Published on the 14/08/2014 | 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 AND DEPARTURES

Adobe has appointed Chris Skelton as Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand based in Sydney. He has been leading Adobe’s Digital Media business across A/NZ, Southeast Asia and Korea since 2012, where he worked to build out new markets and verticals in the Digital Media business and ensure existing target industries continue to grow their adoption of Adobe products. He has over 20 years’ experience working in senior positions for global organisations including Insight, SAP and Cisco Systems.

Jade Software has appointed a new CFO Ben O’Grady, director of sales A/NZ Ana Sever and director of marketing Caroline Francis, bringing new blood to an organisation that is legendary for its employee retention. Managing director David Lindsay told iStart that the creation of the roles are a result of Jade’s continued global expansion into new markets and continuing significant demand for its products and services. He said he has set aggressive growth targets for the company across its three key lines of business (technology, solutions and logistics) and the additional talent will assist in meeting these goals. “All three roles are new positions in the business and are the result of executing our growth strategy and expanding into new markets and industries,” Lindsay explained.

Listed Wynyard Group, a provider of advanced crime analytics and risk management software, has appointed founding CTO, Roger Jarquin, to lead the company’s Crime Science Research Institute in New Zealand, which brings together big data, advanced analytics, crime science and know-how with the single-minded objective of cutting crime. Jarquin will now focus on applying and commercialising advanced crime prevention research, working closely with leading academic institutions, complementary technology companies and Wynyard’s financial services and government customers. Jarquin has recently been appointed Adjunct Senior Fellow, Department of Mathematics and Statistics at University Of Canterbury. He was previously the chair of the Software Engineering Advisory Board and was a prime mover in establishing the NZi3 Innovation Institute.

Greg Miller has been appointed as local head of SAP A/NZ’s recently announced Global Partner Operations (GPO) organisation (previously Ecosystem & Channels). Miller will be responsible for accelerating the company’s growth through new and existing sales channels, particularly for SAP HANA. The GPO organisation will also manage the SAP Business One application set for small businesses, SAP’s OEM business, and other strategic partnerships. Miller joined SAP A/NZ in 2012 as chief operating officer. He has more than 20 years of local and international experience in the IT field, including senior positions at Unisys, Oracle, Peoplesoft and Siebel.

Fronde has appointed globally awarded marketer and leader in social and digital technologies, Andy Lark to its board of directors. Lark is the CEO of Group Lark a global consultancy, based in Sydney, that drives brand and digital transformation for the world’s leading enterprises. Fronde chairman Jon Mayson said, “We are very fortunate to appoint a director of Andy’s calibre to the board. He brings more than 20 years’ experience in technology, globalising sales and marketing, and driving the adoption of new technologies. Andy brings firsthand knowledge of the Australian market which is an added advantage given its importance following our acquisition of OnlineOne last year.” The company has increased director numbers in order for Lark to join as an independent director.

Mega Limited, the end-to-end encrypted cloud storage company, has announced Graham Gaylard as its new CEO to lead the company in its new growth phase. Gaylard has 20 years’ experience in new ventures and start-ups, having set up Wave Internet which he sold five years on and NetValue which now employs 45 people. He is also currently a director of Real Time Genomics and the chair of Soda Inc.Mega was originally established by Kim Dotcom as a replacement for his doomed Megaupload and is exploring a backdoor listing on the NZX via TRS. Acting CEO, Stephen Hall, would remain in the business to focus on the anticipated listing and merger with TRS.

Mike Bowman, former executive director of Bancorp New Zealandand son of the late Greentree founder Don Bowman, has been appointed to ERP vendor Greentree’s board of directors. Greentree’s CEO, Peter Dickinson is delighted with the skill and experience that Bowman will bring to the Greentree board and the bonus of the continuing family connection. Bowman has a BSc and LLB and is a specialist in company and commercial law, banking and finance. He has served as a senior solicitor at Russell McVeagh and was head of corporate finance at Bancorp New Zealand. He holds several other directorships and today he continues working for Bancorp as a consultant, is an independent investment banking and business advisor, as well as a private investor and company director.

