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Publication: DOM Date: 05 Feb 2001 Page: IT 3
Headline: Demand for Playstation2 steady in NZ
SONY'S Playstation2 may have launched internationally with a hiss and a roar and stock sellouts, but sales in New Zealand have been subdued after an initial flurry of activity.
Internationally, Sony struggled to keep up with demand for the games console after its launch late last year, and a production shortage saw many people without their planned new console for Christmas.
In Britain, most machines were pre-ordered, and long lines of customers had to take lottery numbers, with a random few being allowed to make a purchase.
The French were not so content to queue, with reports of several people being hospitalised after a mini-riot broke out at a games shop in Paris.
But while pent-up demand saw brisk sales in the first few days after the Playstation2 was released in New Zealand in November, stores New Zealand InfoTech Weekly spoke to say sales quickly tapered off to a "steady flow".
Sony Entertainment New Zealand spokeswoman Michelle Camilleri says about 95 per cent of the original consignment has sold.
Sony has not revealed how many consoles were included in the consignment. Another is due to arrive in New Zealand in four to six weeks. Ms Camilleri says Sony has no plans to change the $999 recommended retail price.
Harvey Norman, Dick Smith Electronics and Farmers Trading Company all report an initial flurry of buyers.
Bronwyn Knight, buyer with Dick Smith Electronics, says the first couple of days of sales were "great", tapering away before Christmas.
"The first couple of days were probably the `must have' people," she says.
She estimates that given the price, Playstation2 buyers are more likely to be in the 25 to 35 age bracket rather than the younger ages seen buying Playstation1.
Andrew Thompson, Harvey Norman general manager of computers, says sales have tapered off to "a level we expected".
A flurry of releases from software providers such as Electronic Arts is driving the software side of the market, with Harvey Norman experiencing strong software sales.
"And the more titles are released for Playstation2 the more reason people have to buy the console," Mr Thompson says.
"Games consoles are always very, very driven by software."
Nearly 30 games are already available for Playstation2. Top sellers include beat-em-up Tekken Tag Tournament, American gridiron simulator Madden NFL 2001 and futuristic adventure Time Splitters.
The ability to play DVD movies has also proven popular.
Matthew Early, Farmers Trading Company product buyer for computers and entertainment, says Playstation2 will be a consistent seller for the company.
Mr Early says the release of Playstation2 hasn't dented sales of Playstation1. Mr Thompson says Harvey Norman has experienced "minimal impact", with Playstation1 still outselling Playstation2.
He says lower price points for Playstation1 software have seen greater than expected software sales there as well.
Sony has released an updated, smaller version of the original Playstation, PSOne, with the intention that buyers are after a second machine, in much the same way that people buy a small television for a bedroom or bach.
Manager of Gamesman stores south of Auckland, Ian Sewell says New Zealand has been lucky compared with Britain and the United States, and its stores nationwide still have consoles in stock.
Playstation2 is the first product for which Gamesman stores have accepted hire purchase payment arrangement with customers.
Pacific Retail Group, owner of Noel Leeming, was unavailable for comment.
Publication: DOM Date: 05 Feb 2001 Page: IT 5
Headline: Website to match buyers and sellers
WANT to fulfil your dream of becoming an entrepreneur? A new website has entered the fray to match those wanting to sell their small businesses with those wanting to buy.
Nzbizbuysell.co advertises listings which explain what an operation is, give an idea of its turnover, and name an asking price.
Buyers can search according to location, business type and price range.
Nzbizbuysell.co director Richard O'Brien says the website needed to be straightforward and easy to use.
Sellers can provide information about their businesses to nzbizbuysell.co by fax, post, or through the website itself.
The site advertises both private sales, and those offered through brokers.
Mr O'Brien says sellers should think of their listing as an advertisement in a smart, electronic newspaper, available to all buyers, and giving a full picture of businesses on offer.
He says the website will spare buyers from wading through columns of print in search of little more than a snippet of information and a telephone number.
The site also offers advice and a page of useful links for those looking to purchase a business, or start out on their own.
Buyers can use the site free of charge, with sellers paying a fee of $68 (plus gst) for the first six weeks of their listing, and $32 a month thereafter.
There is also a free noticeboard where prospective buyers can post the kind of business they are interested in taking on, a preferred location, and a price range.
The new site offers similar services to those found at another online small business match-maker, set up by former KPMG Legal lawyer John Dennett, in August last year.
The websites can be found at
www.nzbizbuysell.co.nz
and
www.bizsalesnz.com Publication: DOM Date: 05 Feb 2001 Page: IT 21
Headline: This is your alarm clock speaking: Time to wake up!
TWO young inventors hope to replace the strident blare of alarm clocks with a synthesised voice, waking sleepers with a pre-programmed selection of information gleaned from around the Internet.
Michigan-based Thetacom has developed a clock which wakes up shortly before you do, finds its host PC via a wireless link, and downloads your choice of weather forecasts, traffic reports, horoscopes, and news reports.
Having read these out, it could proceed to read your new e-mail, before tuning to an Internet radio station of your choice.
At the other end of the day, the makers say Logiclock will be able to read out a chapter from a downloaded e-book, before lulling you to sleep with a soothing web channel such as "Summer Storm", "Night Woods", or "Ocean Surf".
The clock will communicate with a PC via a wireless link, and assumes the PC has a high-speed Internet connection.
Using its wireless link, the clock will also be able to play music files compressed in the MP3 format and stored on the PC.
The device itself has only two buttons, with most of the configuration being performed on a PC through a web-style interface.
Thetacom hopes to keep the price for the clock under US$55.
Thetacom is working on having patents granted, and is negotiating with several manufacturers to produce the clock.
Publication: DOM Date: 29 Jan 2001 Page: IT 8
Headline: Recruitment firms pay for 'brain exchange'
RECRUITING agencies will pay the wages of candidates relocating to New Zealand while they look for jobs under new models being devised to bring brains to the country.
Morgan and Banks Technology manager Dale Gray says some international firms are looking to import technical staff with offers of guaranteed annual incomes. The recruiting agency will pay overseas workers who relocate an agreed rate, whether or not they can place them with a client.
Mr Gray says the model will see recruiting agencies share more of the risk with the jobseekers, or "staff" on their books.
Another model sees recruitment agencies using brokers to find staff. The broker can work from a pool of talent, sourced across many agencies.
Mr Gray says while many New Zealanders are being lured overseas, IT staff from other countries are moving to New Zealand, making the "brain drain" more of a "brain exchange". He says workers from South Africa, Ireland and Britain are heading to New Zealand in "increasing numbers".
"There is a global shortage of staff, and these minds are free to move around."
Where those on working holidays would once have been content with a low-paid job, Mr Gray says today's travellers are looking for quality roles to further their careers back home.
He says New Zealand firms employing hundreds of staff give individuals much more contact with the upper echelons of their hierarchies, than do British corporations employing thousands. "People want to get exposure to the general manager.
Mr Gray says with Y2K well gone, the recruiting scene is busier than it was this time last year.
"It's quite vibrant at the moment.
"People are starting to convert their e-business strategy into operational deliverables," Mr Gray says.
Mr Gray says offshore companies look to New Zealand to locate specific aspects of their operations, such as call centres.
