we ask Hansen about the company's local expansion plans.

Lacking reality: Sysadmins slam “snooping” claims

22
Australia's peak representative body for systems administrators has taken an axe to claims published in the Sydney Morning Herald last week that a huge proportion of IT professionals abused their system access to illegitimately read others' email, calling for evidence to be presented to back the claim.

Web Directions hosts May mini-confs

Local conference outfit Web Directions, best known for its popular October conference of the same name, will host two smaller conferences for web professionals in May, this year: Web Directions Code, set for May 23rd and 24th in Melbourne, and State of Play on May 28th in Sydney.

At least two web browsers for every Australian desktop: It should be mandatory

50
In mid-2008, a government staffer at an employee town hall meeting being held by the US State Department got up to ask Secretary of State Hilary Clinton what appeared to be a rather unusual question for the venue. "Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox?" asked public affairs officer Jim Finkle.

Questions & answers: Microsoft Australia’s Dynamics chief on CRM

4
Thomas Gudman is Microsoft Australia's new director of its Dynamics Business. In this interview, Delimiter questions Gudman about Microsoft's Dynamics CRM business in Australia, which competes in the market for enterprise software with fellow industry titans like Oracle and Salesfore.com.

Adobe’s biennial tradition: 50% Aussie price hikes

41
Global software giant Adobe has continued a long-running tradition of extensively marking up its prices for the Australian market, revealing yesterday that locals would pay up to $1,400 more for the exact same software when they buy the new version 6 of its Creative Suite platform compared to residents of the United States.

NSW Police under fire again for pirating software

5
The long-running battle between enterprise IT vendor Micro Focus and NSW Police over the force's allegedly illegitimate use of millions of dollars worth of software hit headlines again this week, with the broadcast of a significant investigation into the matter by the 7:30 Report.

Telstra to cut Microsoft Office 365 prices

4
The nation's largest telco Telstra is reportedly planning to follow Microsoft's international lead and cut prices on the local version of Redmond's Office 365 cloud productivity suite, which Microsoft offers locally in partnership with the telco.

IT’S ON: Govt sets up IT price hike inquiry

37
Price-hiking technology vendors are set to be hauled before Australia's Parliament to justify their local markups, with Communications Minister Stephen Conroy confirming the Government will hold an official parliamentary inquiry into the issue, following a long-running campaign on the issue by Federal Labor MP Ed Husic.

Vic Govt to sack CenITex board

11
The Victorian Government is set to remove the board of troubled state IT shared services agency CenITex, according to a report published by Melbourne newspaper The Age late last week.

AGIMO needs a little Obama magic

8
It's hard to imagine AGIMO getting to the point where it has the direct support and interest of Australia's Prime Minister of the day in its efforts. But, if we've learnt anything from Vivek Kundra in the US, it's that this kind of executive-level buy-in is possible.

Offshore cloud an adoption barrier, finds KPMG

12
A research study partially funded by major offshore cloud computing vendors Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and Google has found that one of the major barriers stopping Australian organisations from migrating to cloud computing platforms is the lack of cloud infrastructure based in Australia, with legislation such as the US Patriot Act cited as key concerns with offshore hosting.

Qld Health payroll fix may cost $440m

27
The Australian newspaper has reported that the cost of fixing Queensland Health's botched payroll systems implementation may rise eventually to $440 million.

Local Govt groups abandon Yammer trials

40
According to a yarn by The Register this week, at least two Australian trials of corporate social networking tool Yammer in Australia have been recently abandoned.

Google Australia: ~$1bn in revenue, $74k in tax

49
Search giant Google has revealed it expects to pay just $74,000 in corporate income tax for the 2011 calendar year in Australia, off claimed local revenues of $201 million, despite the fact that industry estimates have continually pegged the search giant's Australian income at closer to $1 billion.

IT strategy to lead NSW from “the dark ages”

10
New South Wales' Coalition State Government late last week revealed a new and wide-ranging strategy which it said was slated to make it "the leader in ICT" when it came to public sector service delivery and the development of the state's technology sector as a whole.

Vendors unimpressed by IT price hike inquiry

30
A number of global technology vendors likely to be hauled before Australia's Parliament to justify their local price markups have grudgingly and briefly signalled their acceptance of the proceedings and willingness to participate, although some have completely refused to comment on the issue.

Why do Australians pay more for Office 365?

12
A great analysis piece was published on local cloud computing media outlet BoxFreeIT last month on why Australians pay more for Microsoft's Office 365 software as a service suite.

Aussie non-profits adopt Office 365 en-masse

5
Non-profit Australian organisations such as charities are adopting Microsoft's Office 365 Software as a Service platform in large numbers, according to non-profit technology enablement group Infoxchange, which has recently helped 20 such organisations shift into Microsoft's cloud.

Two good Australian CIO interviews

0
There have been a couple of good interviews with Australian chief information officers done by various media outlets over the past couple of days -- good enough that we thought them worth highlighting to readers on Delimiter.

NSW finalises colossal datacentre consolidation

10
The New South Wales State Government this week announced the Leighton subsidiary Metronode as the winner of its long-running and wide-ranging datacentre overhaul project, with the company to construct two new substantial facilities which will allow the state to consolidate its IT operations drastically.

Victoria dumps HealthSMART e-health project

15
The Victorian State Government has reportedly decided to walk away from its troubled central electronic health project HealthSMART, which has reached only a limited number of its goals over the past decade since it was initiated, despite soaking up several hundred million dollars worth of government funding.

The ABC didn’t sack Bitcoin miner

27
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation didn't fire an un-named IT worker who attempted to use the broadcaster's vast server infrastructure to make himself a fortune through the Bitcoin virtual currency system, it has emerged, with the employee merely being disciplined and having their access to certain IT systems restricted.

Bridgestone picks Lumias for smartphone fleet

6
The Australian division of tyre manufacturer Bridgestone has picked Nokia's Windows Phone7-based Lumia 800 smartphone as its platform of choice for its corporate smartphone fleet, with the Finnish company beating rival offerings from the likes of Research in Motion, Apple and Google to the work.

HP layoffs likely to hit Australia

1
Technology giant HP this morning said it expected its massive global job cuts -- which are expected to see some 27,000 employees exit the company -- to affect all of its regions across the world, with the implication that Australia will not be left off the list of locations to receive retrenchment targets.

The Suncorp pitch: Core banking overhaul matters

0
Tier two banking and insurance giant Suncorp has started talking up the benefits of its Oracle-based core banking platform overhaul to the financial markets, following rival the Commonwealth Bank in arguing that its own modernisation and simplification program will bring significant business benefits that will affect its customers and its bottom line.

CommBank ditches softphone strategy for smartphones

19
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has confirmed plans to substantially modify its high-profile softphone-based unified communications strategy recently implemented at its flagship Commonwealth Bank Place facility in Sydney, turning instead to a mass smartphone deployment as its replacement.

CSIRO still running Windows 98, NT

19
In an otherwise unrelated article on the organisation's adoption of Internet Protocol version 6, an article published by ZDNet.com.au yesterday revealed that Australia's peak scientific research agency was still running some copies of Windows 98 and NT4.

“Abomination”: Qld Health payroll needs $837m more

15
A KMPG audit into Queensland Health's payroll disaster has found the project has already cost $417 million and will need some $837 million to fix over the next five years, in a finding which the state's new LNP Health Minister Lawrence Springborg said in Parliament this week illustrated that the project was an "abomination".

ABC wants Apple, Android, Windows tablets

10
I would not be surprised at all if major Australian corporations were eyeing off Windows 8 and its bevy of hardware partners at this point, and wondering if the platform will allow them a much greater degree of control, flexibility and manageability over the tablets that they use than Apple's iPad will.

