Information is flying through cyberspace, instantly connecting people worldwide in a way they’ve never been connected before.

It’s an exciting and challenging time to be in the communications game, particularly when you’re in a fast-paced industry like ICT.

What a difference a decade makes, suggested Intel’s Director for South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Philip Cronin, when he presented to a large AIIA crowd at Adelaide Town Hall on Wednesday 13 September.

Quoting Alan Kay’s famous remarks that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it,” Cronin shared his thoughts on the future possibilities of the PC and the changes that we can expect to enjoy in our everyday lives as a result of ICT. Read more

It’s been a busy few months for the Australian Computer Society (ACS), with a number of major initiatives coming to fruition... Read more

ITech Consulting
EQuest Consulting
Smartworker
Devnet Pty Ltd
Golden Orb Technologies
Quipoz

ITech Consulting
ITech Consulting Pty Ltd has developed ReadOn Software, a comprehensive learning tool designed to assist people of all ages overcome reading difficulties.

ReadOn was the recent winner of the Product Category of the 15th WAITTA 2005 - Western Australian Information Technology and Telecommunications Awards.

Unlike other software packages that are purely assistive in nature, ReadOn incorporates specific learning strategies to help people overcome reading problems. In other words, ReadOn helps a person learn to read.

Reading is a complex process and when this process is not mastered, students will struggle to become independent readers. Regardless of reading level, ReadOn allows the student to experience reading with minimal supervision and support. Mistakes can be made and risks taken resulting in an increased willingness to read, as well as improved reading ability and a boost in self-esteem.

“We operate in a very specialised sector of the ICT industry with much of our day-to-day activity involving work in areas outside the technology sphere”, explained Phil Mangano, Managing Director of iTech Consulting. “AIIA membership, and access to national events and functions, provides us with an effective means of keeping in touch with the broader ICT issues and trends.”

Since the official launch of ReadOn in August last year, ReadOn has been embraced by educators, health care professionals, private consultants, families and adult dyslexics around the globe.

ReadOn is distributed by organisations within Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. Phil Mangano states that "distributors and resellers around the world offer our customers a complete service backed by solid expertise and quality support".

EQuest Consulting
Founded in 2000, EQuest Consulting is a niche management consulting firm that provides specialist project management services to a broad range of industry sectors.

Project management is a required discipline that is used to manage the risk of project failure. As a skill, project management is both learnt and acquired. It is not a science. Truly effective project managers bring knowledge augmented with experience to the fray.

EQuest Consulting’s team marshals a considerable depth of both knowledge and experience to enable business success for its clients. “We help protect our client’s project investments,” says Director, Amit Banerji.

Over the years, EQuest has gathered a track record of success in the delivery of technology, business and capital works projects. Although the principles of project management are common across each initiative type, the application of project management may vary considerably. EQuest recognises this uniqueness and applies project management processes in a similarly, customised way.

The specific services EQuest Consulting provides include :

• Providing Quality Project Resources. These include program managers, directors and administrators, business analysts and change managers.
• Training. EQuest is a PMI Global Registered Education Provider (REP). Trainers and instructors are accredited Project Management Professionals (PMPs). Additionally, courses are endorsed by the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) and have been accredited by Charles Sturt University.

“We offer a range of on-site, client tailored, project management and business analysis courses,” says Mr Banerji.

“We also run scheduled public courses. From late 2006 we will be offering a Graduate Diploma in Project Management in conjunction with Charles Sturt University. Also we will be offering courses that will lead to an internationally recognised Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABoK) accreditation as the Australian Chapter lead for the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA).”

• Establishing Project Management Offices (PMOs). EQuest works with clients to determine the requirements for a PMO, then defines what their target PMO looks like and develops a road map that shows clients how to achieve their goal.
• Project Recovery. EQuest works with clients to position and assess current project situation. From there, the EQuest team develops plans to recover projects by getting them back on track.

EQuest Consulting is an Australian company. We have a team of around 40 staff who support our head office are in Sydney and our regional offices in Melbourne and Brisbane.

