Published on the 09/05/2015 | 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
SugarCRM has boosted its already strong leadership team with the appointment of three new executives, to position it for accelerating growth. Remy Malan was appointed as chief customer officer (CCO); Steve Valenzuela is the company’s new chief financial officer; and Fred Gewant has accepted the role as executive vice president, worldwide sales. Previously, Malan led SugarCRM’s professional services organisation, Valenzuela brings more than 30 years of finance experience leading public and private companies, including many recognised SaaS market leaders and was CFO of Apigee. Gewant has more than two decades of experience leading high-growth enterprise software organisations. Prior to joining SugarCRM, Gewant served as vice president of IBM’s Western region.
A young Microsoft NZ employee, Marianne Ma has been appointed to the Singaporebased leadership role of APAC Business Manager, reporting directly to the President of Microsoft Asia- Pacific, Cesar Cernuda. Ma, joined as an intern and has worked at Microsoft New Zealand for the past three years as channel executive for Microsoft’s SMB and partner team.
Enprise Solutions Australia, which specialises in MYOB enterprise solutions implementation, support and consulting, has appointed Grant Harwood as general manager Auckland. Prior to his appointment Harwood founded ERP reseller Bizpro New Zealand in 2002, which he built into a successful MYOB EXO consulting practice. Enrpise has also appointed two MYOB EXO consultants in New Zealand. The appointments follow Enprise’s recent acquisition of the MYOB EXO division of GlobalBizpro, New Zealand’s second largest MYOB EXO reseller.
Cloud-based POS and e-commerce software provider, Vend has, due to strong business growth in the Asia Pacific region, appointed Jason Philactides to the newly created VP of sales role. Philactides brings over 15 years of expertise in direct sales strategy in the region. Vend Founder and CEO Vaughan Rowsell said: “Our customer numbers in Singapore alone have increased by 600 percent in the past two years, and Australia is our second-largest market behind North America. We want more businesses in the region to unlock the power of the cloud, so we’re really pleased to have Jason on board.”
UXC Limited has appointed Peter Grimes to the newly created role of sales director of strategic accounts. He will focus on building relationships and driving results for UXC and its strategic customers and work directly with MD Cris Nicolli and the UXC business unit CEOs. Previously, Grimes has held senior sales leadership roles at CSC, IBM, EDS and HP.
DEALS, SIGNINGS AND IMPLEMENTATIONS
Beyond Bank, a 100 percent customer-owned financial institution in Australia, has announced that UXC Eclipse will play a key role in its organisation-wide roll-out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Office 365. As a customerowned financial institution, Beyond Bank puts a premium on knowing its customers, hence the adoption of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Office 365 which will deliver a 360-degree view of the customer and help it to understand customer needs, and identify and capitalise opportunities.
New Zealand-government owned global food safety and biosecurity services company AsureQuality is preparing for a cloud-first, mobile-first future by moving to the cloud with TechnologyOne Cloud SaaS offering. It was already using Australia’s TechnologyOne enterprise software in an on-premise environment and decided to move to TechnologyOne’s cloud environment to reduce future IT risks. AsureQuality CFO Alan Bird said the company explored moving its existing TechnologyOne software to a hosted environment, but preferred the benefits of SaaS in terms of future-proofing the business, reducing risk, and freeing up the IT department to work on more value-added activities.
The Earthquake Commission (EQC), with UXC Oxygen, has successfully implemented SAP’s Business One solution in the cloud for its core financial management information system (FMIS). The massive expansion in operations following the Christchurch earthquakes led the EQC to realise it needed a solution that would allow it to easily right-size its operations. It chose the SAP Business One solution because it could provide greater stability and increased control, while also being rapidly scalable and fit for the future. In doing so EQC became the first Government agency to put its financial management system in the Government’s mandated infrastructure-as-a-service cloud hosting platform. The IaaS platform is provided separately by three alternative suppliers; Datacom, IBM and Revera (owned by Spark).
