Qld’s email project stuck in low gear
The Queensland-based Courier Mail newspaper revealed this week that the state's Labor Government has spent $46 million on its whole of government email platform, despite it so far catering to just 2,000 accounts.
Elders inks seven-year outsourcing deal with HP
In an announcement yesterday, HP revealed that diversified local company Elders had signed it for a seven-year infrastructure and applications services agreement. Elders is a 172-year-old company incorporating the Elders rural services businesses and the automotive and forestry operations acquired and developed by Futuris Corporation.
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.
Novell to boost “best product” SuSe in Australia
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.
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.
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.
Westpac appoints McKinnon lieutenant Whincup CIO
Top tier bank Westpac has appointed one of Bob McKinnon's top lieutenants, UK import Clive Whincup, to succeed him as chief information officer.
Qld picks new whole of government CIO
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.
Defence may have Thales thin clients by 2015
It looks like there has finally been some action with regard to the Department of Defence's long-running plans to pilot thin client desktops to replace its duplicated desktop PC infrastructure problem. iTNews reports that Thales has been chosen for a brief pilot of the technology.
NSW releases draft ICT strategy to lead tech sector
The NSW State Government has released a draft ICT strategic framework, which it hopes will help it become a leader in technology across Australia.
Breaking Victoria’s IT fail cycle: What not to do
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?
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.
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 GOVERNMENT IT IN FLAMES: $1.4 billion over budget, all projects late or failed
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.
An insider’s look at Aussie app development
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.
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.
Amazon hiring Sydney datacentre manager
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.
Australia’s IT shared services paradigm is dead
It appears that shared services are having a hard time. Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria have all had their fair share of issues with shared services, and this is happening quite consistently in other parts of the world.
Macquarie follows Westpac in IT offshoring
The Australian Financial Review late yesterday reported that financial giant Macquarie Group (commonly known as Macquarie Bank, although it has very diverse interests) is following Westpac in laying off Australian IT staff in favour of shifting jobs to India.
CIO gives top seven tips for cloud adoption
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.
McDonald’s swaps out IBM support for Unisys
The Australian division of fast food chain McDonald's today confirmed long-running industry rumours that it had given incumbent IT outsourcer IBM the boot, instead picking rival firm Unisys to support its IT infrastructure in a new five-year deal worth about $30 million.
PIPE founder, Gordon Bell invest in OrionVM
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.
The Westpac dialectic: IT outsourcing and warring narratives
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.
Funnelback renews Govt search deal
Funnelback has renewed its long-running contract with the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) to provide whole of government search services.
Does Australia need a cloud computing visionary?
On the blog of local cloud computing startup Ninefold, the company's managing director Peter James raises an interesting question -- does Australia need a cloud computing visionary to really push the nation's cloud computing journey forward?
Outsourcing to impact 188 Westpac jobs
Top-tier Australian bank Westpac today confirmed 188 local jobs would be affected by a shift in its technology sourcing strategy which is slated to see some internal work handed off to external suppliers.
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.
Australian CIOs optimistic about future
Microsoft and Fujitsu this week revealed the findings from the pair's first Insights Quarterly Report of Australian CIOs, offering a window into the issues steering IT strategy in Australia’s businesses and government bodies. The planned quarterly survey by independent research firm Connection Research found a high level of optimism among the 207 Australian CIOs who were part of the study.
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.
When mainstream media covers cloud startups
Hilarious video above of a segment broadcast recently on Channel 10 news about Australian cloud computing startup OrionVM.
Melbourne Cup with Atlassian looks fun
Nice little video produced about Melbourne Cup Day at Australian software company Atlassian. Looks like quite a lot of fun was had by all :)
NSW retailer pays $50k for Microsoft piracy
Microsoft Australia has revealed that PC and laptop retailer The Laptop Factory Outlet, based in South Granville, NSW, will fork out $50,000 in damages for infringing the software giant's copyright, after it Windows Certificates of Authenticity (COA) from used PCs on new PCs loaded with counterfeit software.
CHOGM delegates greeted with Windows Vista
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.
TelePresence saves Govt $12m
The Federal Government has saved an impressive $12 million in travel expenses by setting up Cisco’s TelePresence solution, according to a statement jointly issued by the networking vendor and its partner Telstra in Canberra this week, with just one TelePresence meeting involving 12 separate locations, for example, delivering a $100,600 saving in travel costs.
Telstra launches Cisco’s Android tablet
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.
Uni of Sydney students get virtual desktops?
Fascinating story at CIO Magazine today about the University of Sydney deploying virtual desktop infrastructure; but to students — not staff.
Delays hit NAB’s core banking project
Delays appears to have struck the National Australia Bank's core banking modernisation project, with the bank yesterday revealing it had pushed back the implementation of the foundation of its new Oracle-based platform to 2012, having focused on other aspects of the project this year.
Meanwhile, at Linux.conf.au …
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.
IBM suffers “catastrophic failure” at health dept
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.
CBA’s Kaching app raises privacy concerns
One of Australia's leading privacy advocates has raised concerns about the Commonwealth Bank's new mobile, social and near field communications payments application, highlighting the fact that it has the potential to eliminate much of the anonymity offered by paying for goods and services through cash.