“AIIA membership is an important step for EQuest Consulting,” says Mr Banerji. “AIIA offers a platform to enable the dissemination and discussion of ideas, concepts and issues that affect the information industry, as well as a place to meet like-minded executives who can offer valuable insights on their recipes for success.”

For further information please contact Amit Banerji or Colin Stewart on (02) 9900 9900 or email enquires to info@eqc.com.au.

Smartworker
“Getting the best companies access to the best ICT talent is the Smartworker vision,” says Smartworker’s Managing Director John Cooling.

Smartworker staff have expertise in the professions they recruit for and the industries that use their services.

“That’s the great benefit of engaging Smartworker in your search for professional talent,” John Cooling explains. With that level of expertise behind them, they understand the client and the candidate, delivering a superior talent matching service in the areas of: executive management, sales and marketing, management consulting, project management, business analysis, software development, ICT management, ICT delivery, HR, finance or supply chain management.

Smartworker specialises in recruiting for two important industry groups, high-tech and resources. With more than 25 years’ experience in these industries, Smartworker recruits all staff from executive to entry level for the high-tech industry. In the resources sector, Smartworker specialises in professionals for business change, system implementation and project management.

As well as focusing on the functions and industries it knows best, Smartworker strives to provide outstanding customer service on every occasion and deliver on four customer benefits: value, relationship, leverage and reliability.

In addition to its competitive rates, Smartworker adds value to recruiting by hitting targets for quality, on-time and on-budget for every assignment.

Developing a partnership relationship with clients is Smartworker’s customer service goal. Smartworker’s personal service approach and professional service delivery is customer focused and flexible, developing references and referrals between the client and Smartworker.

Clients welcome the leverage they get from Smartworker’s market intelligence and extensive network. Smartworker adds value to the client’s assignment with informative options for clients recruiting needs.

Smartworker provides the highest levels of integrity and confidentiality for your recruiting assignment. The reliability of their follow-up and post sales support gives you a time saving service that adds value to your recruiting assignment.

John Cooling has been associated with AIIA for many years and was pleased when membership for his new company, Smartworker, was approved. “Queensland’s high-tech companies are a critical part of the state economy,” John says. “They provide fascinating and rewarding careers for many people. AIIA is the most vigorous promoter of the industry and putting great support into skills and career development for ICT professionals.”

For access to some of the best professional talent in Queensland, call John Cooling for a confidential discussion (07) 3360 0816.

Devnet Pty Ltd
Devnet Pty Ltd is a leading provider of Internet based strategic business solutions that deliver sustainable business benefits to clients across a wide range of industries across information technology, telecommunications, multimedia and retail organisations.

From offices in Queensland and Victoria, Devnet’s team of experienced, creative and motivated individuals produce compelling solutions based upon clients' needs. The team consists of business and technology experts who work together to deliver solutions that meet both the tactical and strategic goals of clients. It is only through this balanced approach that organisations can leverage their technology investment to provide benefits to both their business and to the people involved.

Devnet maintains a strong position in the market by providing an independent perspective to business solutions. This independence ensures clients will always be presented with the best options for solving their unique business challenges. These options may include strategy and consulting, custom development and integration of off-the shelf software including Devnet’s own flagship product suite: icamm.

The icamm product suite is a complete interaction and campaign management solution that allows you to create, test, optimise, deploy and analyse multi-wave, multi-channel personalised communications. With campaign and marketing management systems emerging as the must have technology for marketing and technology executives, icamm delivers lower cost/higher yield marketing processes and helps build better customer relationships.

“Our market-leading technology backed by expert professional services, enables Devnet to automate best practices in demand generation for managers who need to produce a continuous flow of qualified leads for their sales force,” says Devnet’s Managing Director, Craig Deveson.

“Devnet has joined AIIA to increase our exposure within the IT industry and to become involved with AIIA’s national events calendar. We are looking forward to the opportunity to network and develop strategic business alliances with other AIIA members.”

To find out more information on how Devnet can help your business innovate to meet its operational and strategic challenges, phone 1300 780 955 or visit the website.

