Stories by James Hutchinson

NBN Co’s tasks are split between network construction and business-as-usual telecommunications, and few of the company’s employees could map out the same 20-year careers at the company that often herald the same position at Telstra. They share much of the history, however; many of the staff hired so far herald from chief executive, Mike Quigley’s own alma mater — Alcatel-Lucent — as well as a range of Australian and international telcos.

NBN Co has a head start that would leave many telcos green with envy. Armed with $27 billion in government funding, and at least $9 billion from debt markets, the two-yearold National Broadband Network wholesaler has the resources and backing that could catapult it ahead many of its decadesold equivalents. That’s not to say the challenge before the organisation isn’t any less daunting; within the decade NBN Co is set to change broadband in Australia. The monopoly wholesaler is bound by carefully worded legislation to provide equal access to many of those it will compete with on a shiny fibre-to-the-home network, and satellite and wireless offshoots. Best of all, the company is starting with a clean slate.

Between 2005 and 2010, Gartner estimated IT managers and executive decision makers have gone from dealing with an average of 3.7 vendors to 10. The onset of Cloud computing as well as the revival of service outsourcing in wake of the economic downturn have only exacerbated this as companies increasingly look to multi-source their services to obtain the functionality they need at a cost they can afford.

Really, they should have seen it coming. All the signs were there. Queensland Health, a state government department responsible for paying its 78,000 staff some $210 million in salaries fortnightly, was in dire need for a replacement to its existing payroll system.

Some CIOs understandably treat the consumerisation of IT as a plague — a disease that must be stamped out, lest it subvert the standard operating environment they fought so hard to implement.

The national infrastructure partner, one of four such partners sought by the Department of Health and Ageing for the e-health rollout, would deliver, integrate and provide continued maintenance for enabling systems including core system infrastructure; operations and call centres; reporting and template servicing; and separated portals for use by both consumers and healthcare providers.

Jetstar has progressed with plans to sideline the traditional flight check-in counter, overhauling the boarding process to include automated check-ins and new self-service kiosks.

The federal Department of Health and Ageing has poured an additional $216.3 million to fund its telehealth consultations scheme until 2015, with expectations around ten per cent of the nation’s practitioner workforce would take part in the scheme within five years.

Key players behind the Australian-New Zealand joint bid to host the $2.1 billion Square Kilometre Array radio telescope will launch a grid Cloud computing initiative by September with the aim of potentially harvesting the computing and storage power of desktops worldwide.

New South Wales energy utility Ausgrid is exploring customer rebates and reduced tariffs based on the differing energy saving technologies deployed at 50,000 homes slated for the Federal Government’s $100 million Smart Grid, Smart City project.

Macquarie University has flagged plans to virtualize many of its student computer labs from the second semester of this year, as part of a ploy to better utilise licensed software both on-premise at the university and remotely.

Marc Bailey wants to kill the spreadsheet. At least, that’s what the research fellows at Macquarie University asked for when he first stepped on board as CIO in late 2009.

The Federal Government has axed plans to build a broadband network for vocational education and training institutions, slating $80 million in savings over three years.

The Federal Government has invested $40.2 million over four years to continue Australia and New Zealand’s joint bid to host the global Square Kilometre Array project.

The Federal Government has scrapped plans to subsidise filtering methods implemented by internet service providers under its proposed mandatory internet filtering scheme.