Cisco issues 9.2 percent Aussie price rise

12
Networking hardware giant Cisco has slapped a blanket 9.2 percent price increase on all of its products and services in Australia, giving its customers and partners just one month's notice of the price rise.

HP opens giant NSW datacentre (photos)

13
Global technology giant HP yesterday opened its colossal $119 million new datacentre in Western Sydney, revealing that it had dubbed the new facility "Aurora".

Amazon’s Australian datacentre gets closer

6
That Australian datacentre which Amazon was planning to build? It's been a while since we heard a good rumour on that one, but The Register delivers this week, with news that the US cloud computing and online retail giant's local plans are still on.

Salesforce needs a more anti-social approach

14
As it continues its mega-push into what it has described as "social enterprise" technologies, Salesforce.com risks losing its focus on its core CRM products, particularly as its software as a service model has failed to prove itself in several key markets in Australia.

Costello says Qld should sell IT services units

22
A landmark report into the Queensland Government's financial position penned by Howard-era Treasurer Peter Costello has recommended the state government consider selling off its IT shared services unit, as there was no guarantee they could provide IT services to the government efficiently.

Immigration dumps Lotus in Microsoft focus

20
The Federal Department of Immigration and Citizenship has revealed as part of documents associated with a major IT outsourcing initiative that it is midway through the process of migrating off its Lotus Notes/Domino email platform and onto Microsoft's rival Outlook/Exchange system, as well as a number of other modernisation initiatives.

Buildcorp deploys 150 Nokia Lumias

8
Construction firm Buildcorp has deployed some 150 new staff mobile phones in Nokia's Lumia line, the Finnish smartphone vendor announced this afternoon.

Amazon confirms Sydney CDN node

8
Global cloud computing player and retailer Amazon today confirmed that it had added an 'edge' location in Sydney to speed up the delivery of content to Australians, confirming a deployment model which was the subject of speculation some 12 months ago.

SA Govt CIO to fix Victoria’s IT nightmare

7
The Victorian State Government has appointed Grantley Mailes, a former whole of government chief information officer for sister state South Australia, to lead a committee to establish a new wide-ranging IT strategy to resolve Victoria's ongoing problems with IT service and project delivery.

Cloud computing decimates Vic Uni’s IT dept

8
If you're nervous about the impact that the deployment of cloud computing infrastructure could have on the need your organisation has for dedicated IT staff, you probably don't want to read this chilling article by iTNews, which details some rather mercenary comments by Victoria University on its own plans in the area.

Telstra, Accenture, to deliver SAP cloud

2
German software giant SAP has signed a landmark deal with the nation's largest telco Telstra and IT services giant Accenture that will see the pair deliver hosted SAP solutions to Australian customers from Telstra's on-shore datacentre infrastructure.

Telstra wins $474m DHS telco contract

3
Telstra has emerged as the victor from a prolonged tendering process for a comprehensive suite of telecommunications services at the Federal Department of Human Services, announcing today that it had won a deal with the department worth $474 million.

Two years on, Virgin happy with Exadata

5
When it was first revealed in 2008, Oracle's Exadata machine was an unproven new factor; its new model tying Oracle's software to a specific hardware platform for the first time. But two years after its implementation, one of the first Australian customers to deploy an Exadata has praised the platform, giving credence to the idea that it has earnt its place.

Has Fortescue dumped BlackBerry for Nokia?

3
Australian iron ore group Fortescue metals has declined to comment on an unverified rumour that the company has recently deployed over 600 new staff smartphones, allegedly swapping out its existing BlackBerry fleet in the latest corporate switch to Microsoft's rival Windows Phone 7 ecosystem.

Review brands ATO’s Change Program a success

8
An extensive review of the Australian Taxation Office's colossal $814 million Change Program IT platform overhaul has found the program broadly to be a success, with the initiative delivering on most of its objectives and making a return on its investment in just four years, despite a history which at times seemed close to going off the rails.

Homeless Sydney dev “will code for latte”

17
I don't know whether to feel slightly dubious about her story or merely sorry for Adelle Hartley, a Sydney C#/SQL developer who says she is homeless and has featured in an extensive article published by ninemsn this week.

Rental chain deploys Office 365 to 90 stores

0
Home appliance rental franchise chain Mr Rental has deployed Microsoft's software as a service-based Office 365 productivity platform to more than 90 stores across Australia and New Zealand, Microsoft announced this morning.

Australia to get IBM public cloud in Q4

1
Global IT giant IBM today confirmed plans to deploy its enterprise-class public cloud computing infrastructure in Australia, in a move which will give large organisations and government departments with data sovereignty concerns another option for utilising public cloud facilities based in Australia, as opposed to offshore.

Qld dumps whole of government email project

17
Queensland's new LNP State Government late last week revealed plans to dump the troubled colossal whole of government email project begun under the previous Bligh Labor administration, with IT Minister Ros Bates highlighting the possibility to shift to a "cloud-based solution" instead.

Microsoft Yammer buy great news, says cloud CIO

2
Will Microsoft’s $1.2 billion purchase of corporate social networking firm Yammer be a positive event for the future of enterprise IT? Yes, according to Alan Perkins, one of Australia’s leading IT executives when it comes to understanding cloud computing.

Govt’s new e-health platform already hacked

9
That shiny new e-health platform which the Federal Government sent live this week? The one you're supposed to put all of your most personal medical information in, for sharing only between your cadre of closed-lipped medical professionals? Yup. It was hacked during its development.

SAP Australia poaches Unisys chief

2
The Australian division of German software giant SAP today confirmed it had poached Andrew Barkla, the long-serving Asia-Pacific chief of IT services giant Unisys to lead its Australian operations, following the departure of incumbent Tim Ebbeck in January this year.

40%: Australian enterprise prefers the iPhone

9
40 percent of Australian enterprises now see the iPhone as their preferred staff smartphone model, new research has revealed, in a remarkable demonstration of just how dramatically Apple's flagship handset has shaken up the nation's corporate mobile fleets over the past four years.

Fairfax wants to dump Office, Exchange for Google

10
Media giant Fairfax has announced plans to will ditch Microsoft's Office and Exchange platforms for most of its 11,000-odd staff, with the company to become one of the largest known Australian organisations to shift onto Google's Apps platform for both email and office productivity software.

NEXTDC M1 datacentre launch: Photos

0
In a ritzy ceremony, NEXTDC this week opened its new M1 datacentre in Melbourne. Attending the event were the company's founder Bevan Slattery, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, new NEXTDC chief executive Craig Scroggie, financial executive Mark Bouris, Conroy's chief of staff Shain Drabsch and others.

NSW Health unleashes mammoth email consolidation

7
If you follow technology news relating to Australian governments, you can't help but laugh sometimes; because if you didn't, you'd cry at the irony of it all.

Aussie CIOs back Surface tablet

14
When it comes to tablets in the enterprise, Apple's iPad is currently the market leader. But, according to some early indications, Microsoft may be in with a winner with its new Surface tablet.

Qld Govt IT contractors face layoff massacre

3
Over at the blog of Queensland-based ICT analyst house Longhaus, the firm’s managing director Peter Carr has published some ruminations about the tough future facing many of the state’s ICT contractors as the new LNP State Government puts technology squarely in the layoff firing line.

The ATO’s decade-long Mac denial

26
The reluctance of the Australian Taxation Office to provide a working version of its e-tax lodgement software for the Apple Macintosh has been a long-time bug-bear with Mac users around Australia for a long time. But some of them may not realise just how long angry parliamentarians and others have been harassing the agency about the issue.