Golden Orb Technologies

Has a salesperson out in the field ever quoted a customer the wrong price?

Has internal information gotten into the hands of the wrong people?

Most likely one or more of these has happened to you.

What is the common element of all of these examples?

Inadequate management of internal information.

Many stakeholders, some of whom may not normally talk to each other, may have created the relevant information. For example:

• they work in different departments or locations;
• the information is isolated in different formats, like Word, Excel or PowerPoint;
• topic specific content is created over long periods of time; and
• people no longer with the organisation may have created some of the content.

What is the solution? Ovosuite – the Online Virtual Office suite.

Reinventing the same wheel in meetings? Ovosuite’s Minutes Manager is the solution.

Trying to find specific documents? Ovosuite Document Search.

Worried about security and getting the right information to the right people at the right time? Oversuite Profiling and Ovosuite Security.

You, your staff, clients and customers have secure access 24x7 anywhere in the world to Ovosuite’s range of services. If you can access the Internet, you can securely access your company’s knowledge

This is not an IT challenge. You know how to use a browser! You are comfortable with Word and Excel. You do not have to install any new software. Your existing staff will successfully manage and administer this service.

Ovosuite is an inexpensive service that is scaleable from a small 1-person office to 10,000-person organisation. Costs start from as little as $20 per month.

Golden Orb Technologies has evolved over 11 years into a “software as a service” provider.

“Golden Orb has joined AIIA with the expectation of networking and partnering with Australia’s best,” says the company’s CEO, Neil Pentland. “We want to do business with consulting groups and service providers to deliver the real benefits of the information economy to businesses enabling them to exploit their greatest asset – their existing knowledge. Together we can achieve way beyond the boundaries of Queensland and into world markets.”

Quipoz
Quipoz is the leading software modernisation organisation in Australia and provides a proven alternative to the software replacement conundrum of “build or buy”.

Using patented automated modernisation tools and methods, clients have harvested the 100s of effort years invested in their legacy applications. They have transformed entire application portfolios to new architectures and often enhanced them along the way with best of breed business enabling software. Quipoz’s unique ability to manage multiple language and technology architectures enables clients to rationalise a complex application suite into a single modern core architecture such as J2EE or .NET.

Client project objectives include:

• Documenting legacy applications written in diverse languages such as COBOL, PL1, RPG, PowerBuilder, Natural, OpenRoad and Mantis. The goal being to facilitate more productive and accurate maintenance / enhancement of the applications, with a view to long term modernisation or replacement.
• Mitigating the risk of continuing support for heritage technologies such as databases or hardware/software specific languages. Re-architecting these applications to modern commodity driven platforms reduces long term support risks and reduces cost of ownership.
• Implementing Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) through a strategic application modernisation. Quipoz tools ensure that business specific function embedded in the legacy applications, can be harvested and integrated into the new modern architecture which in turn allow leverage of business productivity tools such as rules engines, orchestration and business analytics.

Client profiles include:

• Financial services organisations including banks, insurance and wealth management companies
• Large-scale manufacturing, resource and utilities companies who typically have heavily custom developed applications
• Software development companies – increasingly package vendors are turning to automation to support easier maintenance and time to market
• Government departments and agencies, especially in areas faced with the challenge of regular legislative change.

According to Quipoz’s Chief Information Officer, Brian Lockyer, joining AIIA is a crucial next step for Quipoz in raising its profile and increasing brand awareness.

“Accessing AIIA’s national events program will provide the company with valuable insight into topical industry issues and an opportunity to contribute to the debate. Quipoz also recognises the importance of the invaluable networking opportunities that AIIA events provide.”

Want another way to identify good graduates… early? Read more

5 October: Sydney - AIIA ICT Corporate Golf Day 2006
11 October: Sydney - AIIA Evening Spotlight Session
13 October: Brisbane - AIIA Luncheon - New Shared Service Agency: what are the implications?
18 October: Melbourne - AIIA's Victorian Government Symposium


Read more

ICT Outlook Forum provides a showcase of the best in Australian ICT research and development. Read more

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AIIA's events calendar can be viewed on AIIA's website.
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