Published on the 21/07/2014 | Written by Newsdesk

A wrap-up of the past quarter’s ICT news…

APPOINTMENTS AND DEPARTURES  

Gartner has appointed former Australian Government CIO Glenn Archer to the position of research vice president in its public sector  research group, commencing 19 May. Archer will advise Gartner’s  senior government technology and executive clients globally  and his research will focus on  the opportunities in the rapid  transition to digital service delivery by governments. Archer has had  a significant management career in government technology roles  including Australian Government  CIO, lead for AGIMO and CIO of the  Department of Education. He has also held senior roles at Centrelink.

Michael Harte has resigned as CIO of Commonwealth Bank to take  up a new position as the chief  operations and technology officer  at the UK’s Barclays Bank. During  his tenure he led and concluded CBA’s major $A1.1 billion core  systems overhaul, and the role  at Barclay’s is an opportunity for Harte to once again work with a  bank on a major transformation  initiative – Project Transform, which relies extensively on technology to improve customer service, boost  efficiency and reduce costs.

Critical threat assessment and advanced crime analytics software business Wynyard Group has appointed Gareth Cronin as vice president of engineering. Cronin brings more than 15 years of technology and leadership experience to the company and will be responsible for growing and leading the engineering and development group. Cronin leaves his role as head of the product development group for Orion Health to take up this new opportunity.

International online workplace Elance-oDesk has officially  launched in Australia, appointing Kyri Theosas country manager. Theos will be responsible for establishing the company’s  long-term presence in Australia. Ultimately the Australia branch will  have a team of five to be located in key cities around the country. Prior to joining Elance-oDesk, Theos was VP of marketing at Rocket Internet in Indonesia and has also worked as a management consultant for Deloitte in Australia.

Mint Wireless has announced the appointment of Alex Teoh as its new executive chairman and Robin Khuda as its new CEO effective 1 May. Teoh is the company’s  co-founder and former CEO, and  takes over as chairman from Terry Cuthbertson who will remain as an independent non-executive director. Khuda takes on the role  of CEO after holding a number of senior leadership roles with various successful and high growth IT and  telecommunications companies including NEXTDC Limited and PIPE Networks Limited. He played a key role in the latter’s $373 million merger with TPG Telecom Limited in early 2010.

Greg Scholten has been appointed as general manager, SAS Solutions OnDemand for SAS Australia and New Zealand. He will be responsible for delivering the strategy for SAS Cloud Analytics  in Australia & New Zealand. Scholten has held senior IT sales  and marketing positions for more than 20 years in both Australia  and the US. His recent experience  includes three years as the CEO of Longreach Software Inc. in San Francisco. He has also served as northern regional manager for NetApp Australia and Australia country manager for Firescope Inc.

Gen-i has announced the  appointment of Simon Gillespie to the role of general manager of corporate clients. Gillespie replaces incumbent Steve Mills, who has  recently moved into the newly created role of general manager client delivery and operations. Gillespie joins Gen-i from his position as Dimension Data CEO, a role he has held since April  2013. He has spent 20 years at  Dimension Data and starts at Gen-i on 14 July.

DEALS, SIGNINGS AND  IMPLEMENTATIONS

Abel ERP software has been  selected by Hotter Engineering, a Taranaki-based supplier of engineering solutions for  the global dairy industry. In  addition, long-standing Able customer Alsco is now running  Abel in 10 countries. Its newest implementation in Switzerland went live last quarter.

Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) has signed a multi-million dollar  five-year deal with IBM  which will provide CCA with access to its SAP enterprise software supplied as a cloud service. The deal  is initially to support its Australian operations but  eventually IBM will take  on the role of providing  SAP cloud services to CCA businesses in New Zealand,  Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Samoa. CCA says it will cut costs  and use the cloud-based solution to standardise information systems and operations across the  region.

Kiwibank announced the first week of March that it had chosen the SAP for Banking set of solutions to  support its long-term strategic plan. At the same time the New Zealand  Department of Conservation (DOC) released news of its successful implementation of SAP Work Manager, the first of its kind in the  country. Managing director of SAP NZ, Graeme Riley told iStart the recent news is indicative of broader trends that he is seeing amongst customers in New Zealand where SAP is continuing to grow and win new business.