Mercury Consulting Group managing director Vinod Govind says firms look around the world for appropriate countries to locate "centres of competence", which will focus on certain aspects of their business.
"There are a lot of centres popping up around the world having difficulties getting the right sort of skilled staff," Mr Govind says.
Mr Govind predicts an explosion in demand for wireless application protocol programmers now that the spectrum auction has come to a close. He says many of these people will have to be found offshore.
Publication: DOM Date: 29 Jan 2001 Page: IT 5
Headline: Office down-time vital for sharing knowledge - expert
ORGANISATIONS must let staff mingle, talk, and share information, a visiting knowledge management expert says.
Tom Knight is principal consultant on knowledge management practice for British-based Fujitsu subsidiary ICL, and is based in London.
Mr Knight, who was in Wellington last week, says many organisations have gone too far with process re-engineering.
"We have to build some of that down-time back in."
He suggests chairs around the coffee machine, or setting up an office environment which takes people away from their desks.
"I come into the office to talk to and meet people."
Complementing an open office culture are formal processes whereby knowledge is recorded, indexed, and published.
Mr Knight says many trans-national organisations _ including French ones _ seem to be solving the language barrier by settling on English for all corporate communication.
ICL has unveiled its own intranet, Cafe Vik, or Value ICL Knowledge. The system features a phonebook which is available on mobile phones via the wireless application protocol. Mr Knight says the amount of information available on mobile phones will expand as faster wireless technologies come online.
He says software advances of the past two to three years have created powerful technological solutions, but says they must be used with caution.
"It was all about intranets when we started _ we were usually called in after the failure of an intranet."
Mr Knight says information technology departments often took on the role of knowledge custodians. The resulting proliferation of company intranets did not always have the support of the staff they were intended for.
Technology is not a silver bullet, and ICL is moving toward an approach which tries to take an entire organisation into account.
"It's a balance between people and processes _ we're putting the common sense back in."
Staff need encouragement and support if they are expected to share the knowledge they carry around.
Mr Knight says the last thing people want to do at the end of a long project is write a report about it, so he suggests companies conduct interviews instead, to ensure information is passed on.
Those writing reports could expect some form of reward or recognition for their work.
"You have to encourage staff to use the system _ you can't just expect people to change."
Mr Knight says accountants have always had difficulty assessing the value of intangible assets such as knowledge.
"How do you account for the discrepancy between a knowledge company's bricks and mortar value, and its share price?"
Mr Knight says the potential for getting value from patents, processes and intellectual property is the challenge for the knowledge company.
ICL works closely with companies developing knowledge management software. It has staff working with Microsoft to design the new "digital dashboard" and the upcoming server product, code-named Tahoe. ICL staff also helped design the algorithms behind the search engine, Autonomy.
* Fujitsu NZ managing director Bill Beale quit last week.
Publication: DOM Date: 29 Jan 2001 Page: IT 7
Headline: Airborne virus attacks only a matter of time
IT IS only a matter of time before computer viruses become airborne and New Zealand's geographical isolation offers no protection.
That's the message from Vincent Gullotto, director of California-based Network Associates anti-virus team, Avert.
Speaking from Sydney last month, Mr Gullotto says though no wireless viruses have been found "in the wild", this will change as reliance on radio and mobile phone-based communication increases.
Mr Gullotto says air travellers, for example, will soon use smart phones and download airport information.
A virus entering this system could wreak havoc, simply by sending people to the wrong departure gates.
Avert, which is based in Colorado, is investigating ways in which the mobile short-message service could be used to mount a virus attack.
"One researcher has speculated that if hackers could get to the phone-book in a cellphone through SMS, they could use the phone to make calls."
Mr Gullotto, based in Portland, Oregon, says if people can find a way to make money from wireless viruses, "it starts to be a real problem".
He says any system which lets customers program icons or run short programs on their mobile phones is of particular concern.
Other mobile viruses include those targeting the operating system Palm uses in its handheld computers. Mr Gullotto says as more people link their Palms to their computers _ giving viruses a point of entry _ this small number of viruses will increase.
In August last year, Network Associates company McAfee released VirusScan Wireless to protect handheld computers running operating systems including Palm OS, PocketPC, Windows CE and Symbian Epoc.
"We anticipate having a scanning engine and data of about 250 kilobytes in size," Mr Gullotto says.
He says the Love Bug virus, which originated in the Philippines, quickly hit businesses around the world. "New Zealand is certainly as vulnerable as anywhere."
Mr Gullotto says Avert's first line of defence is its close relationship with its customers.
He says about 70 per cent of viruses sent in for scrutiny have already been identified. Of the remainder, many are either corrupted documents or not viruses at all. The new viruses are sent to Avert's laboratory to be disassembled, examined, and have fixes created.
Mr Gullotto says the time it takes to break down a new virus and create an antidote can be as little as 30 minutes.
"Typically, to generate a detector takes about half an hour. Cleaning can take 45 minutes.
"Melissa took 20 minutes for both detection and cleaning."
Avert (Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team) posts weekly updates of its findings to ensure all its clients have up-to-date virus fixes on hand.
The 65-strong team has researchers in 16 countries.
"If something was to generate an outbreak, we put a process together so all our offices work on different parts of the situation."
Its three primary teams focus on customer support, virus analysis, and looking ahead to identify trends and future threats.
Avert has to stay abreast of new software, identifying ways future viruses will exploit flaws or loopholes.
"We have to know what needs to go into our scan engine to keep up."
Avert buys a copy of any product using Visual Basic.
Mr Gullotto says popular applications offer greater opportunity for a virus to get out and spread.
"The more standard an application, the more likely it is someone will design a virus to target it."
Avert also tries to build intelligence into its systems so the scanners can predict and trap suspicious behaviour.
Founded four years ago, Avert began with a pure research approach, and began promoting its virus-busting services two years ago.
"Be absolutely sure that e-mail is virus-free before you double-click it because viruses know no prejudice and no boundaries."
Avert has about 14,000 corporate clients around the world. Avert reported revenue of more than US$13 million (NZ$26 million) in the first three quarters of 2000, a figure up 46 per cent on the same time the previous year.
Publication: DOM Date: 23 Jan 2001 Page: IT 3
Headline: BT satellite breaks the wave barrier
BRITISH Telecom is extending the known range of satellite communications networks after tapping into unexpected volumes of data from its BT Global Challenge round-the-world yacht race.
The 12 yachts, which reached the half-way mark in Wellington last week, have used a fast Internet link via the Inmarsat-B group of satellites to send about eight gigabytes of video and 800 megabytes of still images back to race control, for distribution to sponsors and the media. Sponsors can even arrange video-conferences to keep in touch with their boats.
The latest leg of the race has found Inmarsat-B's 64 kilobit-a-second coverage extends further south than previously thought. The satellites located above the equator maintained contact with the yachts almost to their highest southerly latitude.
BT Global Challenge technology spokesman Gordon Henderson, based at BT's East Anglia research centre, says none of the yachts in the last race four years ago had high-speed data links.
The link let Compaq NonStop volunteer crew member Pam Taylor meet her new granddaughter for the first time via a video-conference while crossing the southern ocean.
Mr Henderson says in 1996, the race website received 47 million visits. This time, visits are up to nearly 300 million, with half of the race still to run.
Compaq NonStop crew member Glenda Porter is responsible for sending images back to Southampton, England.