Federal Govt kicks off cloud purchasing cycle
The Federal Government's centralised IT strategy branch has kicked off a major purchasing initiative which will inform the way it purchases infrastructure-, software- and platform-as-a-service offerings over the next few years.
‘Kaching’: New CBA mobile, social, NFC payments app
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has revealed plans to launch a new combination smartphone application and associated hardware accessory that allow customers to make quick payments from their mobile phone to anyone with an email address, phone number of Facebook friendship, as well as to merchants via near field communications (NFC).
ATO in huge Windows 7 rollout
The Australian Taxation Office joined the throng of Australian organisations confirming plans to finally ditch Microsoft's legacy Windows XP operating system and adopt Windows 7, in a move that will also see the agency's employees finally freed from decade-old web browser Internet Explorer 6.
REA Group: Another complex cloud case study
Computerworld has published a fascinating article about the cloud computing strategy of REA Group, which operates the realestate.com.au family of websites. What I find fascinating about the company's strategy is that it's not using just one type of cloud computing technologies to deliver services -- it's using several.
Govt knee-deep in IPv6 transition
The Federal Government's top IT strategy branch has revealed it is knee-deep in the midst of a government-wide transition to version 6 of the Internet Protocol, as global availability of addresses in the current version 4 standard continues to run low.
iPhone, BlackBerry, Android: A parliamentary headache
If you'd been listening in to the ongoing Senate Estimates hearings in Federal Parliament over the past week, you'd have witnessed an interesting phenomenon which perfectly encapsulates the Bring Your Own Technology headache suffered by many chief information officers at present.
First State rewards security tip with legal threat
Whoah. It looks like Australian superannuation fund First State Super has had a massive, corporate-style over-reaction to a security analyst, Patrick Webster who politely let it know about an obvious, glaring security hole in its online platform.
Griffith Uni dumps Lotus for Gmail
Queensland's Griffith University has become the latest educational institution to shift its staff email accounts into Google's cloud, announcing yesterday that it would ditch IBM's troubled Lotus Notes/Domino suite as it did so.
CenITex failure kills govt email for “up to a week”
The problems just keep coming for Victorian IT shared services agency CenITex. Today's damning report into the beleagured organisation comes from The Age, which reports the organisation left thousands of government staffers without email and other IT systems for up to a week.
Tasmania upgrades to Exchange 2010
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.
Telstra deploys Windows 7 internally
The nation's largest telco Telstra has confirmed it is currently in the midst of one of Australia's largest known rollouts of Microsoft's latest Windows 7 desktop platform, in an initiative which will eventually most of the company's 40,000 staff.
Video: Amazing Microsoft Sydney office lightshow
In the video above, Microsoft Australia appears to have taken over several office towers in Sydney's Darling Harbour for the launch of its LightSwitch software (apparently an add-in to the company's Visual Studio development environment. We know we've been pretty hard on Microsoft recently ... but this is amazing. Kudos!
Cloud and fury, signifying nothing
This week, many prominent figures, political and commercial, gathered in that most august of locations, Australia's Parliament House, to launch what was lauded as a landmark report into the development of the nascent cloud computing industry in this nation. But I'm not quite sure what it was all about.
Victoria to replace hacked Myki cards — or not
Victoria’s troubled Myki public transport smartcard project has suffered another high profile setback, with the state to replace over a million of the cards following revelations they can be hacked for free transport.
Microsoft cranks up student indoctrination program
Chalk this one up to a bit of Microsoft mid-October marketing madness. The big M has started advertising for full-time students at Australian universities to spruik its products for it on campuses all around Australia.
NSW appoints digital economy taskforce
The NSW Government has taken another step in meeting its commitment to put development of the state's technology sector at the front of its priority list, announcing today the formation of a taskforce that would help form a ten-year action plan to develop the state's digital economy.
Qld Health dumps GroupWise for Exchange … 2007?
Queensland Health has become the latest Australian organisation to ditch Novell's ageing GroupWise platform in favour of Microsoft Exchange. But why is it migrating to Exchange 2007 and not Exchange 2010?
ANZ Bank and the false cloud narrative
Cloud, cloud, cloud. It's a topic with which Australia's IT industry is currently obsessed with, and for good reason. The clutch of relatively familiar technologies which have been relabelled and integrated into the new cloud reality have mostly been around for years, but have only recently found the true acceptance with customers that they've been seeking for most of that period.
ANZ CIO on the banking IT revolution
ANZ Bank chief information officer Anne Weatherston has delivered a landmark speech outlining her belief that revolutionary technological change is coming to the global banking sector and the steps – from changing business processes, systems and even human approaches – that she believes will be required to address it.
Australia’s Windows 7 love affair turns steamy
It might have taken a few years for Australia to shift into gear when it comes to Windows 7, but evidence is growing that the nation’s initial flirtation with the platform is rapidly accelerating into a full-blown romance.
Uniloc fixed software piracy in 1993
Remember Uniloc? That little Aussie battler software company which took on Microsoft on patents and walked away with half a billion dollars? The company’s founder Ric Richardson this week posted a YouTube clip about the company back in 1993. Let’s just say it was a simpler age.