Queensland-based payment integration company Ezidebit has selected Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud Service to deliver more effective and personalised communication to customers. Oracle’s solution was selected  because it provided more flexibility in campaign flow than other alternatives.

Bickford’s Australia and sister organisation Vok Beverages have implemented theStayinFront EdgeCG SaaS CRM and Analytics solution for consumer goods companies and StayinFront TouchCG for mobile devices. Bickford’s legacy CRM and mobile devices were holding back its sales and ability to deliver high quality in-store selling. The new services allow managers from sales offices around Australia to have realtime access to all data to produce reports that enable better decision making.

Telecom NZ has selectedZuora to provide the cloud-based subscription e-commerce platform to support the roll out of its mass  consumer Big Pipe broadband service. Big Pipe, one of Telecom New Zealand’s first Telecom Digital Ventures incubator businesses, is hoping to bring uncapped, no-frills broadband internet services to the New Zealand consumer market. Zuora will providing it with  automated billing and a scalable platform to support growth and  flexibility in pricing and packaging, collection and accounting of  recurring revenue.

Natures Organics, Australian developer, manufacturer and  distributor of naturally-based  personal care and household  cleaning products, has selected Pronto Software’s business management software solution  to improve efficiency and grow its business. Natures Organics had outgrown its previous IT environment and Pronto’s integrated ERP and BI platform, Pronto Xi, will provide greater visibility of day-to-day functions, enable better cost and warehouse management, and improve performance management using IBM Cognos reports embedded within the ERP system.

MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS AND  PARTNERSHIPS

UXC Limited has partnered with Senetas to provide Australian government agencies, defence and large corporations with  tailored data security solutions  and services. The partnership  brings together the certified highspeed, defence-grade encryptors of Senetas with UXC’s end-to-end  ICT offering of advisory, consulting, and network infrastructure services and makes this solution available  to UXC’s Australian government and commercial customer base.

Microsoft Corporation has acquired Kiwi start-up GreenButton, winner of the  2013 NZ Hi-Tech Awards ‘Hi Tech Emerging Company’ category. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. GreenButton specialises in high-performance cloud  computing and has Pixar, NASA and Boeing as customers. It now joins the Microsoft Azure family of cloud  services.

Payment solution provider Transaction Services Group (TSG), parent company of Debitsuccess andFFA Paysmart, has announced  the acquisition UK-basedHarlands Group. TSG’s businesses support  the growing subscription economy. Harlands Group provides business process outsourcing with particular expertise in direct debit and collections management. As a result of the transaction TSG will now collect approximately $NZ2 billion of collections per annum across two million customers worldwide via its stable of companies.

Ricoh Australia has announced that it will be uniting the Ricoh and Lanier Australia managed services  and product offerings under the  Ricoh brand. Lanier was acquired  by the Ricoh Group in 2001 as  part of a global acquisition. This integration aims to boost Ricoh’s market presence in Australia. “We are taking two strong, profitable organisations and building a new, even stronger business in Australia,” said Les Richardson, MD of Ricoh Australia.

Interactive Intelligence and Gen-i in early April announced a partnership in which they will “bring the first fully monitored, managed and integrated cloud contact centre solutions into  the New Zealand market”. Gen-i currently delivers the fully managed, hosted and on-premise options of Interactive Intelligence’s CIC solution and says it will be transitioning clients to the fully scalable cloud contact centre solution early in the new financial year.

Zendesk announced in April that it  had acquired Zopim Technologies Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based leading  provider of live chat software. The acquisition and integration of Zopim will expand the chat capabilities of Zendesk’s customer service platform. “Real-time chat has become the foundation for how customers want to communicate online today. Zopim has a proven track record of providing tools  for proactive engagement,” said Mikkel Svane, founder and CEO of Zendesk, who added that the Zopim team shares Zendesk’s belief in building beautifully simple products that anyone can use.

TechnologyOne has been granted  permission by theInland Revenue Department (IRD) to store data  for its New Zealand customers in Australia on the TechnologyOne Cloud as a third party provider. The IRD’s approval exempts TechnologyOne customers from data sovereignty rules requiring financial records to be stored in New Zealand.