Ms Porter says the yacht lost contact with Inmarsat-B for only about 36 hours during its 36-day voyage from Buenos Aires.
The 17 crew are allowed to send a maximum of 50 e-mails a day in total. Among all of the yachts, about 8000 e-mails were sent on the latest leg from Buenos Aires.
The amount of e-mail received is not limited but nothing over 30 kilobytes will be delivered to boats.
Yachts are not allowed to receive outside help with the race, and are required to report any incoming e-mail containing race-sensitive information.
Compaq NonStop skipper Will Oxley says several such e-mails have been reported among the yachts.
Problems with the video-editing centre are a different matter, as sponsors are keen to keep up the flow of information from their yachts. Ms Porter says land-based staff are on hand to guide crew through any problems they might experience with cameras or editing computers. Mr Oxley says yachts have an Internet time quota for each leg of the race, and it works out at about eight minutes each day.
"It's vital that we make the most of that time to get as much information as we can about the weather where we are going."
He says crew prepared for the daily Internet lolly-scramble by researching the best public Internet weather services, and noting the times at which they update their information.
Ms Porter says data transmissions back to Challenge control are unlimited.
"They have never told us to stop sending footage." Most images come from two digital video cameras, one mounted on the stern, and one on the mast. The stern camera can swivel and zoom in any direction, and both cameras are controlled from a video editing suite below deck.
The editing suite and e-mail station is powered by two Compaq computers, built into a single rugged chassis.
Mr Henderson says the choice of 500-megahertz Intel Celeron processors reflects the trade-off between performance and proven, reliable technology. The suite has 18Gb of hard disk space.
Two more computers in the navigation station give access to WeatherFax information, digitised charts and data about heading and progress.
Yachts use a lower bandwidth Mobiq satellite phone to keep in touch with home. Ms Porter says the link of about 4kbs is very good, with people in England sounding "like they were just next door".
The race has found that the Mobiq service also extends further south than previously thought. Each day, the Challenge control in Southampton polls yachts using the trusty old Inmarsat-C system, using a 300 bits-a-second data link. It sends yachts information including their coordinates and ground speed.
Because crews were not allowed to bring any sailing aids aboard with them, Mr Oxley says Compaq NonStop's three-strong information technology team wrote their own program while aboard, to turn Sat-C's daily burst of data into a visual representation of their progress, relative to the competition.
The BT Global Challenge website can be found at
www.btchallenge.com
Publication: DOM Date: 18 Dec 2000 Page: IT 3
Headline: Kiwi heads team to improve PC access for disabled
FORMER Wellingtonian Neil Scott is heading up a prestigious project at California's Stanford University that is dedicated to improving access to electronic information for disabled people.
He wants to involve New Zealand in the project and talked to interested parties during a visit to this country earlier this month.
In 1986, Mr Scott left his assistant dean post at Wellington Polytechnic to become a consultant on disability access in San Francisco. Mr Scott says he was forced to move to the United States because New Zealand offered so little scope for work and research in his field.
After five years as an access technology specialist at California State University, he became a founding member of the Archimedes Project. He is the project's leader and chief engineer.
In six months, section 508 of the United States' Rehabilitation Act will make it illegal for the federal government to provide any web service or purchase any equipment which only able-bodied people can use.
Mr Scott says that able-bodied people will benefit in any case from the design work being done by his team to improve access to computers by disabled people.
His team is working on getting rid of the mouse and the keyboard, and finding less intimidating ways to access information through a computer.
Among products developed by the project is a combined speech recognition engine and head tracker, which has yielded dramatic productivity increases for disabled and able-bodied people.
The head tracker locates the cursor on the screen wherever the person is looking. The speech synthesiser translates spoken words into text onscreen.
Mr Scott says people have not complained of neck strain while using the head tracker because "they would have been looking at that part of the screen anyway".
Archimedes Project researchers conducted an experiment at the US Census Bureau, in which disabled people using its improved computer interfaces out-performed able-bodied staff.
"It got people in Washington saying: `Oops, we better have another look at this'.
"Productivity tools also solve the disability problem."
He says productivity gains will inspire change to businesses processes more effectively than the threat of being sued.
He says the Archimedes Project has trained disabled people to use head-tracking game interfaces.
"Able-bodied people using normal interfaces just couldn't keep up with them."
Allowing people with different abilities to move freely among computers, the Archimedes Project has developed its Total Access Port (Tap). The device sits between the processor and the traditional keyboard/mouse interface. It accepts and decodes input from the array of devices the project has developed.
The next step is to develop a device which sits between the processor and the screen. The "Video Tap" will examine the screen's signal, pulling out text, images, icons, and other Windows features, and portraying them in a manner appropriate to the individual.
For example, if the person is blind, the data will be portrayed on a braille reader or a speech synthesiser.
Separating the decoder from software means it will work universally.
"That's the next major piece of the puzzle."
IBM is doing similar work. "IBM wants to take a web page and put it into a form most likely to fit the browser - be it a high-resolution screen or a telephone."
Mr Scott says between the Video Tap and IBM's WBI, interfaces and information can be tailored to meet a disabled user's needs exactly.
The project has developed a "haptic mouse" for blind people. The mouse uses force feedback so people can feel when they bump into and roll over screen items. The mouse gives the impression of height, stiffness and texture to screen items.
"Blind people get fed up with having to listen to everything."
The high-powered mouse has sufficient traction to move the hand around on its own. It can improve productivity for sighted people, too, as they can concentrate on their next task, while letting force feedback guide their on-screen movements.
The project has licensed the technology to Californian computer peripheral-maker Logitech, which uses it in the iFeel mouse.
Publication: DOM Date: 20 Nov 2000 Page: IT 5
Headline: Outsourcing proves NZ banks are 'head of rest of world'
INFORMATION technology systems at New Zealand banks are streets ahead of the rest of the world, according to a visiting author and consultant.
Sebastian Nokes is a senior executive at London's Netb2b2, a venture capital agency for Internet start-ups.
For the past 15 years, Mr Nokes has worked at a senior manager and IT consultant for Credit Suisse First Boston and IBM across Europe and America. Mr Nokes says if New Zealand banks' databases were not up to scratch, it would be impossible to outsource them.
He says many outsourcing projects "go horribly wrong" because an organisation tries to offload its problems with its data.
Project management is IT's biggest area of waste and missed growth opportunity, as detailed in Mr Nokes' book Taking control of IT costs.
Mr Nokes says he does not know of any companies which have succeeded in exploiting the difference in salaries paid to programmers in different parts of the world.
"Project management is very difficult even at the best of times - trying to do it remotely magnifies those problems."
However, he says the prize will be enormous for developers who can successfully split projects between managers in one country, and cheaply paid programmers in another.
"It's exceedingly dull. Making lists, being clear about responsibility, measuring afterwards. People would rather be theorising about the next big thing."
In his years as a project management specialist, Mr Nokes has come across instances of unmandated projects, bareface lies, and even "extra" mainframe computers.
"It's good to illustrate consulting work for clients," he says.
Mr Nokes says New Zealand's IT graduates are highly mobile, but always harbour the desire to return home eventually.
"Talking to Kiwi IT people in London _ they all intend to come back", he says.
