Local News and Events

This thread is for posts about local vendor news that doesn't fit into other local threads and news about local events. For the latter - think about posting the event in the calendar and cross-posting that into this thread.

Gartner Business Intelligence and Information Management Summit

Here's the local Sydney BI Summit that happens a couple of weeks after their Singapore event.

Teradata's Annual Conference

Details of this event are in the calendar.

[admin]

Queensland Business Review
Tuesday 18 November 2008

Business software company TechnologyOne has announced a revenue increase of more than 40 per cent in the year ending September 30, 2008.

The company’s healthy revenue figure of just over $110 million for the 12 month period has been largely credited to the launch of two new innovative software products, Business Intelligence and Enterprise Budgeting Solutions.
Executive Chairman, Adrian Di Marco, said TechnologyOne have also developed a new Customer Relationship Management product which he says has the potential to "profoundly impact" the company’s products and markets.
He said TechnologyOne ‘s new Connected Intelligence series of applications continues to drive sales.

"In recent years, we have won new customers who have moved their business to us because of the inability of our competitors to provide cost effective, seamless upgrade paths," Mr Di Marco said.

"These results have been achieved during a period of significant upheaval in global financial markets."

Mr Di Marco said TechnologyOne would continue to focus on providing "end to end" solutions to meet the specific needs of customers in the education, health and community services, financial services, utilities, managed services, media, entertainment, property and construction as well as all three tiers of government.

"Our products including our Business Intelligence, Enterprise Budgeting Solutions and our Customer Relationship Management are all doing extremely well across the market place."

[Doug Heywood]

Shadforth signs with Olicc Technologies

More detailed reporting


By Julie May Thu 18 Dec 2008 Investor Daily

Dealer group SFG will implement a technology system that helps its planners focus on clients rather than administration.

Boutique dealer group Shadforth Financial Group (SFG) has signed an agreement with Olicc Technologies to roll out Olicc practice management solutions across its financial planning network.
SFG will use Olicc's business intelligence and commission tracking programs to gain more detailed group reporting. The programs will also highlight profitability and revenue per client, adviser, individual practice and external product provider.

"With the system in place, it means that our advisers can spend more time advising their clients and less time on administration," SFG chief executive Nick Bedding said.
"It will also enable us to streamline our back office processes."

Olicc managing director Cliff Garrels said Olicc focuses on helping financial planning practices get a clear picture of how their business is operating, how much time and resources they put in and how much revenue and profit comes out the other end.

"The system will show SFG's management team how each business is tracking, along with giving them figures showing actual against predicted revenue and commissions," Garrels said.

"This will enable them to make any necessary changes to the business to enhance its performance while maintaining a strong focus on client service."

Bedding said SFG was also currently in discussions with a number of parties regarding modelling software and was about to finalise negotiations about the rolling out of some new risk assessment software.

[JohnG]

Just read on ZDnet Australia:

Dimension Data cuts 33 Aussies
Liam Tung, ZDNet.com.au
30 January 2009 01:12 PM
Tags: layoff, microsoft, redundancy, sharepoint, cut, australia, staff, dimension
IT services giant Dimension Data has confirmed it retrenched 33 staff yesterday.


DiData CEO: Steve Nola
(Credit: DiData)
"Taking the decision to retrench staff was a difficult one, and we have lost some talented people from our business," DiData's Australian regional CEO Nola told ZDNet.com.au today.

"However, in assessing our capacity to invest in future growth opportunities for Dimension Data — most notably in IT services — we were required to make some cost cuts in specific operational areas."

Nola said the cuts were necessary to support the company's planned investment in managed IT services, which he said was a growth opportunity. "Even in times like this, when clients are cost-conscious, we're getting a fair amount of enquiries," he said.

DiData, which employs over 1,000 staff in Australia, as at September last year secured revenues of US$974 million wihin Australia, according to Nola.

For competitive reasons, Nola declined to say from which divisions the cuts had been made, and denied claims by sources that the deepest cuts were made to the arm that supports Microsoft Sharepoint projects. "There were a very small number of people out of that business," he said. "We see Sharepoint as a strategic product for us."

Datacentre and call centre staff were also amongst those cut, according to a ZDNet.com.au source, however Nola declined to confirm or deny this. He also declined to confirm whether key sales staff had recently quit.

Until yesterday DiData had maintained the position it was on the hunt for IT talent and was not known to have made redundancies.

The company has now joined the ranks of several other IT services firms within Australia that have laid off staff, including Optus-owned Alphawest, Oakton, UXC, HP/EDS and Optus.

Despite acknowledging customers would be tighter with investments in technology as a result of the economic downturn, Nola said DiData's ongoing revenues from managed services was still healthy and noted it had maintained a spot on the Australian Taxation Office's $55 million a year managed network services bid currently up for grabs.

[JohnG]

I read somewhere recently that Oakton was said to have already cut 50 - 100 people recently.

Can anyone confirm this?

John

[admin]

From CRN Australia:

11 March 2009 08:59AM
Tags: dimension | data | christopher | long | steve | nola

Dimension Data has appointed Christopher Long as national sales director, reporting to Australian CEO Steve Nola.



Long will manage DiData's sales team and promote a broader range of services into the company's client base, with the aim of addressing clients' business challenges.

He will also be focused on accentuating the It service provider's executive engagement program.

Long has spent the last 22 years in a variety of senior executive positions at a number of enterprise software and services firms in Australia and North America, where he specialised in sales management, services management and operations, and software and service company alliances.

"I am intent on working with all of our sales teams to ensure we are taking solutions in these three strategic areas to every one of our customers," he said.

Long began his IT career in Australia in 1985 with professional services firm Accenture, moving from programmer, to business analyst, to project manager and business consultant.

He then worked for ERP software vendor Epicor (formerly Platinum Software) as Asia-Pacific director of consulting and managing director for A/NZ, before joining e-commerce software maker InterWorld as regional VP for Asia-Pacific.

From 1999 to 2001, he was a joint founder and executive vice president of Q Strategies, a US-based services firm specialising in e-commerce and messaging software implementation, based in Boulder, Colorado.

Long returned to Australia in 2001, to work in divisional management roles at software companies including SAS Institute and PeopleSoft.

In 2006, he moved into the consulting space with a start-up software company, developing software programs to manage performance-based initiatives.

Most recently, he was with ERP software company Lawson as Director of Professional Services for A/NZ.