Published on the 12/03/2015 | Written by Newsdesk

A wrap-up of news stories that caught our eye over the the past quarter of ICT news including appointments, departures, deals done, implementations completed, mergers, acquisitions and partnerships…

APPOINTMENTS
Canon NZ managing director Yusuke Mizoguchi has been promoted to managing director of Canon Australia/Canon Oceania, based in Sydney, effective as of 1 April 2015. He will also take up the position of chairman of Canon NZ and chairman of Canon’s Australian R&D company, CiSRA. Kim Conner, currently the general manager of Canon NZ consumer imaging, will replace Mizoguchi in the role of managing director in New Zealand, becoming the first female Managing Director for the Canon Oceania Region.

NetSuite, a leading provider of cloud-based financials/ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, has appointed Lee Thompson as its senior vice president and GM, Asia Pacific & Japan. In this role, Thompson will be charged with heading up NetSuite’s sales operations and building a world-class sales organisation across the entire Asia Pacific and Japan region. Thompson brings more than 20 years of sales leadership experience to NetSuite, having worked for high tech companies including TechnologyOne, Oracle and Salesforce.com in the UK, Sweden, Australia, Canada and Singapore. Most recently, Thompson was operating officer at TechnologyOne.

Westpac Australia has appointed Brian Hartzer to the position of chief executive officer. One of his first actions was to make chief information officer Dave Curran a direct report. He also appointed David McLean as CEO of Westpac New Zealand; McLean has been acting in the role since last August when Peter Clare stood aside after a heart attack. Strengthening the New Zealand executive team will be the newly-appointed CIO, Dawie Olivier who will also report directly to McLean, signaling the strategic importance of technology to Westpac.

Qrious, the information analytics business launched by Spark New Zealand in March 2014, has announced the appointment of David Wills as technology director. David joined Qrious from Xero where he was the GM of platform services. Prior to that David spent five years as CIO at UK Telecommunications regulator Ofcom. Ed Hyde, chief executive of Qrious, is excited by the appointment saying, “David brings a wealth of experience and world class expertise to Qrious. This is a significant move for us, and having him on board underpins our ambitions to be the number one information analytics business in New Zealand.”

Well-known technology industry face Graeme Mueller has been appointed research specialist as CEO of NZTech, the industry group which promotes the growth of the technology industry in New Zealand. NZTech said it was looking for someone dynamic, energetic and capable to take over the reins from out-going CEO Candace Kinser as her three year tenure came to a close. Muller was most recently a managing partner of Ecosystem research and advisory firm in Auckland which he launched just over a year ago. Prior to that he spent a decade at IDC in a number of international management roles, during which he was responsible for the overall management, research services and sales and marketing for a variety of territories and across a number of hi-profile hi-tech industries.

Tableau, a global leader in what it calls “rapid-fire business analytics software”, has announced the appointment of Nigel Mendonca as its first Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand. Mendonca is tasked with ensuring customer success and driving the growth of Tableau in ANZ. Mendonca has more than 22 years of technology expertise, having previously held senior roles at Salmat, Symantec, and Xpedite Systems/PGi. Mendonca’s appointment comes at a time of rapid growth for Tableau in the ANZ region. Local Tableau customers include Mater Health Services, Ray White, University of Western Sydney, Silver Fern Farms, Sportsbet, Anomaly and Inivio.

Texas-based Global Shop Solutions, a leader in producing ERP software for a variety of manufacturing, job shop, engineer-to-order, make-tostock, and mixed-mode industries, has announced that it is opening a new office in Auckland, New Zealand. Until now New Zealand sales and support have been managed from its Australian office as part of the vendor’s overall Asian Pacific operations. The new office will be overseen by William William, described as a “veteran Global Shop Solutions employee” and manager of the Singapore, Indonesia and Australian offices.

DEALS, SIGNINGS AND IMPLEMENTATIONS
Qlik has announced that Mind Australia, a leading provider of community mental health services in Victoria and South Australia, is using QlikView to streamline reporting processes and provide managers visibility into how they are tracking against business targets and key performance indicators (KPIs). Mind generates a significant amount of data on clients, employees, finance and business targets, which needs to be analysed and acted upon in real time. Qlik will seamlessly integrate all data sources into one, reducing reporting requirements and giving a clear and single view of how the business is performing against its targets.

Briscoe Group, one of New Zealand’s best-known retailers, has boosted its reporting and decisionsupport capabilities with the implementation of the SAP HANA platform taking it a step closer to real-time analytics. With 80 Briscoes Homeware, Rebel Sports and Living & Giving retail outlets around New Zealand, Briscoe Group captures thousands of individual transactions every day. The faster processing that SAP HANA offers has immediately enabled the group to access its data more rapidly and enhance and support decision-making across all of it brands. Implementation services were provided by Briscoe’s longterm technology partner RealTech.

New Zealand’s largest provider of video conferencing equipment and technology for the health industry, Vivid Solutions, has extended its services to patient’s tablets and smartphones. It already provides a fully managed, secure and dedicated video conferencing network to clinicians from almost every DHB in the country and the new application extends the network to homes of patients requiring frequent in-home medical supervision via their own personal tablets or smartphones. This will reduce commute times and eliminate the need for specialised devices and has the potential to save millions of dollars for the DHBs.

Film Victoria has replaced its legacy financial software with Microsoft Dynamics NAV. A growing demand for its services led Film Victoria to decide to overhaul its funding programmes, which meant upgrading its ageing financial software. Film Victoria wanted both flexibility in its financial reporting and easy integration with Microsoft CRM to streamline its business processes, and chose EBS, a Melbourne-based company with extensive experience in deploying the Microsoft Dynamics NAV enterprise management software to implement the new solution.

