Published on the 03/12/2014 | 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
UXC Limited, the largest Australian owned ICT consultancy firm in the region, has appointed Craig Wishart to the combined role of group chief information officer (CIO) and chief technology officer (CTO). He will be responsible for the UXC group’s IT strategy, policies and programmes at a time when the group moves towards a more unified IT structure. Wishart has many years of experience in senior roles in technology and operational at Service Steam, ANZ Bank, Telstra, Rio Tinto and Sensis.
Qrious, the smart data business launched by Spark New Zealand (formerly Telecom NZ) in March 2014, has appointed Ed Hyde as chief executive officer. Hyde brings years of senior-level experience in technology companies across New Zealand and the United Kingdom and played a key role in the establishment of Spark’s innovation and incubator business unit Spark Ventures. Rod Snodgrass, chief executive of Spark Ventures, said, “Ed has a strong strategic, product and commercial focus, but more importantly Ed is a guy who wants to push boundaries, challenge the status quo and change the game. That approach and mind-set will be pivotal as Qrious helps New Zealand organisations create value from data, analytics and applications.”
Anne Weatherston has joined the Mint Wireless board as an independent non-executive director, effective immediately. Weatherston has 30 years of experience as a leader of business and technology change in the finance sector and was most recently chief information officer and a member of the management board of ANZ Banking Group responsible for the provision of all technology services across the bank.
Nuance Communications has appointed Robert Schwarz as managing director for Australia and New Zealand. He will be responsible for growing Nuance’s market share and operations in the region and will play a role in strengthening its reputation as a leader in intelligent speech language technologies. Schwartz brings more than 25 years’ experience in IT and telecommunications to the Nuance team and was most recently director of the OEM and managed cloud-as-a-service businesses for SAP Australia and New Zealand.
Airbnb has appointed Sam McDonagh as country manager for A/NZ. McDonagh has over 20 years’ experience in senior management roles at companies including eBay and iiNet. He also co-founded Quickflix in 2003. As Country Manager for ANZ, McDonagh’s first initiatives will be to increase awareness of Airbnb in the region. Dimension Data has appointed Jo Healey as New Zealand CEO to lead its local operations, effective 10 November 2014. With more than 20 years’ experience in the ICT industry, most recently as managing director of Fujitsu New Zealand, Healey takes the reins from Nick Halikias, interim chief executive. Sunil Desai, Dimension Data Asia Pacific COO, says Healey’s proven track record will set Dimension Data in good stead as the business advances as a full spectrum IT service provider in New Zealand. Fujitsu New Zealand, meanwhile, has replaced Healey with Stuart Stitt, who is returning to New Zealand after three years as chief financial officer of Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand.
New Zealand’s IMS Payroll, has appointed Doug Jopling to a newly established role of chief executive. IMS Payroll managing director Kevin Atkinson said Jopling’s appointment heralded an exciting new era for the business, which had recently launched a cloud-based payroll solution to complement its desktop version. IMS Payroll has over 10,000 customers throughout New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
DEALS, SIGNINGS AND IMPLEMENTATIONS
Shellharbour City Council has gone live with TechnologyOne Human Resource & Payroll, andAsset Management – including mobile – moving the company from a non-integrated, best-of-breed approach to a tightly integrated solution. The aim is to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and future-proof its operations as the new solution will also help the council to achieve its mobility and cloud objectives. “We hadn’t really changed our systems over the last ten years and we wanted to introduce something new that was really leading edge,” said Group Manager Information & Customer Services Harin Perera. The council will implement the second phase of the enterprise solution in 2015.
The Warehouse has successfully launched a five-supplier pilot of its new supplier web portal built and run by B2BE, which allows all suppliers to access a website that sends and receives documents by EDI. It also announced that it has a target of getting all its local suppliers to trade electronically by June 2015. The Warehouse’s mantra is ‘better, simpler, cheaper’ and the web portal and EDI are critical to achieving that. Michelle Newsome, relationship manager for B2BE, said: “The deployment of the web portal will ensure that all TWL’s suppliers have the opportunity to send and receive EDI documents and messages without having to invest in the cost and technology of EDI. All suppliers need to use the web portal is access to the internet.”
Reid and Twiname, an importer and distributor for the motor body hardware and industrial and outdoor textiles industries since 1923, has recently implemented Abel ERP Software into its Auckland and Christchurch operations. In addition Nautech Electronics, which designs, manufactures and installs electrical and electronic equipment for thousands of emergency service vehicles, is expanding its use of Abel ERP into its Queensland operation.
Gallagher Bassett, a third party claims administrator, has selected Objective ECM 8 as its next-generation enterprise content management (ECM) platform. Objective ECM 8 for its ability to integrate with Gallagher Bassett’s policy and claims management systems and deliver complex workflow capabilities to improve efficiencies. Gallagher Bassett also required a solution that would be scalable to suit future growth and adoption across the wider Gallagher Bassett organisation.