Hitachi Data Systems has appointed Andrew McGee as Australia and New Zealand chief technology officer (CTO) and pre-sales engineer to drive the company’s business-defined IT strategy. McGee is an experienced technologist and will help to drive Hitachi’s strategy of helping businesses to more closely match technology with their strategic objectives. McGee will also manage an Australian-wide team of systems engineers and technical sales people. He joined Hitachi in 2006 and has many years of experience working hands on with mainframe systems, enterprise storage, and supporting customers in industries as diverse as government, banking, mining, manufacturing and insurance.

DEALS SIGNINGS AND IMPLEMENTATIONS

Cloud business software vendor NetSuite has announced that wealth management and financial services company Yellow Brick Road, has gone live on NetSuite as its business management software platform. Yellow Brick Road needed a scalable, flexible and easy-todeploy business management solution for its Sydney head office that could keep pace with its steep growth trajectory. It chose NetSuite to streamline its core business processes, including financial management, financial planning, CRM, and analytics and reporting. Richard Shaw, CFO of Yellow Brick Road, said, “We now have a solution that has the capacity to adapt to our changing needs over the next ten plus years, not just a stopgap measure to get us through the next couple of years”.

Not-for-profit healthcare group, Epworth Health Care, which runs eight hospitals in Victoria has implemented TechnologyOne’s OneHealth software to replace a number of paper and computerbased systems that manage 10,000 assets worth more than $1 billion. TechnologyOne offers a single system to manage financials, supply chain, assets, payments, governance, risk management, planning and budgeting and the new solution has enabled Epworth to open two new hospitals in Camberwell and Hawthorn without adding more facilities management staff, with a third due to open in Geelong in 2016. It has also helped its biomedical department to manage its $50 million worth of biomedical assets and pioneer treatments and services for patients.

TechnologyOne has also helped the City of Newcastle to improve customer service by replacing disparate IT systems with an enterprise solution, OneCouncil. The Council launched the first release of TechnologyOne’s preconfigured OneCouncil solution covering finance, supply chain, payroll and employee self-service at the beginning of July. Council’s IT Manager Greg Brent said Council was running early versions of TechnologyOne financials, supply chain and enterprise content management (ECM) along with various other systems and chose to re-implement the full TechnologyOne enterprise solution while adopting the proven processes of OneCouncil. “We needed to shift from a best of breed approach to an enterprise solution, in order to support the internal drive for more effective service delivery.”

The New Zealand Ministry of Education has selected local IT supplier Optimation to deliver a replacement system for its School Transport Resourcing Administration System (STRAS), which records the students eligible for school transport assistance and the details of the contracts with the providers that transport them, managing $175 million of student transport payments at the Ministry each year. Optimation already holds one of the largest IT application outsource engagements in New Zealand with the Department of Corrections and Optimation executive chairman Neil Butler said the company is delighted to be engaged on a significant development project with wider benefits for the local ICT sector and the New Zealand community.

The not-for-profit Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF), which offers genomic services to academic, applied research and commercial markets, is deploying a high-performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) core network by Brocade across its entire estate. The new network will help AGFR to cope with the ever-growing size of big data sets – the latest generation of gene sequencing technology generates data files of over a terabyte off each of its five systems every week. The AGRF’s IT infrastructure at the Melbourne node, which is the first to go live, has been upgraded to deliver the compute power, storage capacity and network performance to handle the growing data challenge.

Digital currency platform igot.com is in the early stages of securing funding from international investors. Founded by Australian internet entrepreneur Rick Day and New York attorney Patrick Manasse, and head-quartered in Australia, igot is a one-stop shop to buy, sell, send and request cryptocurrencies safely. It is one of a few digital currency providers to feature BPAY and direct debit facilities. Following an initial round of seed funding, Jesse Chenard, a prominent US entrepreneur and co-founder of Tremor Video, has been announced as both a major investor and company advisor. Day said: “Although it’s early days, securing the support from well-known investors such as Mr Chenard is a positive step forward in our company’s growth and our plans to break into the new and emerging market of cryptocurrency.”

Australian provider of Workforce Management solutions (WFM)ComOps, has been engaged to implement its Microster WFMsolution for recruitment agency Hays, to completely automate award interpretation of timesheets for in excess of 100 awards. Hays said it found the Microster WFM solution to be the only WFM solution able to meet its specific award interpretation and performance level requirements, while being the most capable, flexible and configurable WFM solution in the Australian market. Hays’ Asia Pacific finance director, Phil Allen, said: “I have been looking at Award Interpretation solutions on and off for approximately 15 years and this is the most capable and flexible I have seen.”