In his latest book, Startup.com, Mr Nokes says Internet entrepreneurs should keep plans simple, have clear ideas about revenue generation, define a sound exit strategy, and make sure of intellectual property rights _ especially trademarks.
Mr Nokes says if a company owns a trademark, it has a much better chance of winning its corresponding dotcom URL. There are established legal channels for winning trademarks _ channels which do not exist for website addresses.
"In March, people were very arrogant to Netb2b2. They said: `This is your last chance to give us 3 million cash, sterling, _ be lucky!'"
Mr Nokes says after the market crash, the same people are coming back, still asking for millions of pounds, but still with vague ideas.
Netb2b2 receives about 50 business plans each week.
He says Netb2b2 would prefer to back a first-rate team with a second-rate idea, rather than vice versa. He says if an idea fails due to no fault of the team, Netb2b2 will consider moving the people on to its next goldmine opportunity.
"The best ideas have a long queue behind them. The worst ideas you can have 100 per cent of if you're not careful."
In return, Netb2b2 buys at least 25 per cent of a company. Mr Nokes says it is not efficient to buy only a few per cent.
He says many entrepreneurs are too proud and greedy, but must accept the guidance of wiser heads, lest they end up owning 100 per cent of nothing.
"In fact, everyone is on your side."
He says an easy exit strategy for entrepreneurs is to accept shares in a publicly traded company in exchange for their Internet startup.
Taking control of IT costs and Startup.com: Everything you need to know about starting up an Internet company are published by Financial Times Prentice Hall, a Pearson Education company.
Publication: DOM Date: 13 Nov 2000 Page: IT 3
Headline: E-kiosks to be in Post Shops next year
NEW ZEALAND Post is targeting early next year for the launch of Post Shop electronic kiosks providing services from e-mail and electronic bill payment to access to government websites and vehicle registration.
The date has been put back from this year after secondments to the People's Bank project.
NZ Post has chosen two vendors to build the kiosks after a four-month trial but business solutions general manager James Grassick is not yet prepared to name them.
He says kiosks should start appearing in key Post Shops from early next year.
The public will have the assistance of trained NZ Post staff.
Mr Grassick says once the business model is proven, NZ Post will look to making kiosks available to its 600 Post Centre franchisees.
"A Post Centre selling books or whatever, might be interested in picking up one of the kiosks, on top of their franchise arrangement," Mr Grassick says.
He says the kiosks are intended to offer additional services, and will not draw custom away from Nz Post's existing distribution network.
The kiosks will be more transaction-based than the Internet access offered by many libraries.
The kiosks will include an Internet browser but the basis on which websites are accessible or excluded has yet to be determined, he says.
Government websites could be available to print, with the customer charged by the page.
"We are trying not to offset the costs of one service against another."
He says customers could use a kiosk to check e-mail hosted by their Internet service provider.
They could also send messages via NZ Post's electronic postcard system, which sends an image of the customer's hand-written note. Mr Grassick says capturing hand-writing will eliminate the need for a keyboard, speeding up the process of composing short messages.
He says NZ Post is not trying to move people from their existing e-mail providers.
"We are interested in being able to facilitate access."
Mr Grassick says the kiosks will not be able to accept parcels. He says experience in Germany shows such a service is expensive to set up, and is not popular with the public. Kiosk makers involved in the initial trial included Pie Networks, of Perth; Telstra; Paytech and Hasler, both of Auckland; and Kiosks and Display Systems, of Wellington.
Another upcoming project involves making money orders available for Internet purchases. Customers can buy money orders over the counter, and will soon be able to "spend" them at web stores, which will redeem the electronic orders from NZ Post.
Customers who do not have a credit card, or choose not to use cards for Internet purchases, can pay in advance for electronic money orders, and not worry about receiving a bill.
"The unit cost of providing this is very, very low," Mr Grassick says.
Publication: DOM Date: 13 Nov 2000 Page: IT 9
Headline: Cognos offers mobile access to company reports
UPCOMING software from Canadian business intelligence firm Cognos could make automatic reports direct to a manager's mobile phone.
Cognos Asia Pacific product manger Patrick Spedding, based in Sydney, says Cognos wants to move its software away from specific operating systems, so customers have access to information on any device, from wherever they are.
Among new technology is version 1.5 of Cognos Visualizer, which gives managers a graphical view of their company's performance.
Mr Spedding says business rules can flag alerts when preset conditions are met. "We believe that there are certain business rules that you can automate, so you can notify somebody and do further investigation."
Mr Spedding says an upcoming version of Visualizer will be able to generate automatic alerts, and send them to a mobile phone.
Cognos Asia Pacific director of support and services Peter Stokes says automatic agents separate "housekeeping" from strategic measures, freeing staff from trawling through reports, and letting them concentrate on core business.
Cognos acquired the automatic notification technology in September when it bought British event management firm NoticeCast Software.
Balanced scorecard senior consultant Mark Hopper, of Corporate Enterprise Group in Australia, says faster technology demands faster decisions. "Strategy these days has to be dynamic. If your planning process is 18 months old - that's too long," he says.
Balanced scorecarding, developed by American economists Robert Kaplan and David Norton in 1992, takes into account a firm's financial situation, its level of customer and employee satisfaction, and internal innovation and performance.
New Zealand businesses can use Cognos Visualizer 1.5 to turn the balanced scorecard theory into an everyday decision support tool.
Mr Hopper says about 30 per cent of Australia's top 1000 companies use balanced scorecarding, along with about 60 per cent of Fortune 1000 companies in the United States.
CDP has a staff of 25, with offices dedicated to Cognos training in Auckland and Wellington. CDP has more than 200 New Zealand customers including Fisher & Paykel, Carter Holt Harvey, and WestpacTrust
Founded in 1969, Cognos is an international corporation headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. Cognos has 14,000 customers in more than 60 countries around the world.
A publicly held company, Cognos' revenue for the fiscal year 2000, ended February 29, was US$385.6 million (NZ$964 million), with net income of $58.8 million.
Publication: DOM Date: 06 Nov 2000 Page: IT 3
Headline: Powerlan snaps up part of Workflow
AUSTRALIAN software firm Powerlan has snapped up the Melbourne arm of Wellington company Workflow Solutions, but wanted to buy the whole company.
The partnership sees Powerlan become the exclusive Australian reseller for software developed and supported by Workflow in New Zealand.
Workflow managing director Bryan Hall says he did not want to sell the entire operation.
"Were they interested in New Zealand? Yes," Mr Hall says.
"We want to work overseas through relationships rather than a direct presence."
He declined to comment on the value of the deal.
Further negotiations could see Powerlan offer Workflow's products through its network of offices in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong.
"We see it as a positive step forward for us in terms of opening up markets which would be difficult to achieve otherwise," Mr Hall says.
Powerlan has employed all seven of the Melbourne office's staff - including four ex-pat New Zealanders.
The Melbourne staff will continue to concentrate on sales, customisation and implementation of Workflow products.
Powerlan established its New Zealand presence last year. It grew to nine staff at its Wellington office in August following its acquisition of most of the assets and the seven staff of the Wellington arm of Sydney-based software firm CPS Systems.
Workflow had about 20 Australian customers at the time of last month's deal.
Since the deal was signed, Powerlan has taken on about five staff to sell Workflow's products in Sydney.
The deal will see Powerlan market Workflow's Facilities Management Solution and its customer relationship management application, CustomerCare.
