Does it take either a significant service outage or a sea change in your business, like a major acquisition or a downsizing, to get business leaders to re-examine seriously whether your Information Technology infrastructure and resources are performing efficiently and effectively? All too often, businesses only re-examine their IT infrastructure and resources when a major snafu has occurred or some external force has turned the business model on its head.
“We need a reliable solution. We have a tight budget but the pedigree of the equipment is important — we do not want cheap-and-nasty.” - Rob Brown, IT manager, Aotea College
Taking the leap - one man's story
James Madelin left investment banking to become a photographer—and found that he’s an inventor, too
Ubiquitous and pervasive - welcome to the mobile world
Eight years ago nothing much was happening in mobile gadgets: the cutting edge was a ringtone with a tune. But there were those who could see past the unprepossessing mobile landscape.
Doing buisness at a slower pace...
Londoners refuse to be rushed by an upstart from the colonies, but you can do business at British pace.
Koppers Australia needed a reliable hardware platform for its new ERP system, which would enable the company to centralise its Asia-Pacific operations and report to its United States parent company.
It also wanted to lower its operational and IT management overheads and minimise downtime.
From wheelie bins to world leading cleantech
If you saw students hoofing wheelie bins of water from a roof, you'd probably write it off as another hilarious jape by the underemployed. But back in 1996 when Greg Yeoman, Mike Hannah, Brendan Poole and their co-conspirators were tipping bins, they weren't targeting unsuspecting passersby. They were busy testing the EnviroPod, a storm-water drain filter they had invented.
An emerging computer model—cloud computing—has evolved to address the explosive growth of Internet-connected devices, and to complement the increasing presence of technology in today’s world.
Midsized companies are moving toward an infrastructure that is optimized and responsive to help them meet new business demands. This article looks at the short- and long-term benefits of cloud computing and how midsized companies can start integrating some cloud services into their existing IT environments.
“This isn’t in any way about ICT leading the business into ICT solutions. This is about understanding and getting people to think about what the business needs and us enabling it.” - Mark Marshall, Director, ICT Division , CPIT
Standing on the backs of giants? Watch out you don't fall
You've got a hot new idea for a product or service that will slot neatly into an existing infrastructure. You can create it quickly and build on someone else’s audience. But are you living on borrowed time? Will your carefully developed and devised offering survive, if it piggybacks on someone else’s service and is at the mercy of business decisions that you have no influence over?
Christchurch web hosting company Digiweb can claim to have one of the greenest data centres in the country after being officially declared a carbon-neutral business.
“In the good old days the challenge for schools was getting enough server processor power but now the issue is how much reliable, high-end storage you can provide.” - Barry Baughan, IT services manager, Rangi Ruru Girls’ School
Telstra reviewed the latest security surveys from Ernst & Young, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Cisco, IBM Internet Security Systems, the Computer Security Institute and others.
Going medical, virtually
Holding the balance of life and death in your hands isn’t a game—except when it is. New Zealand-based GoVirtualMedical has finally replaced the medieval med-student practice of practicing on a prone body with a professional multimedia version of the battery-powered board game, Operation.
Physical? That's old school
Who would have thought that infrastructure was the most interesting part of the Internet? Welcome to cloud computing, where big pipes and big iron create a second—no, third—generation of Internet entrepreneurs. Matt Cooney asks: could New Zealand become the land of the long net cloud?
Tapping into the biggest markets around
Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn … what’s the big deal? If markets are conversations, social networks are the biggest markets around. Here’s how (and why) to get involved, without getting in the way
Finally, a nurse who truly has no qualms about changing bedpans: a robot
If the idea of R2D2 changing your bedpan isn’t appealing, you can be sure it’s one job that nurses won’t miss. It’s just one of the tasks that a robo-nurse is being designed to do in a collaboration between the University of Auckland and local artificial intelligence experts at Robot-Hosting.
“Our IT solution is critical as most services used by teachers and students are now delivered via the network and run on the server infrastructure.” - David Leckey, IT manager, Kelston Boys’ High School
"It was a very, very successful rollout — we never really faltered."