Qantas deploys 2,200 iPads to pilots

9
Pilots on the nation’s biggest airline Qantas will shortly starting using iPads to access the wide range of operational information they need to do their job instead of printed paper, under a partnership announced today between the airline and telco partner Telstra.

Tribunal backs ANZ Bank’s IT outsourcing

3
Industrial regulator Fair Work Australia has issued a ruling supporting ANZ Bank's decision to shift some 260 Australian and Indian staff IT testing staff to employment with outsourcer Capgemini, rejecting union demands that the bank must negotiate with staff over the move.

Qantas dumps BlackBerrys for iPhones

4
National carrier Qantas has reportedly confirmed plans to ditch some 1,300 corporate BlackBerrys and replace them with iPhones, as the ongoing corporate shift away from Research in Motion's BlackBerry ecosystem gains pace.

CommBank unveils Square payments rival

18
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia this morning revealed several devices and an application development platform that together constitute an ecosystem similar to the Square mobile payments system which is becoming popular in the US for transactions at merchants such as retailers, restaurants and cafes.

Stephen Wilson leaves Qantas

0
One of Australia's most high-profile IT executives, Stephen Wilson has finished a short-lived stint in the private sector, with the executive confirmed to have left a senior role at Qantas to lead the IT operations of Sydney Water, just two years after he left his post as CIO of the NSW Department of Education to join the airline.

EMC, Avaya get new Aussie chiefs

0
Enterprise IT vendors EMC and Avaya have revealed they have new leaders of their Australian divisions, following the promotion and departure of their local incumbent managing directors.

End of an era: Greg Farr to leave Defence

2
The Department of Defence has advertised for a public sector executive to replace its long-serving and highly regarded chief information officer Greg Farr, whose departure will amount to the end of an era for the department.

Qantas signs up for Office 365

0
Qantas has reportedly revealed plans for a mass deployment of Microsoft's Office 365 suite, in a landmark move which will mark one of the first major Australian rollouts of the software as a service platform in a private sector entity.

LNP Qld Government kicks off IT cuts

7
The new LNP Queensland State Government has kicked off a substantial drive to reduce the amount it spends on technology-related goods and services, even ahead of a landmark audit of the state’s public sector technology use, expected to be handed down in December this year.

100,000 Coles staff get SharePoint Online

0
National retailer Coles yesterday revealed it had deployed SharePoint Online, a component of Microsoft’s software as a service-based suite Office 365 to some 100,000 Australian staff, in the latest indication that the cloud platform is gaining traction amongst large Australian enterprises.

MyNetFone supplies VoIP to Tassie Govt

9
IP telephony and broadband company MyNetFone this week revealed it had been selected by the Tasmanian Government to supply Voice over IP telephony services to the state, in a three-year deal expected to be worth some $20 million over the period.

Adobe bucks IT price hike inquiry

24
US software giant Adobe is fast emerging as one of the toughest nuts to crack when it comes to the IT price hike inquiry currently being carried out by the Federal Parliament.

Enterprise will hold back on Windows 8

28
I recently came across a fantastic series of posts which pretty much sums up what I think about Microsoft's incoming new operating system Windows 8.

Qld wrestles with WinXP upgrade

30
Work in the Queensland Government and stuck on a dated desktop PC running Windows XP? Bad news.

Carbon Tax: How will it hit servers?

23
How much impact will the Federal Government's so-called Carbon Tax have on server hosting costs? According to Aidan Tudehope, the managing director of Macquarie Telecom's hosting division, quite a lot.

Disastrous patch cripples CommBank

73
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is currently reeling with internal chaos and some service delivery problems, following what appears to be a disastrous mis-application of an operating system patch to thousands of desktop PCs and hundreds of servers last week.

IT price comparisons not useful, says AIIA

26
The IT industry's peak lobby group today said it was "not useful" to directly compare prices on technology goods and services between Australia and other countries and that increased Australian prices on such goods reflected different conditions and protections locally compared with other countries.

CBA outage took down CommSee

12
The Commonwealth Bank's wide-ranging outage also took down its customer relationship management platform CommSee, one of its main unions has revealed, in a move which further illustrates how extensive the technology-related problems suffered by the bank over the past week truly have been.

HP CEO Whitman lands in Australia

9
HP has confirmed its global chief executive Meg Whitman has landed in Australia for a brief visit, in a move that comes as fallout from a bungle at key HP customer the Commonwealth Bank of Australia continues to make itself felt.

Office 365 juggernaut hits ANU

3
Qantas, Mr Rental, Fortescue, Coles, Curtin University, a slew of local non-profits and more: The list of Australian organisations to announce that they're deploying Microsoft's Office 365 software as a service productivity suite is growing day by day. And now, according to iTNews, the Australian National University has added itself to that list.

Westpac launches Android NFC payments app

13
Westpac Banking Corporation has joined the throng of Australian financial services giants attempting to stay ahead of the growing trend towards payments from mobile phones, launching an app yesterday that will allow those with Android smartphones to make mobile payments through their embedded NFC chip.

IE6 still popular in Federal Government

18
The outdated version 6 of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser is still mandated and/or supported by seven Federal Government agencies, according to a new survey of the Canberra public sector's browser preferences, in a further indication that legacy versions of key software platforms continue to be maintained by the Government.

Sarv Girn becomes Reserve Bank CIO

0
Recently departed Westpac group general manager of Enterprise Technology Services Sarv Girn has picked up a high-profile position as the new chief information officer of the Reserve Bank.

330k users: Google Apps hits Catholic schools

12
Search giant Google has revealed its Google Apps software as a service platform has been deployed to some 330,000 students, teachers and administrative staff at Catholic schools across Australia, in one of the largest local known rollouts of the platform so far.

NSW Police wants huge internal social network

12
The New South Wales Police Force has flagged plans to deploy a sizable internal social networking platform, as it moves ahead with plans to better serve the information needs of its 17,000 police officers and 4,000 civilian administration staff.

Victorian school may deploy 3,500 iPads

19
Independent Melbourne school Haileybury has already rolled out 1,000 iPads to staff members and students throughout its three campuses in the Victorian capital and may roll out several thousand more as it attempts to take advantage of the Apple technology in education.

“Chaos” in NSW Govt IT shared services

21
A landmark report into the management of the NSW Public Sector commissioned by the state's new Coalition Government has described how dozens of overlapping and competing systems and services providers have created "chaos" when it comes to the state's current IT shared services paradigm.

Back to the future: Qld kickstarts payroll consolidation

14
The new LNP Queensland State Government has revealed plans to consolidate eight "outmoded and heavily customised" payroll IT systems into one outsourced system, in a move which will re-ignite the debate over how the state should provide core IT services supporting administrative functions to its various departments and agencies.

How NAB’s private cloud keeps it carbon-neutral

3
The National Australia Bank has published a detailed white paper revealing how it used a combination of engineering and information technology tools and processes such as infrastructure on demand to achieve carbon neutrality and push beyond this benchmark into even greater heights of environmental efficiency.

Rackspace confirms dedicated Sydney datacentre

10
US hosting giant Rackspace has confirmed plans to launch a large datacentre in Sydney later this year, to support growing local demand for its services after entering the Australian and Zealand markets in 2009 using its infrastructure located overseas.

Office 365 switch may hit BPOS die-hards

6
Are you a customer of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite who hasn't yet confirmed your intention to upgrade to the new Office 365 paradigm? Well, reality check: You don't have much time to make the change before BPOS is switched off.