Australian Aconex, a provider of cloud solutions to manage the large construction and engineering projects, has been chosen by Concert, a Canada-based developer of residential, rental, senior living, commercial, and industrial properties, for the 88 Scott condominium project in Toronto. Concert has already successfully used Aconex during the preconstruction phase to manage information and processes, including tendering, and will continue using the platform throughout the construction phase. “Aconex opened our eyes to a better way of dealing with project collaboration and document management,” said Joseph Grassia, senior project manager at Concert. Aconex has also been selected by Waterfront Toronto and Hines for the first phase of public infrastructure for the Bayside Waterfront project in Toronto.
IT services provider, HCL Technologies has been selected by Sydney Trains to provide bespoke systems support services. HCL will provide end-to-end application management and support services. HCL will also be responsible for optimising the company’s application portfolio in alignment with business processes across its Australian operations. CIO of Sydney Trains, Malcolm Pascoe, said, “HCL’s in-depth experience in managing complex applications landscape globally, strong delivery framework, knowledge management methodologies and core domain expertise in the transport sector made it an ideal choice for this engagement.”
Qlik has announced that Colliers International, a leading global commercial real estate company, will be introducing Qlik Sense across EMEA to arm its senior leadership team with critical business insight and inform strategic decision making. Perry Willis, head of information technology EMEA at Colliers International, said: “Qlik Sense allows our regional managing directors and senior managers to access the data they need tohelp make decisions that can ultimately impact our bottom line. Data visualisation is now being actively used in the boardroom and informing our senior discussions, and we’re even more excited by how Qlik Sense can help the company grow in new directions.”
MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS
MYOB has acquired HR and payroll solutions company PayGlobal to expand its HR and payroll offering for larger businesses in Australia and New Zealand. The purchase of PayGlobal is a significant customer acquisition play for MYOB and ownership of PayGlobal will provide access into big-name clients and the opportunity to extend and integrate the PayGlobal solution into its products. PayGlobal also has a mature private cloud architecture that will be of interest to MYOB. In addition MYOB has also announced a minority investment in Washington-based Acumatica, provider of cloudbased enterprise resource planning (ERP) and financial software. The announcement follows a recent multi-million dollar agreement which allows MYOB to develop a localised cloud based ERP solution.
Kiwi company Sush Mobile is set to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Auckland-based financial technology company Finzsoft in a deal reportedly worth $1.9 million. Sush Mobile is responsible for creating the Kiwibank Home Hunter app and The Warehouse mobile apps. Finzsoft managing director Andrew Holliday said the Sush Mobile deal is part of a planned approach for Finzsoft to build next generation capabilities to help it lead the development of transformational products for the banking and finance sector.
Software giant SAP has forged an international deal with IBM which will host its SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud Services in its data centres around the world – including those in Sydney and Melbourne. SAP is banking on its global data centre deal with IBM to provide it and its clients with greater geographic reach. IBM has been selected as a “premier strategic provider” of cloud infrastructure to run HANA. According to a spokeswoman IBM plans to offer the service from its Australian SoftLayer data centres, the first of which has opened in Melbourne and also from its Sydney cloud services centre which will be available to run large HANA instances.
Sage Business Solutions, a global supplier of business management software, has announced it will distribute the range of Aritmos software solutions for the agribusiness and apparel clothing sectors. Sage and Aritmos originally entered into a collaborative IT partnership ten years ago to develop new vertical software solutions for distinct business sectors and industries.
Global Shop Solutions, a global leader in ERP, has opened a new office in Sydney, Australia. Working in tandem with the Global Shop Solutions’ Jakarta, Indonesia location, the Sydney office will primarily serve as a sales, service, and consulting hub for the company’s growing customer base throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific. Following the opening Global Shop Solutions also announced the impending release of Version 2014.1 of its ERP software and the hard release of its process documentation and testing (PDT) product.
VMware has announced that it is working with Telstra and other local partners in order to deliver an Australian hosted version of its vCloud Air service available next year. Three core service offerings are anticipated under the vCloud Air banner – a dedicated cloud, a virtual private cloud and a disaster recovery-as-a-service cloud. VMware also announced a partnership with Deloitte Consulting which will help customers with “cloud enabled business transformations” according to technology partner Kevin Russo. This will include the rollout of SAP solutions as-a-service.
UXC Eclipse is now a certified member of the Microsoft Azure Circle Partner Program. Microsoft Azure is a platform for building, releasing and managing applications across data centres in a global network. With this certification UXC Eclipse can provide its customers with a complete cloud solution with Microsoft Dynamics hosted in Azure plus Office 365. In addition UXC Eclipse’s VinPoint solution, an integrated business management software solution for the wine market, has been Certified for Microsoft Dynamics. This accreditation signifies that VinPoint has met Microsoft Corp.’s highest standard for partner-developed software.
Leading Australian software developer, Flamingo, has announced that it will co-create healthcare solutions for Australian consumers following an injection of $1.5 million in funding from Epic Pharmacy, one of Australia’s largest, specialty pharmacy groups providing hospital, oncology and aged care pharmacy services. The Flamingo platform launched earlier this year supports a new and innovative approach to customer relationships and retention. It provides ways for customers to co-create the experience they want by enabling customers to personalise the way they communicate, how they interact and want to be treated by an organisation and the mix of goods or services they want to receive. The Epic Pharmacy funding will be used by Flamingo to build out customer-directed healthcare solutions initially with healthcare insurers and hospitals.