Noel Leeming Group CFO Mark Conelly
Rhubarb Zoo is proving that animation is pure adult’s play
Who would have thought that infrastructure was the most interesting part of the Internet? Welcome to cloud computing, where big pipes and big iron create a second—no, third—generation of Internet entrepreneurs.Matt Cooney asks: could New Zealand become the land of the long net cloud?
Following the Unsustainable Path
CIO's and Executives alike, agree that today's business operations are heavily dependant on technology. Supposedly "simple" business requests such as up-scaling IT production, changes in business processes to meet customer demands or to achieve productivity gains, and the integration of new/existing services, often reach the boundaries of organisations' IT abilities.
Linking genius and insanity
Throw away your de Bono, ignore your critics and embrace your appalling personality. Sometimes it pays to be crazy—just look at Picasso. That’s the advice from Dr Margaret Boden OBE, author of The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms and lecturer at Sussex University on the process of creativity. Lauren Bartlett seeks the science behind Boden’s ideas
A new kind of philanthropy says it's wrong to lose money
Quick test. Who said this: “I think it's wrong to ask people to lose money.” Warren Buffett? Donald Trump? Bob Jones?
Try Bill Clinton. The former US president spoke those words during a press conference in May for his own charitable organisation, the Clinton Foundation.
Fast-growing Queensland-based Super Cheap Auto Group has used a combination of IT leasing and close management of its IBM-supplied infrastructure to maximise return on investment and system uptime.
Helping its members, not running computer systems.
Ultimately, the Foundation wants to get business computing out of its hair. The first step to that happy state is a move, through IBM Business Partner Eagle Technology, to a managed services ITC model.
"We've never looked back - now I don't understand why everyone doesn't have Lotus Notes.", Mark Bennett, Salvation Army information systems group manager
Returning the favour...
Our kiwifruit industry was built by combining the Chinese gooseberry with Kiwi know-how. Now a New Zealand company is returning the favour, working with Chinese growers to raise the plants needed for its natural, healthy sweetener. But they need to step carefully, reports Bette Flagler—Big Sugar is watching
Louise Francis – Senior Market Analyst, Global Retail Insights, IDC
In turbulent economic climate, companies are coming to the realisation that integrated systems are the key to creating competitive advantage through flexibility, agility, adaptability and access to real-time information for effective decision making.
Virtual manufacturing anyone?
If you can draw your idea, Wellington startup Ponoko can probably make it—and find buyers for it too. Peter Griffin meets the New Zealanders at the forefront of the handmade revolution
The value in diversity
Want a short cut to innovation? Employ the United Nations. Or at least fill your office with people of diverse ethnicities, genders, disciplines and histories, and let them muddle their way to the bank. That’s the advice from Swedish-Cherokee-African, Harvard-educated, entrepreneur Frans Johansson. He’s also author of The Medici Effect, a best-selling business book about the power of organised diversity. Johansson dropped by Idealog HQ (well, the lobby of the Sheraton) to explain how by emulating the Medici family’s ability to combine diverse influences—from Dutch artists to Indian mathematicians—companies can spark their own private Renaissance
Using technology to provide top-quality service hands New Plymouth's TSB Bank yet another customer satisfaction award ahead of its rivals.
… but tech is only part of the problem. As hybrids, electric vehicles and hydrogen-powered cars arrive in showrooms, the biggest barriers to adoption are infrastructure and politics—and both can be solved with some judicious marketing. Idealog meets a New Zealander who is helping US President Barack Obama with his alternative fuels plans, and another laying the groundwork for our fossil-friendly future. The catch: one is pushing plug-in electric, the other hydrogen. Is there room for both?
An IBM-developed IT integration strategy for national accounting group WHK is delivering enormous cost savings.
Getting real about the environment
Like it or not, the landfill economy is coming to an end—and New Zealand needs to get real. Gena Tuffery uncovers the Kiwis who are doing us all a favour and living up to our undeserved reputation. Just don’t use that ‘G’ word
“To do what we do we really need a quality of infrastructure that is best-of-breed … high-speed, high-performance systems.” Zero One general manager Suraj Keshvara