NAB shifts UBank onto new core IT platform

4
The National Australia Bank today revealed it had migrated its UBank online brand onto its new Oracle-based core banking platform, in a move which is slated to deliver both the bank and its 300,000 UBank customers significant immediate benefits from the new technology.

Mac Uni CIO on Apple, Android tablets and IT life

5
Local Apple forum MacTalk has just published an extensive podcast interview with Macquarie University chief information officer Marc Bailey, which we commend to your attention.

Purge: Qld Govt cuts 384 IT contractors

16
The new LNP Queensland State Government today revealed that it had terminated the contracts of some 384 technology contractors in total over the past few months, as it ramps up its drive to slash technology-related spending while simultaneously remediating dated IT systems left to languish by the previous Labor administration.

Tableau beds down Telstra Super

0
US business intelligence vendor Tableau Software has claimed Telstra's superannuation fund Telstra Super as a major Australian client, with the company deploying Tableau's solution to gain additional insight into its membership and transactional data.

Australian Govt has “cloud last” policy, says Ovum

21
The Federal Government has taken a "cloud-last" position on the adoption of the new generation of cloud computing technologies, analyst firm Ovum said today, as it lacked a clear vision of the benefits of the cloud computing model, but was very clear about its risks.

Specsavers deploys Google Apps, loves cloud

2
Optometry chain Specsavers has deployed Google Apps to its Australian staff and hopes to continue moving almost everything else into the fluffy happy land of cloud computing, the company's Asia-Pacific IT director Simon Baxter has told iTNews on the sidelines of the CIO Strategy Summit the week before last.

LNP sacks 80 from CITEC

11
Not satisfied with terminating some 384 technology contractors already this year and running the axe over the IT department at the state's education department, Queensland's new LNP Government led by Premier Campbell Newman has now turned its attention to IT shared services unit CITEC.

IT price hike inquiry may subpoena rebel vendors

15
Labor MP Ed Husic has publicly raised the prospect of forcing recalcitrant technology vendors to appear before a parliamentary committee on IT price hikes in Australia, alleging that some suppliers are "treating the Parliament with contempt".

Govt IT buyers “struggling” with pace of change

18
Government departments and agencies are "struggling to keep up" with the pace of change in the technology sector, analyst firm Ovum said in a research note issued this month, with the rapidly evolving technology landscape outpacing the speed of procurement cycles.

Asciano upgrades “entire” IT infrastructure

0
Port and rail operator Asciano has revealed a wide-ranging plan to upgrade its “entire” IT infrastructure and applications stack, in a move which will see a broad tranche of technology platforms modernised with the assistance of Japanese diversified IT services giant Fujitsu.

NAB deploys Chatter … and Yammer?

11
From Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference in the US this week comes the news that the National Australia Bank has deployed the company's internal social networking tool Chatter ... as well as having an existing rollout of Yammer.

CommBank standardises in-house fleet on iPhone

20
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has revealed that it will standardise its mobile phone fleet on Apple’s iPhone platform, as it progresses plans to move away from its high-profile softphone-based unified communications strategy recently implemented at its flagship Commonwealth Bank Place facility in Sydney.

Photos: PM Gillard launches Macquarie datacentre

11
Prime Minister Julia Gillard launched Macquarie Telecom's new Sydney datacentre in Sydney last week. Macquarie is billing the facility, dubbed the 'Intellicentre 2' as Australia's most advanced high-security datacentre. It cost $60 million to build.

Federal Govt re-affirms Microsoft format choice

26
The Federal Government’s central IT strategy division has re-affirmed and formalised its decision to pick Microsoft’s Office Open XML document standard as the federal public sector’s common office document standard, despite the fact that most alternative office suites cannot write documents in the standard.

Victoria starts airing its IT dirty laundry

38
The Victorian State Government has over the past month started holding hearings which touch in depth on the wide-ranging IT project delivery issues which have resulted in the state’s departments and agencies broadly failing to deliver ten major IT projects over the past half-decade.

12 months on, Victoria Police still has no CIO

0
12 months on from the departure of its then-chief information officer Michael Vanderheide to lead Victorian IT shared services agency CenITex, Victoria Police still has not appointed a permanent CIO to lead its extremely troubled IT operations.

Vic Govt releases motherhood ICT strategy

10
The Victorian State Government has released the draft of a new whole of government information and communications technology strategy, with which it aims to start addressing extensive IT project and service delivery issues which have resulted in more than a billion dollars in budget overruns and a string of failed IT projects over the past half-decade.

Lotus position: ABS a “happy Notes camper”

25
We couldn't help but laugh when we read this excellent interview with Australian Bureau of Statistics chief information officer Patrick Hadley, describing the agency's ongoing commitment to IBM's Lotus Notes/Domino platform as part of its recently released and wide-ranging ICT strategy.

Q+A: Oracle’s banking chief Ashwin Goyal

0
Delimiter recently conducted an interview with Ashwin Goyal, Oracle's global vice president & general manager, Financial Services.

IT glitch takes down CityLink tunnels

10
Bad news this morning for Melbourne commuters, with a mysterious glitch at CityLink taking down the Burnley and Domain tunnels. Traffic apparently slowed to a crawl, to howls of protest.

$1.5bn splurge: ANZ banks on customer tech

0
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group has revealed plans to spend up to $1.5 billion on a wide range of customer-facing technology systems and branch refurbishments, in the latest salvo of an intensifying battle between Australia’s major banks to position themselves as technology leaders.

Elders Real Estate deploys Gmail to 1,200

10
interview Last week Elders Real Estate revealed that it had this year deployed Google's Gmail email platform and its Sites website creation and sharing tool to some 1,200 staff located around Australia. In this interview, the company discusses the rollout, its rationale for it, and its attitude towards cloud computing services in general.

NEC expands NSW Police network business

1
Diversified ICT services business NEC this afternoon revealed it had retained and expanded its communications-related work with NSW Police, with the Japanese company to continue providing voice telephony services to the organisation and expand its remit to include maintenance and support of its data network as well.

Defence appoints new CIO: Peter Lawrence

6
The Department of Defence has appointed high-flying global IT executive Peter Lawrence, currently group manager of IT, Energy Markets for utility Origin Energy, to replace its outgoing chief information officer Greg Farr.

“Criminal neglect”: Qld Govt IT fixes to cost up to $6 billion

17
Queensland’s new IT Minister Ros Bates said this week it would cost the state between $3.7 billion and $6 billion replace the “mess of mismatched, miscellaneous and duplicated [ICT] systems” which the previous Labor administration had left the state with.

IBM says it “successfully delivered” Qld Health payroll

41
Global technology giant IBM has written to the new LNP Queensland Government claiming it “successfully delivered” against milestones agreed with the previous Labor administration with respect to the disastrous payroll systems overhaul at Queensland Health, which has already cost the state $417 million and will need another $837 million to fix over the next five years.

BoQ deploys Salesforce.com CRM

1
Bank of Queensland today revealed that it is deploying a new software as a service-based customer relationship management system which would deliver it a dramatically simplified and flexible platform for dealing with customer accounts, with the technology reported to be supplied by US-headquartered vendor Salesforce.com

Parliament’s IT systems a complete shambles

19
The department which runs Australia's Federal Parliament has published a damning report acknowledging it has widespread problems with IT service delivery and infrastructure, stemming from the fact that it has "no parliament-wide IT strategic plan" and no mechanism for making strategic IT decisions, despite a decade of reports warning of the situation.

Trainhack: Students crack ticketing system

6
Forget Black Hat in Las Vegas. Australia’s Ruxcon is where it’s at, complete with public transport ticketing hacks and shadow figures involved in advanced network security exercises.