Data discovery vendor Qlik has introduced Qlik Sense Desktop, a free version of its data visualisation application that allows business users to rapidly create interactive visualisations, reports, and dashboards and uncover hidden associations and insights that may otherwise be overlooked. The free Qlik Sense Desktop is available for a standalone installed Windows client. The complete Qlik Sense offering is expected to be generally available in September 2014 and will have key enterprise capabilities and be server-based enabling server-side development from any device, flexible mobile use, collaboration and sharing, custom development and data integration.

New Zealand-based technology entrepreneur and ex-Localist CEO Christina Domecq has launched a free cloud-based business navigator, named Ora. The software platform is designed to help small businesses do better business via a set of features and algorithms provided by Ora and its partners Westpac, Xero, MYOB and Vend. Ora tracks all competitor information and activity, market insights, business leads and relevant information from digital, print and broadcast channels, which are all captured and turned in to actionable items within the platform’s centralised feed and dashboard. It also integrates with accounting and banking services. Ora’s team of experts provides the best growth solutions matched to the business’s specific needs.

SAP has announced its first New Zealand adopter of its cloudbasedBusiness ByDesign suite, launched a year ago. New Zealand surf and beach lifestyle brand Coastlines has chosen SAP’s cloud solution and IT-partner Soltius to help it meet the strict supply chain requirements of its heavyweight retail clients. At only 23 people in size, Coastlines is not the usual 1000-seat SAP client, but the implementation shows that the software megavendor is broadening its offering to compete with younger cloud vendors. Graeme Riley, managing director of SAP New Zealand said: “To successfully compete in global markets, Kiwi businesses need systems that are up and running fast at a low cost of ownership, while enabling scalable and rapid innovation.”

Inland Revenue has taken a number of steps forward in itsBusiness Transformation project, which will cost up to $1.7 billion over the next 10 years, and will create a modern system that reduces compliance costs, integrates automatically with New Zealand businesses’ IT systems and means people will engage with the IRD less frequently, more simply, and increasingly online. A couple of months ago it announced the release of its Request for Proposal for a design provider for its core systems upgrade. The closed RFP was released to multi-nationals Accenture and Capgemini, who were shortlisted during the Inland Revenue’s Expression of Interest phase. Both have extensive international experience in delivering tax and technology programmes, and have been working with New Zealand companies during the process, according to Inland Revenue. In July Inland Revenue also announced it is seeking nominations from the New Zealand technology sector for inclusion in an IT industry reference group designed to offer a forum where outside perspectives can be shared and views exchanged in a free and frank manner between the ICT sector and the Inland Revenue.

NBN Co which is building and operating Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) has renewed a key contract with Service Stream for the connection of homes and businesses to high speed broadband. The contract renewal is for a further term of two years and has an estimated value of $140 million, excluding materials and has two one-year extension options. The announcement continues the momentum of the rollout with 199,067 families and businesses currently connected to the NBN across the various access technologies.

Millbrook Resort is the first club in New Zealand to install a state-of-the- art GPS system in its golf carts. The cloud-based Golf Pilot system by GPS Systems International has features that cater for both golfers and club managers. The interactive system enables players to see where they are on the course, and access pro-tips – in any one of 60 languages. Millbrook has fitted all 50 of its carts with the units. The real-time map shows management where each of the carts are at any given time. Other features include weather and two-way communication. In the future players will also be able to order refreshments to be delivered direct to the golf cart or be ready for when they come off the course.

MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS

ASX-listed telecommunications provider Vocus Communications Limited has entered into an agreement to acquire 100 percent of the issued capital of New Zealand fibre provider FX Networks Limited for an enterprise value of $NZ115.8m (approx. $A107.7m). Vocus, which provides data centre, dark fibre and international internet connectivity to service providers across Australia, NZ, Singapore and the US, claims the acquisition will make it the third largest network operator in New Zealand and “the clear leader in trans- Tasman telecommunications and data centres”. FX’s extensive high-quality fibre optic backbone network throughout the North and South Islands of New Zealand, combined with the New Zealand Government-sponsored UltraFast Broadband network, means Vocus will now have extensive fibre reach to across the majority of New Zealand.