Workflow began in 1993 to market and support Remedy's products in New Zealand.
It has more than 60 customers in New Zealand, including the National Bank, ACC, Clear Communications, Inland Revenue, Air New Zealand, and Fisher & Paykel.
A privately owned company, it has 28 staff between its Auckland and Wellington offices.
Mr Hall did not wish to disclose its revenue.
Powerlan employs 800 staff and recently reported strong results from its first year as a listed company.
Revenues in the year to June totalled A$178 million (NZ$235 million) _ more than double Powerlan's prospectus forecasts _ with profits 50 per cent ahead of target at $10 million.
Publication: DOM Date: 06 Nov 2000 Page: IT 2
Headline: Cognix looks to India for knowhow
WELLINGTON software and consulting company Cognix Group intends to marry Kiwi creativity with Indian technical knowhow.
The Cognix Group will draw on Indian computing giant Satyam's 7000 IT staff to deliver software and "best-practice" consulting.
It will focus on building expertise in New Zealand's telecommunications, banking and finance, and media sectors.
Cognix Group managing director Partha Sarathy says the group's strength is in its combination of creative New Zealanders and technically skilled staff in India.
Mr Sarathy says New Zealand has many trained IT people immigrating and graduating from its universities, but few of them have the deep knowledge and experience necessary to bring large projects to market.
Mr Sarathy says Cognix cannot afford to have inexperienced staff without mentors to coach them.
He visited India recently to find staff who can come to New Zealand and fulfil the mentor role.
Cognix Group will launch its web-based billing system this month. The firm will market the system to New Zealand's deregulated power industry, before touting it overseas.
He says Cognix is in talks with overseas companies.
In August this year, Wellington company Ebit _ founded in March by Mr Satyam _ bought Wellington-based consulting firm Cognix, creating Cognix Group.
Cognix wanted to build the system, but lacked size and expertise to bring it to market. Through Ebit's relationship with Satyam, the billing system has been built in eight months.
Mr Sarathay wants to expand the group with organic growth and new business partnerships, rather than raising capital.
He says the group will consolidate in New Zealand, before expanding to Australia and beyond.
Cognix Group has 22 staff working around the country, based out of its Wellington office, and plans to grow to between 35 and 50 people.
Mr Sarathy says before its acquisition, Cognix, founded in March last year, turned over more than $1.5 million in its first year.
Publication: DOM Date: 06 Nov 2000 Page: IT 10
Headline: CA's Batchelor: 'convenience is king'
COMPUTER Associates says companies must deliver personal service via their websites to gain customer loyalty.
CA sales executive Andrew Batchelor, based in Auckland, says the days of the old, "business card-style" website are numbered.
CA launched its "e-business workplace" suite, Jasmine ii last week.
Mr Batchelor likened the personalisation power of Jasmine ii to that of Coca Cola, which is available in different varieties containers and locations, depending on the customer's needs at the time.
"Convenience is king," Mr Batchelor says.
Those using the portal can build their own view of an organisation by dragging and dropping links to resources on to their personal pages. Resources can be of any kind including Internet or intranet Web pages, databases, or programs.
Content can be categorised and shared as online libraries. Jasmine ii offers notification agents which monitor links in the background and alert customers if content changes, or if a preset situation arises.
A search engine cuts down the time it takes to find relevant information.
Mr Batchelor says personalisation can turn casual browsers into customers, and customers into avid fans of a company website.
As well, letting customers build their own pages, Jasmine ii offers intelligent data mining software, Neugents ii, which helps companies offer customised information or offers. Neugents - short for neural agents - runs on top of the business rules system, Aion. It "learns" about customer behaviour by repeatedly sifting data, searching for pattern relationships. It can take a customer's profile, find similarities with other customers and supply information or offers based on what has proven successful in the past, or could be effective in future.
Mr Batchelor says customers will pay a premium when they believe they are receiving personal service and have developed a strong relationship with a company.
A potential pitfall is that customer data must be kept absolutely accurate and up-to-date, least inappropriate offers do more harm than good.
CA brought technical and marketing people together for its Auckland and Wellington presentations last week, highlighting the importance of their working together to build one system which will work all the way from the database to the customer.
Three tiers of security within the portal allow for access to information on public, group or personal levels.
Jasmine ii is written using the Java programming language, with support for the eXtensible Markup Language.
It will run on several operating systems including Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, Sun Solaris 2.6 and 2.7, IBM Aix, and HP-UX.
As an introductory offer, CA is offering a package including the Jasmine ii portal server, portal administrator and 25 portal viewers for $25,000 (plus gst) till the end of the year.
Computer Associates' website can be found at
www.ca.com
Publication: DOM Date: 24 Oct 2000 Page: IT 10
Headline: Hitachi wooing Kiwi partners for storage
JAPANESE firm Hitachi Data Systems is looking for partners to set up a massive pool of reliable storage for New Zealand companies within the next six months.
Hitachi Asia-Pacific marketing director Garry Scarborough, based near Sydney, says the "storage service provider" will make remote storage available to smaller companies on a similar basis to utilities such as power and water.
He says the storage provider will make use of Wellington's Citylink fibre-optic cable.
"We will offer a true storage service."
Hitachi Data Systems vice-president for data solutions Hu Yoshida, based in Santa Clara, California, was in New Zealand last week to promote storage area networking as an answer to skyrocketing storage demands propelled by e-commerce.
"What we are seeing now is the tip of the iceberg," Mr Yoshida says.
"I must have generated millions of bytes of data today, just by checking out of this hotel. That data will now have a life and a value of its own."
The Freedom Data Networks arm of Hitachi Data Systems is intended to concentrate on data, rather than on storage hardware.
"The long-term goal is to have a single image view of data across the network, that is going to be self-healing, self-tuning, and self-configuring, because we want to reduce the complexity of using storage," Mr Yoshida says.
He says Freedom Data Networks wants to leave a customer's options as open as possible, so they can take advantage of new technologies and integrate different kinds of storage device.
Mr Yoshida says standards are evolving, but companies cannot afford to wait.
"Data growth is unstoppable _ it's already here."
Hitachi Data Systems has accounts in the United States which are doubling in size every six months.
"To maintain this growth, we have to change the way we do storage," he says.
Now that the cost of storage is exceeding that of servers, the storage area network has come into being, where multiple servers have access to a unified, high-availability storage pool.
"In the past you would not put a $300,000 storage subsystem on a $10,000 server. With networking, you can put many servers on that storage subsystem."
Mr Scarborough says Hitachi will target New Zealand's large banks and other financial institutions, telcos, and airlines with its storage products.
Hitachi's flagship storage device is the Freedom Storage Lightening 9900. It avoids the bottlenecks caused by shared-bus architecture by making use of an internal "switched fabric", known as "Hi-Star".
Mr Yoshida says Hi-Star offers internal bandwidth of up to 6.4 gigabytes per second. The 9900's disk space will scale to 37 terabytes by the end of this year.
Publication: DOM Date: 24 Oct 2000 Page: IT 9
Headline: Centrinity sees NZ as launch pad to Asia-Pacific
CANADIAN communications software-maker Centrinity will use New Zealand as its jump-off point for sales in the Asia-Pacific region.