Jade Software capped off a successful 2014 with a seven terminal sale of its master terminal port management software to Abu Dhabi Ports Company, further enhancing Jade’s reputation as the mixed cargo terminal operating system of choice in the Gulf region. The sale ends a year of substantial multi-terminal deals in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, including a record breaking third quarter. Jade’s Managing Director David Lindsay says: “We are excited to have formed this new relationship with Abu Dhabi Ports and look forward to working closely with them to not only achieve their operational goals, but also to support their growth aspirations for the future.”

Sitecore, a global leader in delivering website customer experience management solutions, announced that the Colliers International Australia and New Zealand websites are now live and providing visitors with a personalised, multi-channel web customer experience – putting the customer at the heart of every interaction. The new Colliers websites were built by Sitecore experts, OneClick, using the Sitecore platform and are consistent with the Colliers International United States and Canadian websites which OneClick also develop and maintain. The sites will also support the soon-to-come ‘My Colliers’ feature which enables customers and end users to take complete control of the browsing experience by connecting to the site through their LinkedIn account and providing the ability to manage subscriptions, preferences and stored information. They also boast an enhanced search capability with a ‘predictive search’ and a ‘drag map’ where site visitors in New Zealand and Australia can click on a listing and instantly view its location. Global critical communications company Tait Communications has been chosen for Australia’s first national Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) Tier III network. Tait has clinched a deal with Australian telecommunications provider Vertel to deliver the solution that provides digital voice and data services to help government and enterprise customers increase their operational effectiveness and efficiency.

MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS
Australian web hosting provider, Crucial, has announced it has acquired AVS Networks, one of the nation’s oldest domain hosting and registration companies. Sydneybased Crucial has acquired AVS Networks (NSW) in an agreement which will see all AVS Networks customers move across to Crucial’s award-winning platform. The acquisition will also see Crucial strengthen its position in the small business hosting sector, with the addition of AVS CEO and founder, Nigel Burke, to its team. AVS Networks customers will migrate to Crucial in early February.

CA Technologies has announced it is working with a selection of Australian channel partners – including, Melbourne IT, RXP and UXC – to help local businesses fully leverage their investments in Amazon Web Services (AWS). This will be achieved using CA Unified Infrastructure Management (formerly CA Nimsoft Monitor) for Amazon Web Services which allows organisations to monitor and manage service levels in the cloud. Darren Reid, senior vice president, partners & alliances – Asia Pacific & Japan at CA Technologies, says that CA UIM is a popular choice for companies deploying AWS because of its ability to use insights into resource usage to further leverage their AWS investment.

The Australian brand RosterLive is no more, having been subsumed into WorkForce Software which bought the business in early 2013 and is now pushing ahead with rebranding in A/NZ. The RosterLive cloud-based workplace scheduling system used by around 250 organisations across Australia and New Zealand has been renamed EmpLive following a rebranding by its new owners. RosterLive meanwhile has been rebranded as WFS Australia. Leslie Tarnacki, WorkForce Software’s vice president of HR worldwide, and general manager of the company in A/NZ said that since the merger the Australian operations have doubled in terms of headcount and that the company now employs 70 people in Sydney and Melbourne. The vast majority of clients are in Australia, though the company has also deployed its solution for three New Zealand businesses and one in Japan, which are all serviced out of Sydney.

One of Australasia’s largest independent business technology solutions providers, Datacom, and contact centre software company, Interactive Intelligence Group have announced a strategic partnership that will see them bring the best infrastructure, experience and tools on offer to contact centres across Australia and New Zealand. The combination of Datacom Connect’s flexible and proven cloudbased infrastructure and contact centre solutions with Interactive Intelligence’s Customer Interaction Center (CIC) to bring a rich will mean the partnership can offer a resilient and scalable contact centre solution to its customers. The partnership enables Datacom to extend the provision of sales, service and support across New Zealand and Australia for the entire range of Interactive Intelligence communications solutions.

Cloud business analytics firm Adaptive Insights and performance management specialist Tridant have announced that they have partnered. Tridant plans to leverage the Adaptive Insights cloud-based performance management and analytics platform via the partnership to assist clients to shift from outright purchases arrangements to flexible subscriptions.

Deloitte Digital has announced the expansion of its Cloud ERP Integration practice through a strategic alliance with MuleSoft. The alliance will enable Deloitte to continue to help its customers accelerate their digital transformation initiatives in the areas of mission critical data, application development and mobile experiences. “Clients bring us their challenges knowing we have what it takes to create a new business vision for their companies,” said Martin Stansbury, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and cloud ERP and integration practice leader.

ASX-listed IT services company UXC Limited has started 2015 at a fast clip with growing enterprise demand. Besides tackling the fundamental technology needs of all enterprises, UXC has also established a series of vertical industry strengths. UXC Connect for example has developed a range of solutions targeted at the healthcare market. According to Ian Poole, UXC Connect CEO, particular focus was being paid to patient experience and healthcare business’s financial performance, which was essential given Australia’s ageing demographic, specialist skills constraints, and constrained economy. The SAP solutions and cloud company UXC Oxygen meanwhile, has become a preferred Platinum partner of Concur, the leading provider of travel and expense management solutions. The Concur cloud-based platform manages every step of a business traveller’s journey before, during, and after the trip and is used by more than 27 million people. It is fully cloud-based and mobile enabled and integrates seamlessly with UXC Oxygen’s customers’ existing investment in SAP technology.