CallPlus has purchased local ISP Orcon, joining residential ISPsSlingshot and Flip to take the CallPlus Group to 15 percent market share, with over 220,000 customers. The privately-owned, New Zealand-based group now has more than 500 staff, and a turnover in excess of $200 million. CallPlus CEO Mark Callander said the company is now strongly positioned “to further take on the big boys”. The acquisition is part of the on-going consolidation of the ISP market into a shrinking pool of players that are large enough to be able to offer a full competitive suite of products, services and support.

Mint Wireless Limited has announced it has secured a new distribution partner and achieved significant operational milestones, including committed orders for 15,000 user licenses from new and existing distribution partners. With the Chip & PIN mandate coming into effect from August 2014 in Australia and October 2014 in New Zealand, the demand for Mint’s PCI compliant mobile payment solutions has accelerated. Mint has also entered into an agreement with WolfStrike where it will offer integrated payments across multiple mobile devices under WolfStrike’s own brand to customers across Australia. WolfStrike’s customers will be able to turn their iOS or Android devices into fully-featured credit and debit card payment systems and accept payments anywhere, anytime.

Australia Post has chosen the Captell solution for IT capacity and performance reporting to give the Australia Post IT team consistent, automated reports across all its IT infrastructure. Australia Post will use the Captell system to centralise its capacity and performance data from all monitoring software it has in place, including: SCOM, NetApp, IBM Tivoli, HP/ESM, event management data, Service Deskincident, problem, change and configuration data, OEM/Grid, data from VCentre and other manually produced data. Captell’s ability to build and publish fully automated report documents means Australia Post will be able to implement a capacity management system without a time or cost burden on the organisation.

Telecom New Zealand confirmed that it would change its name to Spark on 8th August 2014 to reflect the fact the company has moved beyond the home telephone into a digital world. In line with this desire, Spark (Telecom) then announced it had signed a conditional agreement to purchase all of the shares in leading business cloud services specialist Appserv Limited. Spark (Telecom) chief executive Simon Moutter said that the acquisition of Appserv adds to the significant investment in cloud services and provides a major new piece in the cloud jigsaw. Spark Ventures (Telecom Digital Ventures ) has also made a strategic investment in start-up application services business App La Carte in a move that recognises the rapid growth in the use of mobile apps by customers, and to accelerate the company’s product development pipeline.

A ground-breaking trans-Tasman partnership will provide New Zealand scientists and researchers access to very high-speed global connectivity, offering capacity for ‘big data’ transport between New Zealand and the rest of the world. The partnership is between theResearch and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd (REANNZ), its Australian equivalent AARNet and the Southern Cross Cable Network. REANNZ CEO Steve Cotter said: “This will allow New Zealand science and research to be at the leading edge of global research and have the same capabilities as their trans-Tasman peers.”

Specialist SAP solutions and consulting company UXC Oxygenhas acquired Australian-basedClarity Consulting Group Australia Pty Ltd as part of its plan to extend its customer base and further strengthen its position in the Australian market. CEO, Stuart Dickinson, said building its customer base is a fundamental part of UXC Oxygen’s strategy to complement its SAP consulting business with recurring revenue activities in the areas of software maintenance and software sales.

Tele2 AB and NetComm Wireless Limited have entered into a strategic partnership to create new machine-to-machine (M2M)/internet of things (IoT) opportunities for vertical markets. This will be achieved by transforming asset management capabilities in areas such as industrial automation, security, smart cities and healthcare. The alliance forms part of a broader collaboration between leading M2M/IoT ecosystem partners selected by Tele2 and NetComm Wireless to provide end-to-end solutions easily applied to a broad range of M2M/IoT applications across key industry sectors.

New Zealand integration and EDI company Flow Software is expanding its operations in Australia. Flow, which integrates applications and automates business processes, will be establishing a direct presence in Sydney to support its growing customer and partner base. To avoid confusion the Australian distributor of the same name is being renamed and rebranded asFusion Factory, and will continue its existing business as a distributor, implementer and support provider of Flow products.

Spark/Telecom’s ICT services division Gen-i has entered in to an agreement with Australian telco Telstra which will mean Gen-i will be able to leverage Telstra’s services in Australia. These services were previously delivered to its A/NZ customers through AAPT, which used to belong to parent company Telecom. The new deal will result in a significantly reduced Gen-i presence in Australia. Gen-i is already working with Telstra and its customers to transfer as many of its existing Australia services to Telstra, where this makes sense for both parties.