Funeral services group deploys Salesforce.com

0
US technology giant Salesforce.com has revealed that Australian funeral services provider InvoCare – which encompasses the Simplicity, White Lady and Guardian Funerals brands – has deployed its Sales Cloud customer relationship management software as a service application, in a deployment touching 130 branches across Australia.

IBM’s NASH deal gets terminated

3
The National E-Health Transition Authority this afternoon confirmed it had “terminated” a $23.6 million contract with IBM to build a key component of the Federal Government’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record project, just 18 months after the contract was initially inked.

ICAC finds Sydney University IT manager corrupt

0
The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has found that University of Sydney information technology (IT) manager Atilla "Todd" Demiralay engaged in corrupt conduct by using Succuro Recruitment, a business that employed his wife and later operated through a company in which he and his wife had a financial interest, to recruit contractors and staff for the university, without disclosing his financial interest in the business.

“Nepotism”: Audit blasts CenITex culture

15
Victoria’s Ombudsman today published a damning report into procurement practices and the engagement of contractors at the state’s IT shared services agency CenITex, finding examples of “nepotism and favouritism” in the company, as well as more serious improper conduct and poor procedures for handling CenITex’s large contractor workforce.

CenITex report: CEO’s email to the troops

2
Delimiter is reliably informed that CenITex chief executive Michael Vanderheide sent the following email to the IT shared services agency's staff this week, following the publication of a damning report by the Victorian Ombudsman into procurement practices and the engagement of contractors at CenITex.

Nokia Lumia rollout for Sara Lee

6
Finnish smartphone seller Nokia today added another name to the growing public list of large Australian organisations which have decided to deploy its Windows Phone-based Lumia line as their corporate smartphone, picking the series ahead of competing options from Apple and Android.

You can’t actually buy Windows 8 in Australia [Update: Well, kind of]

33
Windows 8 has launched in Australia. But you can't actually buy fully boxed copies of it locally. No, really.

“Obstruction, avoidance and evasion”: IT giants stonewall price inquiry

30
Members of Parliament from both major sides of politics have very publicly blasted global technology giants such as Apple, Adobe and Microsoft and even representative group the Australian Information Industry Association, for what they described as “deep reluctance and resistance” to give evidence before a parliamentary committee investigating local IT price hikes.

A roundup of Australian Windows 8 trials

12
Now that Windows 8 has launched in Australia, what do we know about enterprise trial deployments of the technology? Surprisingly, quite a lot. A lot of people might believe that Windows 8 is the new Windows Vista, but when you look around on the actual ground, it appears as though major Australian organisations are at least dabbling with Microsoft's new operating system opus.

‘Daring yet awful’: An epic Windows 8 rant

37
We hate Windows 8 on the desktop just as much as the next man, but we haven’t tested it as extensively as Taswegian and technologist Simon Reidy, who penned this epic rant on Google Plus this week detailing why Microsoft’s new opus is the company’s “most interesting, daring, different, ridiculous, contradictory, frustrating, and awful Windows yet”.

IBM Australia suffers disaster quarter

7
Things haven’t been going well at IBM Australia recently. And now, according to a juicy article in The AustralianIT, things have gone from bad to worse in terms of the company's finances.

NBN Co appoints John McInerney as CIO

12
The National Broadband Network Company has appointed former Telstra and HP executive John McInterney to be its new chief information officer starting on 3 December this year, following the departure of inaugural-NBN Co CIO Claire Rawlins in August.

Qld Labor Govt feared IBM payroll backlash

5
New cabinet documents released by the Queensland Labor Party pertaining to the payroll systems disaster at Queensland Health have revealed the then-Labor administration in 2010 feared that IBM would pursue its own lawsuit if the State Government terminated its contract over the botched IT systems overhaul.

Fire + Rescue NSW deploys 400 Chromeboxes

19
Emergency service Fire and Rescue NSW has revealed it has dumped a number of traditional desktop PCs and plans to ditch more, as part of a widespread deployment of Google’s Chromebox cloud-based desktop platform which has so far seen some 400 of the gadgets deployed to fire stations throughout the state.

Defence desktop overhaul gets green light

6
The Department of Defence’s long-awaited desktop PC overhaul project has been given the green light to go ahead in a mass deployment, after a successful trial of 700 users conducted by the project’s main technology vendor Thales.

AARNet peers with Amazon Web Services

5
Work for one of Australia's universities and use Amazon Web Services? Your life just got a little better. Today AARNet, the telecommunications network serving Australia's university sector, announced it would peer with AWS for fun and profit.

VMware out, Hyper-V in at ING Direct

4
Internet banking brand ING Direct revealed this week that it had upgraded its server infrastructure to the latest version 2012 of Microsoft’s Windows Server operating system and further standardised on the vendor’s Hyper-V solution, as the bank’s enthusiasm for Microsoft’s server stack continues to grow at the cost of virtualisation rival VMware.

Qld may ditch $1.2bn Health payroll project, start again

12
Remember Queensland Health’s botched payroll systems overhaul? The project which was initially estimated to a relatively small initiative, but ballooned out in value to more than $1.2 billion and stil doesn’t quite work? Yeah. According to an article in the Courier Mail this morning, the new LNP administration in Queensland is considering ditching the whole thing and starting again.

Finally, Amazon launches Sydney datacentre

19
After six months of rumours and the launch of several ancillary services down under, US cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services has finally announced the availability of locally-hosted cloud computing services from an Australian datacentre; with prices comparable to those seen overseas.

NAB CIO gets promotion amongst reshuffle

0
The National Australia Bank appears to have conducted a minor reshuffle of its executive leadership team, including what appears to be a promotion for NAB chief information officer Adam Bennett.

CommBank CIO is major cloud fan

5
It hasn't been until this week that the full extent of CommBank CIO Michael Harte's enthusiasm for the cloud computing medium has been made clear.

NSW Govt progresses private cloud talks

3
Remember that private cloud computing environment that the NSW Government is planning to develop for its departments and agencies? The one it discussed in a public forum last month in front of the creme de la creme of Australia's IT industry? Well, according to Intermedium , the state is actually doing something about the plan, kicking off private talks with key vendors.

Suncorp scopes Win Server 2012, Hyper-V

3
Second-tier banking and insurance giant Suncorp has revealed it has plans to deploy Microsoft’s latest Windows Server 2012 server operating system and Hyper-V virtualisation platform and reduce use of VMware’s rival technology, to assist in gaining efficiencies as part of its virtual desktop infrastructure rollout to staff.

Whole of Govt CIO Steward retires

3
Australia’s Whole of Government chief information officer Ann Steward this week announced her intention to retire from the public service after seven years leading peak IT strategy agency the Australian Government Information Management Office and long years more in the global public sector generally.

SAP confirms Australian datacentre

0
The rumours that German software giant SAP would follow rival Oracle and cloud giants Amazon and Rackspace and start providing software as a service-based services from an Australian datacentre have been flowing around Australia’s technology sector for quite a while now. They surfaced in the pages of the Financial Review in May this year, and gained strength as SAP’s SuccessFactors launched an Australian datacentre that same month. And now they’re reality, according to iTNews.

How to understand NAB’s core banking strategy

0
If you follow Australia’s banking technology scene closely, no doubt you’ve probably become quite confused over the past four or so years about the National Australia Bank’s core banking overhaul strategy and how precisely it is actually put together and progressing; and you wouldn’t be the only one. But if you delve a little under the surface it all becomes clear.

NSW Govt launches Opal card on ferries

17
However, the new Coalition Government in NSW over the weekend shone a ray of light into the public transport smartcard ticketing situation, with the new Opal smartcard being launched on Sydney ferries, to start with.

