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  • Analysis: Massive layoffs at HP make for IT outsourcing identity crisis

    It's been more than three years since HP acquired IT services provider EDS, and the long-term direction of its bigger - if not better - outsourcing business is no more clear than it was on the day the deal closed.

    Written by Stephanie Overby • 24 May 12 19:14

  • From IT to ET: Cloud, consumerisation, and the next wave of IT transformation

    IT as we know it is over.

    Written by Johna Till Johnson • 23 April 12 21:32
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    A new era of IT transformation

    The days of large IT transformation projects are over. In their place will be a new kind of IT transformation: smaller in scale, near-constant and more responsive to business needs — but with vast potential to revolutionise how IT is used by enterprises.

    Written by CIO Staff • 06 Dec. 11 07:39

  • Supply chain management in Australia - Part 2

    If supply chain experts can spend so much time and effort improving efficiency and still have more work to do, how are smaller companies meant to get their supply chains right? It’s not as if they have been standing still: CIOs at FMCG organisations and other companies of all sizes have long focused on using high-end supply chain management solutions to trim fat from their company supply chains. Many embarked upon massive enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations a decade ago as they stared down the end-of-life of existing systems and the spectre of the Y2K bug. Yet while their intentions were good, the same can’t be said for the methods of resolution.

    Written by David Braue • 20 Sept. 11 06:00
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    Supply chain management in Australia - Part 1

    It all started, as these things sometimes do, with a chicken.

    Written by David Braue • 19 Sept. 11 10:59

  • Working with HR - Part 3

    What department heads and line managers think of HR, what employees think, and what HR managers think.

    Written by Tim Mendham • 19 Aug. 11 07:00

  • Working with HR - Part 2

    Stephanie Christopher, national director of SHL Australia New Zealand, a company which assists companies — including recruitment firms — in their recruitment activities, says that for the more technical positions HR has to fill, “it would lean toward the line manager for advice; it would be the line manager who would have final say”.

    Written by Tim Mendham • 18 Aug. 11 11:37
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    Working with HR - Part 1

    Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: “Managers aspire to be strategic, but they are required to fulfil their duties as a functional expert.”

    Written by Tim Mendham • 17 Aug. 11 13:50

  • Government shared services navigate a rocky road - Part 3

    The path to shared services is rarely smooth sailing.

    Written by Brad Howarth • 06 July 11 10:58
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    Government shared services navigate a rocky road - Part 1

    The deployment of shared services has something of a mixed history in public sector organisations in Australia. The notion of pooling IT services from multiple government departments and agencies into a single operation appears to hold great benefits, from both a cost and service delivery perspective. But history has shown that such efforts can quickly be derailed by the complexity of the tasks they are trying to consolidate — especially when the motivation for consolidation slides too far towards cost recovery as opposed to providing excellent service to the agencies involved.

    Written by Brad Howarth • 04 July 11 14:23
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    Managing relationships with vendors - Part 3

    For some organisations the hassle and uncertainty that can arise from multiple vendor relationships is best addressed by putting all of their eggs into the one carefully chosen basket. South Australian transport and logistics company, Northline, recently entered into a five year, $5 million contract with integrator Brennan, which will handle more than 300 portable and desktop computers in addition to servers, enterprise software and LAN communications. Basically, everything except telecommunications, which is provided by Optus.

    Written by David Binning • 06 May 11 15:09

  • Managing relationships with vendors - Part 2

    According to Dr Tim O’Neill, co-founder and director of business intelligence specialists Avolution, probably the biggest mistake an organisation can make when dealing with suppliers is to outsource the systems architecture. “This is why there’s so many untold billions of dollars-worth of failed IT projects out there,” he says. “Outsourcing the architecture function is fraught with danger.” In order for projects to be successful organisations need to maintain a healthy degree of cynicism and effectively force vendors to earn trust.

    Written by David Binning • 05 May 11 13:07

  • Managing relationships with vendors

    The IT choices a company makes can mean the difference between business success and failure. Whether it’s access to information, communications between staff, partners and customers, HR, inventory management, operation and monitoring of equipment and other and assets as well as business security, IT has managed to make itself indispensible at virtually every organisational level. Yet it would seem that for many organisations, this awareness often fails to translate into properly thought out and well-executed strategies for managing the vendors that supply the technology.

    Written by David Binning • 04 May 11 16:03

  • Not-for-profit - Part 4

    One problem that is typical for NFPs is the different nature within an organisation of IT users and the technology they apply.

    Written by Tim Mendham • 21 April 11 09:00

  • Not-for-profit - Part 3

    How are relations between not-for-profit with IT vendors?

    Written by Tim Mendham • 20 April 11 15:37

  • Not-for-profit - Part 2

    Within any organisation, however — below the its culture and style of management — there are similarities between not-for-profit and commercial organisations.

    Written by Tim Mendham • 18 April 11 11:35

  • NAB private Cloud builds new paradigm: Part 3

    The development of a greenfield private Cloud is facilitating NAB’s IT revolution, but compared with more traditional banking platforms the new technologies is not without challenges.

    Written by Rodney Gedda • 15 April 11 17:33

  • Legal issues in the Cloud - Part 4

    One of the remaining key issues Cloud users need to consider relates to the notion of being locked-in to certain applications or systems — and if a user wants to transfer data or applications from the Cloud, whether the data is portable between service providers. In these circumstances, a user will need to consider its requirements to access data some years into the future for a plethora of regulatory reasons.

    Written by Mark Vincent and Nick Hart • 11 April 11 06:00

  • Legal issues in the Cloud - Part 3

    Proper due diligence focuses on identifying the players in the Cloud relationship. That is, who is actually involved in providing the services and are they the same entity (or entities) that are processing or storing data? In the case of aggregators, for example, a Cloud user could be dealing with a single entity which itself is provided services by various third parties.

    Written by Mark Vincent and Nick Hart • 10 April 11 06:00

  • Legal issues in the Cloud - Part 2

    Unlike a fixed server in your office or at a data centre in Australia, data in the Cloud can potentially be located anywhere in the world — even in multiple data centres in multiple copies worldwide. A Cloud service provider may not even know where the data resides at any one time. The Cloud may not be tied to any particular location but this is clearly not the case with the laws of each country. Any ‘global’ technology solution will be impacted by the laws of a large number of nation states. As a result, sending and processing data around the globe could, in the process, fail to comply with data protection and privacy laws in various countries.

    Written by Mark Vincent and Nick Hart • 09 April 11 06:00
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