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City West Water has reduced maintenance costs, eliminated paper based reporting and increased responsiveness with an integrated job management system and a new fleet of Next G handsets.
The government agency provides water and sewerage management for 1 million homes and businesses in the greater Melbourne CBD area.
City West Water information services manager David Bellchambers said it was desperate for a replacement for its "disastrous" Statenet mobile radio network and clunky field reporting system.
"We rolled out 3000 Panasonic toughbook laptops running on Next G which saved us $20,000 in maintenance and repair over using regular Dell laptops," Bellchambers said.
"Our old mobile systems were big ugly desktop things in our trucks which chewed up enormous amounts of power and didn't often work.
"The new [platform] hooks into our SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition)system and alerts us of burst water mains and dangerous job sites using our GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping program."
An alert system, built on the Kingfisher protocol, monitors the pressure of City West Water's network of pipes and sends notifications straight to field laptops.
The Field Operations Case Utility System (FOCUS) integrates the agency's Oracle RDMS databases, including its Hansen asset management system, Smallworld GIS platform and interactive voice reponse (IVR) phone system.
Staff upskilling is the biggest benfit according to Bellchambers. The system has realised about 90 percent of its projected improvements, including KPI reporting from the field, reduced water loss, and fewer customer disruptions.
"We've got blokes out there who are 60 and are learning new skills because the system has taken up the mundane tasks," Bellchambers said.
The agency also cut head count, improved responsiveness and improved safety of field staff working in dangerous environments with an integrated alert system.
The system generates an answering message on the agency's customer service phone line through an email from the management system to the IVR, which is then coverted via text to speech.
He said the so-called off-the-shelf system from e-wise required a lot of customisation for the platform to work, but recommended businesses tweak similar implementations as much as possible to maxmise suitability and staff acceptance.
Bellchambers said it remodelled the system's secuirty to run over it's Wi-Fi network.
"We use RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) and fully encypt traffic over our Wi-Fi VPN. We also ensure that on customer addresses are taken with laptops into the field," he said.
The agency recieves two external vulnerbility tests each year and is regularly audited by government agencies.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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10 steps to loading dock security 07 October, 2008 11:30:00
Companies in all industries struggle to secure the loading dock, that sensitive spot where goods come in and go out. Follow these best practices and sleep better tonight.It's the stuff of CSO nightmares. Early on the morning of September 2, while most folks were home sleeping off the hot dogs, thieves used bolt cutters to break into an Alltel Communications warehouse and four of its loading docks in Fort Smith, Ark. Sources say they escaped with an estimated US$10 million worth of cell phones, not a bad haul for their Labor Day efforts. - +
Corporate security and the climate crisis 03 October, 2008 11:21:00
How to adapt security and risk management policies - including IT security - to deal with climate change.US military strategists, CIA analysts, international agency officials and Nobel Prize winning economists concur with the consensus of the world's scientific community: the Climate Crisis is a planetary security issue, as well as a national security issue for each of the one hundred ninety two countries that belong to the United Nations. But the Climate Crisis is also, by extension, a corporate security issue, as well as, yes, a cyber security issue. - +
Companies own up to virtual security blind spot 02 October, 2008 11:05:00
VMWorld attendees reveal vast majority of companies have little or no security in place for their virtual systems.The vast majority of companies have little or no security in place for their virtual systems. That is a scary statistic revealed in a survey of attendees at the recent VMWorld 2008 conference in Las Vegas. - +
How to minimize the impact of a data breach 01 October, 2008 08:54:00
ID Experts' Rick Kam describes a customer-centric action planThirty-one percent of customers--nearly one-third of a company's client base and revenue source--are terminating their relationship with organizations following a data breach, according to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute. - +
Five mistakes security pros would make again 30 September, 2008 10:18:00
Whether it's getting fired for standing up for what's right or making a network configuration mistake that leads to better security, there are some mistakes worth making. Five security pros offer personal examples.Ten years ago, Michael Riva was network administrator for a top-five American consultancy. Employees were downloading graphic pictures and videos onto the network. Riva told his boss a proxy server with content filtering might be in order; his boss laughed and suggested they put in a bigger file server instead.
Symantec State of Spam Report - October 2008 07 October, 2008 11:58:00
AIIA to Reward Sustainability and Green IT Champions at the 2009 iAwards 07 October, 2008 11:56:00
Yellowfin Achieves BI Success with Asia Pacific Telcos 07 October, 2008 09:46:00
Frost & Sullivan Gears up for Annual IT Industry Gala Awards Event 07 October, 2008 08:29:00
Multimedia Technology & EVERKI sign exclusive distribution agreement. 06 October, 2008 14:34:00
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Wireless LANs: Is my enterprise at risk?
Achieve an overall understanding of the risks associated with wireless LANs. Discover their inherent properties, as well as what makes them different from wired networks. Read on to uncover a list of recently published articles on real-life breaches and incidents illustrating the need for proactive measures to mitigate wireless security risks.
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