$63m baby: Oracle sells ‘the works’ to Defence

8
Oracle has revealed that it signed a wide-ranging $63 million contract with the Federal Department of Defence earlier this year that will see the US technology giant supply virtually all of its major product lines, ranging from its popular PeopleSoft, Database and Fusion products to its Exadata hardware and even its Exalogic Elastic Cloud technology.

Melbourne IT may sell off divisions

4
Diversified Australian hosting and digital services group Melbourne IT today revealed it would conduct a review into the future of its various divisions which may result in selling some of them off, in the wake of disappointing flat revenue growth over the past six months.

IBM adds 150 new jobs in Ballarat

0
Well it appears that analyst firm capioIT’s rating of the Victorian region of Ballarat as the best non-metropolitan location in Australia for IT services delivery may be accurate. Or, at least IBM thinks so. In coalition with the Victorian Government, Big Blue last week announced it was expanding its Ballarat operations by some 150 jobs.

Regulator forces ANZ off Salesforce.com

1
Just when you thought Australia’s banks and the banking ecosystem in general were making some headway in their acceptance of cloud computing technologies, international regulators throw a spanner in the works. iTNews reports todaythat the Monetary Authority of Singapore has forced the hand of ANZ Bank when it comes to cloud computing.

ASG clouds Tax Practitioners Board

0
IT services outfit ASG has revealed it has been chosen by the Tax Practitioners Board to deliver an “all cloud solution” for its enterprise IT needs.

Windows 8 sales disappointing in Australia

38
It won't come as a surprise to many, given its drastically altered user interface and mixed reviews, but the news is already bad for Microsoft's new flagship operating system Windows 8 in Australia.

‘Cloud’ is now mainstream in Australia’s banking sector

5
It's finally happened. After years of expressing concern about the privacy risks, regulatory challenges and technical inadequacies of the new clutch of technologies broadly known as “cloud computing”, Australia's financial services sector has embraced the new paradigm wholesale. It's about time.

NAB starts deploying Windows 7

6
In 2009 the bank started investigating the next move, to Windows 7, and now that 2013 is almost here, according to iTNews (we recommend you click through to the full article), the bank is actually deploying some Windows 7 machines:

Microsoft’s war on Google Apps gets nasty

15
Microsoft Australia produces case study scorching towards Google Apps and Gmail.

Telstra builds four new datacentres

0
Telstra late yesterday revealed plans to expand its cloud computing business through constructing four new datacentres located around the nation to cater for demand. Now if only the telco could announce some new cloud computing customers.

Ninemsn shifts hosting to … Amazon?

6
We knew Amazon Web Services had robust infrastructure — after all, the Commonwealth Bank hosts some of its services with the cloud computing giant — but we didn’t know that it was quite this robust. The AustralianIT reports today (we recommend you click here for the full article) that one of Australia’s largest web sites, Ninemsn, is actually hosted with Amazon:

Now Qld Health bungles e-health program

15
It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, given the ongoing disaster that is Queensland Health's payroll systems overhaul, but news has emerged that the department is also suffering problems with its electronic health program, with the first two tranches of the initiative being at least two years late.

Woods Bagot deploys SharePoint 2013 early

7
It’s only just been formally released for official use, but Australian architectural design firm Woods Bagot has been using early versions of Microsoft’s SharePoint 2013 software since early this year, a new case study published by Microsoft recently has revealed.

A govt IT insourcing success story

9
With all of the IT disasters that have come out of the Victorian State Government recently, sometimes it’s hard to believe that anything has gone right recently in the state with regards to government technology use. That’s why we were pleasantly surprised to read this case study detailing how utility Yarra Valley Water has successfully switched away from an outsourcing model and brought its IT support in-house.

Webjet adopts Office 365, Windows Azure

0
The latest missive to emanate from the Microsoft monolith is regarding Webjet, which has adopted both Windows Azure and Office 365, and is even dabbling in Windows 8 apps.

NSW moves closer to ‘cloud-first’ strategy

11
The New South Wales Government has given further signs that it is moving to adopt the kind of ‘cloud-first’ IT procurement strategy which jurisdictions such as the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand have pursued over the past several years, in a move which could fundamentally change the way the state buys and uses technology.

Tasmania wants on-island private cloud

21
The Tasmanian Government has gone to market for an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or private cloud solution that can be used across its operations, telling potential suppliers that any supplied option must be located in the state and that it envisages transitioning most of its services to the environment in the long-term.

Huge surprise (not): Telstra wins ABC telco deal

15
In what is not precisely the most unexpected news of the century, Telstra and the ABC have announced that they are once again planning to cosy up so that the telco can provide sweet, sweet telecommunications services to help the broadcaster, well, broadcast stuff.

US ambassador slams Australia’s “cloud protectionism”

38
US Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich has slammed Australia's "cloud protectionism" in wanting datacentres located on-shore.

Qld may hold Royal Commission into payroll bungle

11
It's been one of the biggest IT-related disasters in Australia's history, it's going to take $1.2 billion to fix, and it's even the subject of complex legal discussions between prime contractor IBM and the Queensland Government. Welcome to the world of Queensland Health's colossal payroll systems overhaul bungle. Today's news is that the state's LNP Premier Campbell Newman has canvassed setting up a commission of inquiry (also known as a royal commission) to get to the heart of the matter.

ADFA hack a national security failure: expert

13
According to media reports, a single hacker from the Anonymous group, calling himself Darwinare, released online the names, birthdays and passwords of 20,000 staff and students from a university database at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Qld sets royal commission into Health payroll

7
It's time. One of Australia's greatest ever IT disasters is now going to have the *ahem* privilege of having a royal commission conducted into how precisely it went wrong.

Debunking Abbott’s “server timestamp” claims

48
Unless you live in an area of Australia where it's impossible to get television or radio reception (an idea which has seemed attractive to your writer at times, in the current media environment), it would have been hard to escape the news that a Federal Court judge has thrown out the sexual harassment case against former Federal House of Representatives Speaker Peter Slipper. But it's one particular comment by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott that has Australia's IT industry perking up its ears this morning.

802.11ac to wire up your garage datacentre? Why not?

15
Fascinating blog post this week from MacTalk founder and all-round geek Anthony Agius, who chronicles his attempts to use two 802.11ac routers to link his new garage-based server farm to his house network.

Server timestamps: Abbott was right after all

13
The Department of Parliamentary Services appears to have cleared Abbott of any wrongdoing in fudging James Ashby-related media release timestamps, admitting that its systems haven't been up to spec.

Govt splits AGIMO, appointing CIO, CTO

3
The Federal Government has announced it will split its troubled IT strategy division the Australian Government Information Management Office in two, promoting internal staffers into two new chief information and technology officer roles in line with the recommendations of the Reinecke review regarding the agency’s future.

$180m Vic Ultranet project a complete failure

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Victoria's Auditor-General has published a damning report classifying the state's $180 million Ultranet educational technology project as broadly a complete failure, with the project being hardly used by the state's students and teachers and being delivered late, over budget and with significant contract probity issues.

‘Cloud protectionism’? How about ‘consumer choice’?

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The reality is, a huge proportion of Australians do not know they are using the cloud when they use services such as social networking, and do not know that much of their personal data is being stored overseas as a result. When they find out, they are not happy about it.

11,000 iPads in one hit: UWS goes Apple crazy

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The University of Western Sydney has revealed that it will deploy some 11,000 iPads to students and staff this year, in one of the largest rollouts of the Apple tablets known in Australia so far and a move that will see every first year student at the institution receiving one of the devices.