Australasia manager Michael Middlemiss, based in Wellington, used to distribute Centrinity products in New Zealand, and will head Centrinity's New Zealand office.
Mr Middlemiss says Centrinity chose New Zealand based on his 10-year experience with SoftArc's First Class products, which it now sells. The product for telcos and ISPs provides one "mail box" to organise messages arriving by fax, e-mail, short messaging, and voice.
Mr Middlemiss says the unified message system means people will no longer have to juggle with multiple message formats. He sees large communications companies offering the system on similar terms to existing services like call waiting and caller ID.
Customers can access their messages, contact lists and diaries across the Internet via the First Class client software or through a web browser. They can check messages by logging on to their mail box with a telephone.
On a computer, voice messages are played using a media player. Faxes and e-mail are displayed onscreen.
Those checking their messages with a mobile phone can have e-mail and text messages read out using a computer-synthesised voice.
Mr Middlemiss says First Class is developing technology which will use optical character recognition to transcribe faxes into searchable text messages.
He says the unified messaging installations do not require large bandwidth, citing examples in China, where students use the telephone to leave voice messages, and get telephone voice messages in reply.
Mr Middlemiss is in the process of appointing Centrinity distributors for New Zealand and Australia, and wants to increase staff to about five over the next year.
Centrinity reported revenue of US$3.7 million (NZ$9.25 million) for the third quarter of fiscal 2000.
Centrinity's other communications products have gained about 3000 new users in New Zealand, with three deals in the past two months. Mr Middlemiss says the deals average about $25,000 each.
The Auckland-based independent school Senior College of New Zealand has taken more than 800 licences for a First Class communication system. Mr Middlemiss declined to name the other two organisations.
Centrinity was born of the acquisition of Canadian companies SoftArc and SoftArc International by Canadian MC<> Learning Systems in June, 1999.
Centrinity is based in Canada. Its international head office is in Ireland, with other offices in Sweden and England. It trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Publication: DOM Date: 24 Oct 2000 Page: IT 8
Headline: 1901 census project on record
The task of putting Britain's 1901 census online is a massive job. Fraser Rolfe reports
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WITH more than 32 million names to transcribe, the British Public Office has turned to prison labour to help get the 1901 census for England and Wales online.
Family history research specialist Stella Colwell visited New Zealand this month to spread awareness of the Internet's role in increasing access to libraries and archives.
In August this year, the Office's website received more than 20,000 visits from New Zealand alone.
The census digitisation project is part of the Office's plans to both increase public access and reduce pressure on fragile documents.
Of an estimated 170,000 annual visitors Britain's Public Records Office, about 60 per cent are interested in family history. With only 200 seats at the Family History Centre's reading room, the centre is becoming crowded.
As part of the 1901 census project, the names, ages, and localities of more than 32 million people have been scanned and are now being transcribed. The Office is using prisoners to carry out the transcription process.
Ms Colwell says once the census is available on the Net, research by overseas patrons will be much easier.
The Office awarded the contract to digitise the census to the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, the non-nuclear research arm of the Defence Ministry.
Patrons will be able to search the database by first name, surname, age or locality.
A "wildcard" feature will let patrons broaden their searches to cover incorrect and alternative spellings.
Everyone involved with the project is required to sign non-disclosure forms because a full century must elapse before the 1901 census becomes publicly available.
A limited, "soft" launch will take place a month before this, but the real test will come when the site is opened to the public on the first working day of 2002.
Suggested charges are 80 pence (NZ$2.85) to download an image of a page, and 50p to view its transcript. Ms Colwell says the site will accept credit cards and the Office is experimenting with various voucher systems.
As a systems test, the 1891 census returns for Norfolk have been digitised. This census will be online for two or three months next year, before being withdrawn. Ms Colwell is not sure what its ultimate fate will be.
Projects in the wings include the digitisation of the Office's popular military records and records of probates and wills.
The digitisation of court records is proving especially difficult because all county offices have their own systems. An archive system is being developed so all records will conform.
The images service at the Wellington branch of the National Library has been running nearly five years and has made about 18,000 images available.
Most recently, the service scanned six rolls of film depicting headstones in Wellington's old Bolton Street cemetary. The images, which were confined to a single album, are now available to all on the Library's TimeFrames website.
Imaging services team leader David Adams says the department was set up to find ways of reducing the handling of delicate, original material, while increasing the public's access to it.
"The idea was to digitise and finally to store the images", Mr Adams says.
Rather than send original negatives offsite for copies to be made, the service offers high-resolution digital copies.
"Most clients use digital images anyway _ now we can provide as digital image direct to the publisher", he says.
When scanning black and white images, the service aims for a .tiff format file of about eight megabytes in size, on CD or Zip disk. He says this yields about 300 dots per inch for an 8x10-inch print.
"I think we are going to be pushed to increase that even more as storage costs go down and quality goes up", he says.
Ms Colwell would like to see a formal global programme to link libraries, creating an ideas forum.
Publication: DOM Date: 16 Oct 2000 Page: IT 1
Headline: Pizza on Internet Wap to go
TWO Wellington companies have joined forces to bring pizza to those with Internet Wap phones and empty bellies.
Global Enterprise Solutions is to build a Wap (wireless application protocol) application for Hell Pizza, in a deal closed last week.
Customers will be able to view Hell's menu and place orders from Wap-enabled mobile phones.
GES business development manager Adele Fitzpatrick says the contract is a perfect example of the diverse uses for Wap.
"Hell's customers will be able to decide what to order from the menu displayed on their phone, saving the inconvenience of having a paper menu or Internet-linked computer handy. It is irrelevant where they may be at the time," Ms Fitzpatrick says.
She says the application could one day let Hell update its mobile customers with daily specials.
The application runs on Sun Solaris and will be housed by Telstra Saturn.
GES expects the service to be up and running in about a month. Hell's website can be found at
www.hell.co.nz
Hell managing director Callum Davies says Wap is a natural progression for his company. "We were the first pizza company to offer Internet ordering, and now we are the first to offer Wap ordering."
Publication: DOM Date: 09 Oct 2000 Page: IT 2
Headline: Dalziel calls for hi-tech input into assisting immigrants
IMMIGRATION minister Lianne Dalziel wants input from the information technology industry about improving immigrants' skills mix.
She says because IT ideas can create new businesses and new opportunities for New Zealand, "this is an area in which we could be doing a lot more in terms of talking to the industry".
Ms Dalziel last week called for nominations for a ministerial advisory group on immigration.
The ministry is also launching a website this week to provide intending business immigrants with access to a wealth of information about New Zealand.
More than 650 links to other business and governmental websites comprise the backbone of the New Zealand Immigration Service site.
With instructions in 14 languages, immigrants intending to set up businesses can find information about everything from relevant government legislation to real estate prices and raising a family in New Zealand.
Ms Dalziel says the site will be a fantastic resource for potential immigrants, and those who are already in the country.
Website project manager Karlene Davis, of the Business Migrant Liaison Unit, says the site, built by Wellington companies intangiblesinc and Network Communications, was about four months in the making, and the largest task was assembling the hundreds of links to online resources.
Ms Dalziel also says a review of the skills category of the immigration scheme will begin within the next few months that could affect the way potential immigrants' educational and business experience is scored.
She signalled in September last year that a Labour-led government would adjust the skills and experience category of the immigrants' scoring criteria to give greater emphasis to the recruitment of people to specific job vacancies.