Wireless Nation has signed a contract with ASB to provide the bank’s rural customers and staff with additional free data on its rural broadband solutions, discounts on voice over IP (VoIP) phone lines, and zero-rated data on its satellite broadband network. The arrangement enables qualifying customers to use Wireless Nation’s phone, rural cloud and agribusiness solutions without incurring any data usage or average costs.
Empired has secured a contract with Toyota Motor Corporation Australia Limited (TMCA) to provide managed services across the Microsoft stack including its core customer-facing Microsoft platforms Mail, Sharepoint and Lync systems. Toyota is a substantial strategic opportunity for Empired, as it has vast operations throughout Australia. The confirmation of the contract follows the recent announcement of an NZ$12 million project with the Ministry for Primary Industries.
La Trobe University in Victoria is the first organisation globally to go live with SAP S/4HANA in the cloud, enabling the education institution to increase efficiency across its business units by more than 20 percent. With its sights set on becoming one of the top 500 institutions worldwide by 2017 (part of its Future Ready Strategic Plan), La Trobe sees technology as a cornerstone of pushing the boundaries of the student experience and organisational efficiency – in this case consolidating multiple legacy systems onto a single platform.
The South Australian Government has selected Motorola Solutions Australia to deliver a major project and ongoing services, valued at more than AU$175 million, to upgrade and manage its government radio network (SAGRN) for seven years, with an option to extend for up to five years. The upgrade and management services will deliver considerable, long-term benefits to more than 20 public agencies that depend on it to keep South Australian communities safe, including country and metropolitan fire services, police, ambulance and state emergency services.
Mining company Rio Tinto will move to a ground-breaking information systems and technology (IS&T) delivery model, partnering with Accenture to shape and deliver the transformation. The new model will migrate core enterprise IS&T systems to an as-a-service solution based in the cloud. It also incorporates consumption-based pricing to ensure costs are fully flexible and in line with business demand. The programme will include the modernisation of the company’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) and information management (IM) platforms, consolidating and hosting these applications in the public cloud.
Zuora has announced that it has deployed its subscription billing platform at FarmIQ for its farm management software to New Zealand farm businesses. This will automate the billing and payment operations of its new software business and support rapid scale-up. FarmIQ offers software-as-a-service to New Zealand farm businesses. Janine Ahie, FarmIQ’s CFO says: “We want to represent good use of smart technologies in all facets of our own business.”
MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS
Alibaba.com, the leading platform for global wholesale trade owned by Alibaba Group, announced that it has collaborated with leading e-commerce platform Bigcommerce to deliver an integrated shopping experience for sourcing products from Alibaba.com’s extensive network of Chinese wholesale suppliers. “Small businesses are the backbone of the global economy and it’s important that we help them to grow and stay competitive,” said Michael Lee, international business development and marketing director for Alibaba.com.
2degrees has purchased internet service provider Snap and will launch fixed-mobile services this year, accelerating its growth as a full service communications provider. The two growing challengers will combine under the 2degrees brand. 2degrees CEO Stewart Sherriff says the two companies have enjoyed a selling partnership arrangement for the past two years and the purchase is a logical and comfortable move for both. “Snap provides the perfect complement to our mobile offering and will allow us to deliver the total package that our customers – and theirs – have been asking for.” Snap CEO Mark Petrie will join the 2degrees senior leadership team and lead the fixed services division within 2degrees.
IBM has signed a five-year multimillion-dollar agreement with Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) to move its Asia Pacific customer planning and relationship management systems to the IBM Cloud in Australia. Large fluctuations due to seasonal sales, has made it difficult for CCA to own and manage its own IT infrastructure. Hosting the workloads in IBM’s two SoftLayer cloud centres will provide CCA with a more agile environment to quickly respond to customer needs and will deliver significant annual savings to CCA.