Free ‘trinkets’ while courses cut: Union condemns UWS iPads plan

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The academics union has condemned a plan by the University of Western Sydney to give away 11,000 iPads as part of a $35 million bid to keep its content and teaching relevant to students.

Seittenranta to be permanent DPS CIO

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Long-time Centrelink and Department of Human Services IT executive Eija Seittenranta has been appointed to a permanent role as the chief information officer of the Federal Department of Parliamentary Services, following a temporary appointment to the role in October.

Service Stream deploys 1,400 Office 365 seats

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Telecommunications infrastructure construction and maintenance firm Service Stream has revealed that it has deployed more than 1,400 seats of Microsoft's Office 365, in one of the largest known rollouts of the software as a service platform in Australia outside of the education sector.

Shoes of Prey outs itself as a Google Apps fan

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We thought we’d point readers to this blog post on the blog of Google Australia by Mike Knapp, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Sydney-based ecommerce startup Shoes of Prey, which has achieved notoriety over the past few years for its innovative site, which allows women to design and order their own shoes, getting around the normal retail grind. In the blog, Knapp outs Shoes of Prey (which has around 40 staff) as a long-time Google Apps user.

Where’s My Jetpack? An awesomely epic rant by Australia’s new CTO

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If you have even the slightest interest in government IT or technology project management, we recommend you sit down with a cup of tea and your tablet and read this epic rant by Australia's new chief technology officer John Sheridan. It's worth it.

Harris Farm deploys IBM all-in-one servers

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Retailer Harris Farm Markets revealed in late December that it had deployed IBM's all-in-one compute, storage and networking Flex System in its operations to meet a variety of aims ranging from reducing IT costs and complexity to boosting the performance of business systems such as its ERP platform.

Unisys picks up more Queensland Education work

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Queensland's Department of Education, Training and Employment has extended an extremely long-term major IT services contract with supplier Unisys to the value of $29.4 million and simultaneously put a second tranche of IT services work on the market.

WiPro outsourcing takes chunk out of Woolworths

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Retail giant Woolworths has confirmed the jobs of some 64 in-house technical staff will be affected as part of a wide-ranging IT infrastructure outsourcing contract inked last year with Indian IT services company WiPro.

CIO promoted as Boral outsources IT

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Diversified materials company Boral this morning revealed it would embark on a wide-ranging IT outsourcing program which would see an undisclosed number of jobs go and its chief information officer promoted.

Medicare moves into Human Services IT family

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It’s been a while now since the Federal Government signed into being the Department of Human Services, the new super-department formed by the merger of Medicare, Centrelink, the Child Support Agency, Australian Hearing and CRS Australia. However, DHS’ IT department, which largely consists of Centrelink’s very successful IT department with more resources, has only just now taken responsibility from long-time outsourcer for much of Medicare’s IT systems.

Qld school iPad trial a strong success

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Queensland’s education department has published several extensive reports detailing recent trials of iPads within the classroom, with the documents overwhelmingly classing the Apple tablets as a success, including in their ability to help students improve their academic performance.

A round-up of 2012 in government IT

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It's 2013 already (I know, I know, it's not yet formally 2013 in Australia until after Australia Day, but still), but as we think about the year ahead in public sector technology projects, it's worth giving ourselves a quick refresher course in what happened last year.

DHS reveals year of IT outages

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New Federal Government super-department the Department of Human Services has revealed it suffered 137 IT outages thoughout the year to the end of September 2012, with dozens of instances where customers of services such as Centrelink were unable to access online services through Centrelink's web site.

Oracle chief Mark Hurd hits Australia

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Oracle's global co-president Mark Hurd is in Australia to meet with key clients and to catch up on his tennis.

NRMA, Coles reveal sizable Oracle deployments

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US technology giant Oracle has revealed that two major Australian organisations, Coles and the NRMA, have chosen Oracle as the basis for new IT projects, using technology ranging from Oracle’s customer relationship management platform to its Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Linux.

Cloud burst: Oracle reveals second Australian datacentre

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Oracle co-president Mark Hurd has used a visit to Australia over the past week to officially launch the company’s second local datacentre, which the US enterprise IT giant will use to expand the variety of cloud computing and hosted services it provides locally to Australian customers.

Two Sydney universities get hacked

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It hasn't been a good few weeks for university IT security in Australia, with the Universities of Western Sydney and New South Wales both being broken into.

QBE appoints new CIO amid restructure

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Insurer QBE has unexpectedly appointed a new chief information officer, with its incumbent executive holding the position shifting to another position within the group.

Tasmania’s huge payroll overhaul may go cloud

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The Tasmanian Government has flagged plans to overhaul its dated whole of government human resources and payroll systems, in a move which will affect some 28,000 employees and may see the state shift its systems into a cloud computing/software as a service model.

Parliament trials Windows 8 tablets

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ZDNet publishes an interview with Federal Parliament chief information officer Eija Seittenranta, detailing the fact that the Parliament is conducting a trial of Windows 8 tablets.

Board-level dialogue key to NAB Oracle overhaul

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One of Oracle’s most senior executives has labeled board-level engagement between the giant US vendor and local customer National Australia Bank as having been key to the bank’s unusual Oracle-based core banking IT upgrade project, which has seen the vendor develop its software with the direct input of NAB.

A great Aussie virtual desktop case study

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Virtual desktops, bring your own device computing, integrated datacentre components. These are three of the hottest trends to hit Australia’s enterprise IT sector at the moment, and they all come together in this highly recommended article by iTNews writer Chris Jager looking at a huge virtual desktop implementation at RMIT University.

Last chance: Microsoft plans huge Win8 price hike

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Microsoft Australia has confirmed that Australians have only several more days to buy its new Windows 8 operating system at promotional prices before it hikes its prices on the software massively as at the 1st of February.

Vic Dept tenders for major cloud solution

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The Victorian Department of Business and Innovation has gone to market for a major Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution, in a move that comes on the back of a successful Software as a Service deployment at the department and signals its plans to become a leader in the state government in the cloud computing arena.

Mainframe out; Westpac adopts Exadata, Exalogic

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Top-tier bank Westpac has revealed that it will shift some processing resources off existing mainframe infrastructure and onto Oracle’s Exadata and Exalogic platforms, as it attempts to gain higher levels of efficiency in the platforms that underpin its project to achieve a single view of customer information.

“Morons”: Freelancer CEO wants ACS disbanded

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The outspoken chief executive of crowdsourcing company Freelancer.com has posted an extensive diatribe online calling for the Australian Computer Society to be disbanded, describing the professional body as a "joke" and being run by "f*cking morons".

Customs restructures IT with CTO

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The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service has advertised for a new chief technology officer to ensure its strategic IT vision is aligned with its business operations; but it's not immediately clear how the new CTO will fit in with the company's existing chief information officer position held by Joe Attanasio.

NSW Police reportedly settles with Micro Focus

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Remember how NSW Police was allegedly caught red-handed pirating software from enterprise IT vendor Micro Focus? And how the whole story was the subject of an extensive and embarassing documentary report by the 7:30 Report in April 2012? Yeah. Not precisely the best look for the boys in blue. Well, it appears that NSW Police has come clean in the case.

NSW reforms ICT services contracts

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Looks like the New South Wales Government is making good on its promises to reform the way the state purchases technology services, as part of its overall IT strategy. This week we received a media release on the issue from Minister for Finance and Services Greg Pearce.

First interviews surface with new Defence CIO

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It’s been a couple of months since the new Department of Defence chief information officer, Peter Lawrence, stepped on board to replace the now legendary Greg Farr, and the first interviews have started to surface with Lawrence.