The ministry will watch for trends arising from resident appeal authority decisions, Ms Dalziel says.
"We are very keen to keep those areas under close scrutiny because we don't want our policies to get out of kilter with what the country needs." She says New Zealand does not have a strategic approach to discussing temporary permits versus residence permits.
"Why is someone with a good, well-paying job in New Zealand prevented from applying for residency, when someone who doesn't have a job can?"
Earlier this year, 115,000 six-year visas for hi-tech workers in the United States were snapped up in less than four months. Many of those taking advantage of the programme are software developers from India.
The website can be found at
www.business-migrants.govt.nz
Publication: DOM Date: 18 Sep 2000 Page: IT 15
Headline: Small Kiwi businesses opt for Linux servers
SALES of computer servers that run the free operating system Linux are fuelling growth of 150 per cent every four months for an Upper Hutt computer retailer.
Sales of Linux servers are running at two a week for the company which opened its doors early last year.
LinuxNet managing director Daniel Giddens says small- to medium-sized businesses can save up to $10,000 on a typical server installation when they opt for Linux.
Customers buying Linux servers pay only for hardware, installation, and servicing, all of which is provided in-house, Mr Giddens says.
Recent customers opting for the open-source operating system include Harcourts, Banks Shoes, the New Zealand Army, Label and Litho, and Accent Architects.
Mr Giddens says though Linux-based network firewalls can run on Intel's 486 and low-end Pentium processors, most customers choose to run Linux on powerful servers which can handle all their network needs.
Most of LinuxNet's customers are small businesses seeking an affordable office server. Software can be maintained via a secure Internet connection. LinuxNet says software is sometimes upgraded several times in the space of one month.
Mr Giddens says a server running Linux can be configured to look and behave just like a Microsoft NT server.
He says Linux servers can thrive in a Macintosh-based environment.
LinuxNet has set up two servers to push large graphics files to and from the Internet and Macintosh workstations.
As well as hardware and support, LinuxNet offers web design and web hosting services.
LinuxNet offers servers running Apache web server, the software used by more than 60 per cent of the web servers worldwide.
LinuxNet's six staff are part of Wellington-based Advanced Computer Solutions, a computer company offering high-end technology and services to corporate customers.
Publication: DOM Date: 18 Sep 2000 Page: IT 13
Headline: Lapsed encryption patent boost for security software
THE lapse of an American patent governing the most common forms of Internet encryption will spur innovation and reduce development costs, an Australian consultant says.
Baltimore Technologies regional business consultant Mike Jeffries, based in Sydney, says the 1983 RSA patent has stifled the advance of Internet security.
Developers had to stump up for licences, or try to work around the patent because the US accounts for about 60 per cent of the Internet security market.
Mr Jeffries says this often added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of developing security software.
"People looked twice at whether they needed to use the technology," he says.
The RSA patent covers popular forms like the public key infrastructure, and digital signatures.
The public key infrastructure lets people exchange Internet data and money securely and privately using electronic "keys", issued by a trusted third party.
Digital signatures are used to authenticate the identity of the sender or signer of an electronic document.
Coinciding with the patent's lapse, American firm Baltimore Technology is releasing its KeyTools suite of security development software. Mr Jeffries says the core of KeyTools is available free.
Developers can licence "snap-in" modules like Telepathy m-Sign, which lets mobile customers digitally sign and verify data transmissions.
m-Sign complies with global standards for mobile security. Smartcard-equipped handsets taking advantage of m-Sign will work around the world, he says.
Mr Jeffries predicts a vibrant security market for the next generation of wireless Internet browsing devices.
He says global standards mean the quality of mobile commerce security is overtaking that of the desk-bound browser.
He says despite the patent's lapse, Baltimore Technologies will retain its global distribution of developers _ including 80 in Australia _ because of higher salary costs and acute skill shortages in the US.
* Baltimore Technologies has just bought Australian e-mail security firm Content Technologies for the equivalent of US$922 million (NZ$2.2 billion). The total consideration is 91 million Baltimore ordinary shares, or "Consideration Shares", and is based on Baltimore's September 13 London closing price of <>7.72 (NZ$24) per share.
Globally, more than 6000 companies and their six million staff use Content Technologies' MIMEsweeper products to protect themselves against confidentiality breaches, exposure to e-mail legal liability, junk e-mail, e-mail-borne viruses, and misuse of e-mail and the Web.
Publication: DOM Date: 11 Sep 2000 Page: IT 12
Headline: Software to search out porn in e-mail
UP TO 80 per cent of business e-mail data transmissions consist of pornography and other inappropriate images, says Australian e-mail specialist Content Technologies.
To help companies reduce this wasted bandwidth, and the cost of storing porn on their e-mail servers, Content Technologies has developed scanning software PornSweeper to integrate with its MailSweeper for SMTP product.
PornSweeper runs its eye over all incoming e-mail, looking for popular image file formats. Even if a picture is embedded in another document, or has had its extension changed _ eg from .jpg to .doc _ PornSweeper will still find it.
On finding a picture, the program checks it for areas matching its database of skin-tones, decides what proportion of the image is devoted to skin, and counts the number of skin patches. An optional feature tries to recognise faces. After scanning for patches resembling eyes, it measures how far apart the "eyes" are, and gauges this against the size of the whole image. The face recognition feature slows the scanning process but can pick up company portraits which could otherwise be quarantined as porn.
William Tonkin, Wellington-based managing director of New Zealand distributor Scientific Software and Systems, says false positives run at about 15 per cent, and about 20 per cent of all inappropriate images slip through.
Mr Tonkin says this is an acceptable trade-off between screening out porn and releasing legitimate picture attachments.
He says PornSweeper is a valuable deterrent to those sending inappropriate material, and shows a company is taking the problem of e-mail porn seriously.
Another new MailSweeper module lets administrators index e-mail as it arrives, simplifies search and retrieval, and archives mail according to customers' criteria.
Mr Tonkin says MailArchivist can help companies comply with legislation requiring them to retain e-mail.
Up to 32 million messages can be stored in up to 32 catalogues. MailArchivist can handle up to a million messages a week and up to 15,000 users.
The program relieves mailbox congestion and can replace haphazard archiving.
Scientific Software and Systems is based in Lower Hutt.
Publication: DOM Date: 04 Sep 2000 Page: IT 4
Headline: Dob in a chello bandwidth abuser
TELSTRA SATURN'S flat-rate high-speed Internet provider chello broadband has decided to disconnect or limit access to customers downloading too much data to their personal computers.
Chello sent an e-mail to customers on August 25, giving them one week to accept the new conditions on its flat-rate service, or terminate their accounts.
About 400 Wellington customers pay $90 a month for the broadband service, which promises download speeds 10 to 15 times faster than a dial-up modem.
Chello Australia and New Zealand managing director Philip Alexander says about five chello customers are using about a quarter of chello's bandwidth, slowing down the service for all.
Customers have complained to NZ InfoTech Weekly saying the service is often no faster than a dial-up modem connection.
Chello will monitor customers' data traffic on a weekly basis. Mr Alexander says "excessive users" will first receive a phone call requesting they scale back their use of the flat-rate service. If the call goes unheeded, it will be followed by an e-mail or letter. Bandwidth restriction or disconnection will be chello's last resort, Mr Alexander says.