Dicker Data and NEXTDC have targeted the SMB cloud market with a new partnership to provide affordable datacentre solutions. The partnership is aimed at Dicker Data’s extensive base of SMB resellers and unlocks space in NEXTDC’s UTI tier three certified datacentres at an “affordable price”. Dicker Data chairman and chief executive, David Dicker said: “The new partnership was the next step in the cloud solution sell for the company. We currently hold a strong share of the server market and we’re now able to give our partners a place to put that kit on a consumption basis.”
Leading business software company, Greentree International is fuelling growth for some of the world’s fastest growing companies, including NZX-listed Ryman Healthcare and The Evolve Group, which featured in the winning-line up at its recent 2015 Awards. The Awards celebrated the outstanding performers in Greentree’s global community, including representatives from the 10,000 companies that use its software.
KPMG Australia acquired Asia Pacific cyber security technology solutions business, First Point Global, as part of a global strategy to expand the firm’s cyber capabilities. The announcement marks the fourth cyber acquisition by the KPMG international network in the past five months. The combined team, to be known as KPMG First Point Global, will offer clients a full spectrum of cyber services spanning consulting, systems implementation and ongoing support.
An Australasian leader in online travel booking and expense management for business, Serko Ltd., has acquired the business and assets of Arnold Travel Technology in a cash deal from Wotif Group, a leading operator of travel. Darrin Grafton, Serko’s chief executive officer said: “This is an important strategic investment for Serko given we now expect around US$4 billion of Australia’s corporate travel spend (TTV) to be booked through Serko’s platforms.”
Salesforce has announced a new partnership with StartupAUS, a not-for-profit technology start-up advocacy group, to help accelerate Australian start-up ecosystem growth. In addition, Salesforce has announced the launch of the ‘Salesforce for Startups’ programme in Australia, which gives tech entrepreneurs the tools needed to successfully build and grow their businesses. Salesforce says that both the partnership and the Salesforce for Startups programme will provide Australian start-ups with a framework in which they can give back to the local community, based on the Pledge 1% programme.
STA Travel is building on its 10-year relationship with Enablis (formerly Azzurri Communications) as it upgrades its network, and rolls out wi-fi and a new telephony solution to its 73 stores across Australia and New Zealand. STA Travel operates in over 75 countries across 15 time zones and employs in excess of 3000 people speaking more than 60 languages. Con Pazios, IT manager for STA Travel said: “We sat down with Enablis and worked out what Enablis could do to help us achieve our business goals. A critical piece of that was improving the underlying infrastructure and upgrading the network to connect all services into the one platform.”
SugarCRM has acquired the intellectual property rights and other assets of San Francisco-based Stitch, leading developer of personal assistant technologies that enhance productivity for mobile users and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. San Francisco-based Stitch replicates the functions of a real-life assistant by learning how people interact and making timely, relevant suggestions – through an intuitive mobile app that can improve customer experiences.
Tasmanian communications and cloud services provider TasmaNet and Microsoft Dynamics ERP Gold Partner UXC Eclipse have formed a partnership to deliver intelligent business solutions in software-asa- service (SaaS) mode. William Moore, senior executive enterprise solutions and services for UXC said: “The relationship forms a launch pad giving UXC better access to Tasmanian government.” The SaaS partnership will also generate general business and revenue in Tasmania and on the mainland, underpinned by TasmaNet’s secure cloud services.
UXC Oxygen has finalised the acquisition of the business assets of SAP Hybris systems integrator Contiigo. This acquisition puts UXC in a strong leadership position in the omni-channel customer engagement and commerce solutions market and reinforces UXC Oxygen’s position as the only SAP systems integrator in Australasia with a proven digital customer engagement commerce (CEC) offering. UXC Oxygen CEO, Stuart Dickinson said: “This is an exciting and strategic development as it brings together leading capabilities providing us with a wider business sector footprint for our growing digital aand customer experience practice.”