NSW kickstarts cloud email, virtual desktop trial

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The New South Wales State Government today kicked off two trials of virtual desktop and cloud email services, in a move which could eventually signal a mass migration of some 30,000 government users into the cloud and which represents one of the first concrete steps by the state into the new cloud computing landscape.

Rackspace hires high-profile cloud CIO Perkins

0
Hosting and cloud computing giant Rackspace this morning revealed it had hired one of Australia's most cloud-savvy chief information officers, former Altium IT executive Alan Perkins, in a key role to spearhead the adoption and development of the company's solutions in Australia.

Attanasio quits Customs as CIO role abolished

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The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service has revealed plans to abolish its chief information officer role in the wake of the resignation of its incumbent CIO Joe Attanasio from the position in late November last year.

Three years on, RailCorp may get CIO

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More than three years after it lost its last chief information officer, NSW State Government agency Railcorp has finally flagged plans to overhaul its IT executive management structure, in moves associated with the split into two separate divisions, Sydney Trains and NSW Trains.

Get em young: Windows 8 indoctrination

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Many young Australians head off to school these days with a collection of Apple paraphenalia; iPhones, iPods and now iPads are common items to see in the schoolbags of students heading off to both high school and primary school. However, for at least one young man, there won't be any Apple in his forseeable future.

Parliament runs out of money for Win7 rollout

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In an exchange in a Senate Estimates hearing yesterday (PDF transcript here), DPS secretary Carol Mills revealed the department didn’t have enough money to complete the rollout to Windows 7 it has been working on.

Victoria releases concrete, detailed ICT strategy

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The Victorian State Government has released the final version of a new whole of government information and communications technology strategy containing hard deadlines for goals, with which it aims to start addressing extensive IT project and service delivery issues which have resulted in more than a billion dollars in budget overruns and a string of failed IT projects over the past half-decade.

Vic Govt ICT strategy analysis: CenITex split, cloud adoption on the cards

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The potential break-up of troubled IT shared services agency CenITex and the opening of the door to government adoption of the new cloud computing paradigm are two of the most important themes written between the lines of the Victorian Government's major new ICT strategy released yesterday.

Farce: Adobe CEO flatly refuses Australian price questions (video)

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The chief executive of global software vendor Adobe, Shantanu Narayen, has refused to directly address questions regarding price markups that can see Australians pay up to $1,400 more than US residents for the company's software, in a press conference in Sydney this morning which at times threatened to descend into a farce.

Beleaguered Qld IT Minister quits

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Beleaguered Queensland Minister for Science, IT, Innovation and the Arts Ros Bates today revealed she would quit her position effective immediately, following a string of controversies and health problems which have dogged the politician since the state's LNP administration took power in March 2012.

The NSW RTA’s iMacs lasted a full decade

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The NSW RTA (now the RMS) finally reveals plans to replace the 'sunflower' iMacs in its motor registries around the state, a decade after they were first deployed. Now that's what you call return on investment.

NSW may sack 610 IT support staffers

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We're not happy to hear from The Register that the NSW Department of Education and Department may be about to sack some 610 technical support officers.

Qld’s new IT Minister has zero IT experience

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Following the resignation of Ros Bates last week, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has appointed Ian Walker to replace Bates as the state’s Minister for Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts. Did we mention that Walker appears to have no experience dealing with information technology, given his extensive background as a 35-year veteran of law firm Norton Rose?

Adobe faces piracy backlash over Australian pricing

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Many Adobe customers have taken to the Internet to openly pledge to dump the software vendor's products or pirate them illegally, with thousands more signalling their general displeasure with what many saw as the arrogant refusal of its chief executive Shantanu Narayenlast week to answer the question of how the company can justify charging Australians up to $1,400 more for its software than US residents.

DoHA latest to ditch Lotus Notes for Exchange

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The Federal Department of Health and Ageing has revealed it will be the latest Australian government agency to dump IBM's Lotus Notes/Domino environment in favour of a switch to a collaboration platform built on the Outlook/Exchange ecosystem, as part of a continuing trend of migrations to the Microsoft platform.

More criticism of the ACS

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Well-known IT industry figure Tony Healy adds to Freelancer.com chief executive Matt Barrie's criticism of the Australian Computer Society.

CERT report finds IT hacks uncommon, usually petty

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A major new study of the IT security habits and experiences of Australian organisations conducted by government group CERT Australia has found the majority did not suffer an IT security incident over the past 12 months, and those that did mainly suffered minor breaches such as the theft of a laptop of smartphone.

Qld Transport in huge IT infrastructure refresh

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Queensland's Department of Transport and Main Roads has kicked off an extremely wide-ranging refresh of its underlying desktop IT infrastructure which is slated to see legacy products such as Lotus Notes, IBM Sametime, Windows XP and Novell's file, print and application deployment software replaced with more popular and updated equivalents.

ABC hack protests anti-Islam interview

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The ABC has confirmed that one of its websites has been hacked following the airing earlier this month of an interview held by Lateline with anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders.

Shock: Queensland Health to get IT review

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From the department of why the hell haven't they already done this comes the news that that bastion of IT systems stability and competence Queensland Health (yup, the very same, you'd be surprised how often it pops up in Delimiter stories) will undertake a review into its IT procurement practices and IT governance arrangements.

Surface Pro for Australia in “coming months”

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Just one month ago Redmond launched the supposedly flagship device in the US and in Canada, but made no mention of launches in other first-world, early technology adopter countries such as Australia. Just one month later, overnight last night in the US, the company said Australia and a number of other countries would receive the Surface Pro "in the coming months", but without giving a firm date.

Another Lotus migration: Caltex details huge Office 365, Windows 7 rollout

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Petrol and convenience store retailer Caltex has revealed it has completed a large migration away from IBM's ailing Lotus Notes/Domino platform and onto Microsoft's Office 365 cloud email system, alongside other associated technology deployments such as an upgrade of the company's desktops to Windows 7.

As expected, Mailes to lead Vic Govt IT

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As has been widely known inside the Victorian Government for a while now, former South Australian whole of government chief information officer Grantly Mailes has been appointed to a permanent role as Victoria's first chief technology advocate -- a new style of role recommended in the state's new ICT strategy which Mailes coordinated.

Govt CTO explains new role; with Lego

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We're pleased that John Sheridan has published the complete text of a lengthy speech he recently gave explaining his new role as Australian Government chief technology officer. Plus, he does so using a stack of cool lego pictures and a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica. Really, what else could you want?

Yarra Valley Water implements Oracle Exadata

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Victorian utility Yarra Valley Water this week disclosed it had implemented several Oracle hardware products as it sought to boost the performance of its IT systems, including the vendor's Exadata Database Machine and its Exalogic Elastic Cloud solution.

BioPak replaces Sage, MYOB with NetSuite

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Cloud-based business software company NetSuite this week revealed that Sydney-based sustainable packaging company BioPak over a year ago replaced a number of point solutions such as MYOB and Sage's customer relationship management software with a comprehensive NetSuite-based solution for its business applications.

Spear-phishers targeted Reserve Bank in 2011

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The Reserve Bank of Australia has on several occasions been the target of targeted malicious email traffic that sought to help external attackers breach the organisation's IT security systems, it was revealed this morning, although it is believed the bank was able to fend off the attacks before they got access to any sensitive information.

Shocker: Qld Health payroll tender was rushed

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From Computerworld this week comes the incredible, unbelievable, amazing news that the tendering process for Queensland Health’s colossally botched payroll systems upgrade may have been just a teensy bit rushed, and that the Government may not have allocated sufficient funding for the project.