"Ninety-nine per cent of folk are using the service as intended."
Chello's e-mail acknowledges the slowness of the service in recent months, and offers customers one month's free access by way of recompense.
Chello says customers should notice a speed increase by Friday week.
Mr Alexander says chello increased its international bandwidth from two megabits per second to 6Mbit/sec in July, and further expansion is planned.
Chello gets by on this bandwidth by storing popular websites on its own servers in New Zealand. Each time a customer requests a website, chello compares the size of its copy with that of the original. If the two are identical, the cached version is sent to the customer.
Customers can dob in those they suspect are violating the new policy at
abuse@chello.co.nz.
Publication: DOM Date: 28 Aug 2000 Page: IT 18
Headline: New Zealand hooks into global virus surveillance
NEW ZEALAND has joined a global virus-surveillance network called eDoctor, which seeks out and kills viruses.
Japanese virus-buster Trend Micro has added Wellington IT consultancy Sytec to its global eDoctor virus-warning network.
Sytec managing director Grant Smith says when the Love Bug e-mail virus hit in May, Sytec was performing a pilot eDoctor project with a large government department. After an alert at 1.30am, Sytec had a filter in place within 90 minutes.
That morning, the government department was just preparing to discuss its response when Sytec phoned giving the all-clear, Mr Smith says.
"Red alerts" go out when three or more instances of a destructive, fast-spreading virus appear "in the wild" _ at sites unprotected by virus-screening software.
Trend's global partners are all connected to a laboratory in Manila with 150 virus "doctors" on hand. As soon as a fix is available, it is sent to partners.
Country manager for Trend Micro Australia, Kenny Liao, based in Sydney, said last week in Wellington: "That is the time traditionally we would call customers, wake them up, get them to go back to the office and download the update."
Sytec can now remotely log-on to a customer's network and use push technology to send the virus fix right down to the desktop level, Mr Liao says.
He says if companies leave the responsibility to their staff, "the policy is going to fail", because a few will always disable their virus-monitoring software.
"Using eDoctor is giving control back to the experts".
Sytec business development manager Erin Harte says services such as the eDoctor program are the future of virus protection.
Clients can subscribe to the service on a monthly basis.
"You need to know why you're doing, where you're doing it, and adjusting it," Mr Harte says.
"It's not an application you just drop down to desktops and forget about."
Mr Harte says heavy reporting is crucial if clients are to see they are getting value for their money.
"We constantly report on malicious activity that we detect and reject, where it came from, what action we took," he says.
Mr Liao says of the 55,000 viruses in the world, only about 500 are active. The remainder he refers to as "zoo" viruses. They are obsolete and no longer a threat.
Trend Micro maintains a website at
wtc.trendmicro.com/wct
to provide a constant update of the top 10 viruses in the world.
Pricing for the eDoctor programme will be available soon.
Publication: DOM Date: 21 Aug 2000 Page: IT 12
Headline: Sybase launches portal offerings
AMERICAN database firm Sybase has launched a raft of software and consulting services to help companies nurture online relationships with customers and employees.
Sybase has formed relationships with more than 30 American companies to offer services worldwide through the Sybase Enterprise Portal.
Senior director of product strategy Robert Breton, based in San Francisco, demonstrated the different relationships a secure e-commerce website can offer customers, business partners and employees, in Wellington last week.
He says employees could be allowed to access payroll information, agents could review their sales performance, and customers could see their past orders.
Mr Breton says the services can integrate with a company's existing supply chain and business plan to reduce costs and improve internal and external relationships.
Adam Johnson, Sydney-based managing director for Australia and New Zealand, says the offering promotes evolution rather than revolution by allowing companies to build on top of their existing systems.
Sybase offers the expertise to make existing data available online securely, and in a manner appropriate to a viewer's profile.
The "business-to-everyone" service supports programming languages Java, XML, EJB and Corba, enabling developers to create interfaces for a wide variety of data sources.
Security measures include digital certificates, username/password and native Unix or NT operating system log-in.
Such features as security-profile linked search engines can filter out search results a client is not entitled to see.
In order to deliver personal content, clients are encouraged to register at a website. As a client logs in on subsequent visits, they will be presented with a view of the website tailored to their profile.
Mr Breton says this view can include personally addressed notices, individual promotional offers and access to individualised services and data.
Clients expect a website to be constantly available. Sybase allows for redundant components to ensure no single point of failure leads to system-wide disruption.
Mobile and wireless transaction products are supported by services offered under the portal umbrella.
Sybase's New Zealand customers include the New Zealand Dairy Board, Telecom and INL.
Publication: DOM Date: 24 Jul 2000 Page: IT 7
Headline: Mentoring programme off to a good start
A MENTORING programme offered by recruitment company Morgan and Banks is off to a "surprisingly good" start with interest from about 45 mentors.
Once the programme was established late last year, prospective mentors "just came to us", according to Duncan Holland, Wellington manager of human resources consulting.
A mentor's guidance can help foster and support the move into leadership.
"Most people who approach us are looking to advance their career possibilities _ they are looking for long-term results".
Mr Holland says executives are often unable to counsel their staff, they feel their peers may use any weaknesses against them, and they do not want their superiors seeing "elements which may be prejudicial to their advancement".
They can feel isolated or "caught in the cross-hairs of a telescope", he says.
Morgan and Banks' mentoring programme aims to establish trust-based, confidential relationships with mentors who have already "walked the walk".
After initial interviews and a matching process, applicants move into an intensive, three- to four-month period with a mentor who is always available.
"There is a very high level of communication", Mr Holland says.
Mr Holland says a short-term programme with a specific coaching objective and timeframe may be paid for by management.
Senior people may also bear the costs themselves.
After the initial few months, ongoing mentoring may require "only a couple of e-mails a month".
This is charged at a relatively low maintenance level but can be reviewed should more intensive contact with the mentor be required.
Morgan and Banks' Australian arm is enthusiastic about taking up this New Zealand initiative, says career management product head Phillip Healy, based in Melbourne.
A team of senior university exectives is the first large group to enter a formal programme.
Mr Healy says 15 to 20 potential mentors have come forward in Melbourne in the past six months.
"We look for people with high emotional intelligence", he says.
"They need insight, communication skills and an awareness of the effect they have on people. Good leadership skills, in other words."
A "War for Talent" business breakfast in Sydney recently attracted 400 organisations.
Mr Healy says businesses realise "we are only as good as the people we've got".
Morgan and Banks will offer the mentoring service in other Australian cities once the programme has been fine-tuned in Melbourne.
Paul Stevenson, career transition manager based in Auckland, says the process of matching mentors and "mentees" is crucial.
"Industry specific knowledge is not as important as the ability to relate", he says.
Former Alcatel and Telecom Wellington chief executive Tone Borren is a mentor working with chief executives or people close to that level.
Mr Borren says organisations refer people who they want to keep but who may be experiencing a problem which impedes their moving higher in the organisation or achieving desired results.
For Mr Borren, it is a way of "giving something back".
He has previously worked with Business and the Community, which mentors at a lower level in organisations, and he has written a book called The Intangibles of Managing.
Mr Holland says mentors, "can usually earn far larger money in their own field of endeavour", but find the programme immensely rewarding on a personal level.
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