IT PEOPLE

Interactive Intelligence picks Phillips for Australian sales

Stephen Withers — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:35:42 +0000

Unified communications provider Interactive Intelligence has appointed Mitchell Phillips as Australia territory manager.

"Mitchell's track record in driving sales success comes at a strategic time for the company and we are delighted to welcome him to the team," said ANZ managing director Brendan Maree.

Mr Phillips was most recently senior sales executive new business at Witness/Verint Systems. He previously worked as senior sales executive with Aspect Communications, and held a variety of sales and account management roles at Telstra.

He has a degree in education from Sydney University.

Greythorn appoints new NSW manager

Peter Dinham — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:33:48 +0000

IT&T recruitment firm, Greythorn, has appointed a new general manager to run its business in New South Wales.
Greythorn Australian managing director, Richard Fischer, said Sean Roocroft had been appointed to the role, based in the Sydney office which is the company’s largest office globally. Roocroft joins Greythorn from Peoplebank/Ambit.

“Sean has a wealth of IT recruitment experience, having successfully managed IT recruitment teams for 6+ years, most recently at Peoplebank/Ambit where he was the NSW manager. In addition, Sean has over 15 years industry experience, working with strategic decision makers such as Senior Managers, HRD's & C level executives with particular focus in assisting clients in developing, delivering and continuously improving their recruitment
processes, strategy and performance,” Fischer said.

Roocroft is responsible for Greythorn’s financial services, permanent, contract and government recruitment divisions in NSW.

"This is a great win for Greythorn to attract such a high calibre recruitment manager. Sean is very highly regarded in the industry and I have no doubt he will build on our success. For us, reputation is everything, and we continue to go from strength to strength with our management team and employees."

Microsoft hires new public sector supremo

Stephen Withers — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:22:23 +0000

Microsoft has appointed Laura Ipsen as corporate vice president of its worldwide public sector organisation.

"I am delighted to welcome Laura to Microsoft," said Susan Hauser, corporate vice president of Microsoft's worldwide enterprise and partner group. "Innovation is an increasingly important catalyst for economic growth and competitiveness around the world. We are thrilled to have someone with Laura's deep experience leading our outreach to governments and extending our commitment to improving lives through innovation."

Ms Ipsen was most recently senior vice president and general manager of connected energy networks at Cisco, and previously worked for Hitachi Data Systems, Acer, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

She is currently a board member of Monsanto and of the GridWise Alliance, and previously served as board chair of both the Information Technology Industry Council and the Organization of Women in International Trade.

Too many chiefs, not enough Indians

Beverley Head — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:16:05 +0000

By the end of last year Australia had around 700 too many ICT managers, and 2,700 too few ICT professionals. It’s the classic case of too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

The Clarius Skills Index for Computing Professionals is a measure of the skills-demand balance in Australia which is conducted for listed recruitment business Clarius by KPMG Econotech.

The December 2011 index which has just been released features some significant changes in terms of the way the index has been generated. The index now also splits up ICT managers, ICT professionals and ICT and telecommunications technicians into three separate groups rather than the previous “ICT professionals” portmanteau description.

It then analyses Australian Bureau of Statistics and Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations data regarding unemployment rates and job advertisements.

An index of 100 represents perfect skills-demand balance where figures above 101 are considered to indicate skills shortages.

The December quarter index for ICT professionals stood at 101.3, for ICT and telecommunications technicians at 97.7 and for ICT managers was 98.5.

Despite the oversupply of ICT managers and technicians the report notes that; “Various industry sectors continue to have strong demand for IT services, particularly government, the entertainment industry, telecoms, utilities and mining.”

But what about the banks? Read on...

However it acknowledges that recent bank job cuts will have an impact on some major IT projects, with some projects actually being mothballed until the economy picks up.

According to Commentary from Candle, which is the ICT recruitment division of the Clarius Group; “Caution is everything, an increase in contract roles for the banks is now likely because they are obviously letting go many permanent staff and will realise they will need to keep some people on contracts."

Project managers and people with .Net skills are in high demand as are people with experience in cloud computing, data warehousing, security specialists and database managers.

CSC changes the guard with Mike Lawrie

Beverley Head — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:52:01 +0000

IT services giant CSC has announced that Mike Lawrie will take up the reins as president and CEO before the end of March this year. It’s a case of CEO revolving doors as Mr Lawrie’s previous employer is being taken over by another company which wasn’t planning to make him CEO.

Mr Lawrie will replace Michael Laphen who has previously announced his intention to retire from his role as CSC chairman, president and CEO. The chairman’s role will be taken over by current CSC director Rodney Chase.

After a long career with IBM, and a very brief stint lasting less than a year at the helm of Siebel, Mr Lawrie has latterly been the chief executive of software house Misys. That company overnight announced plans to merge with Swiss software business Temenos, whose current CEO, Guy Dubois, is expected to head the merged entity which will be among the world’s biggest vendors of banking software.

Mr Lawrie last year attracted controversy in the UK for the payout of a 2 million pound bonus thanks to a complex pay scheme linked to Misys’ company share price, which rose during 2011, but fell back after an earlier merger plan collapsed.

A CSC statement said that the board was confident Mr Lawrie had the; “Vision and wide-ranging experience to lead CSC forward, as we execute on exciting strategies in areas such as cloud computing and cybersecurity.”

Mr Lawrie was appointed to the CSC board of directors yesterday and will take up the CEO role before the end of March.

New engineering chief for BigCommerce

Peter Dinham — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:14:41 +0000

Global e-commerce SaaS provider, BigCommerce, has a new chief engineer of its Australian operation who will oversee the design, development and testing strategy with a team of more than 25 engineers at the company’s Sydney headquarters.
Former VP of Australian software company, Atlassian, Soren Harner, has been appointed as BigCommerce’s vice president of engineering in Australia. He also previously worked with content management giant, Vignette.

“I’m a software engineer at heart. Nothing gives me more joy than working with great people to create software that combines elegant design and solid engineering to create opportunities for millions of people. BigCommerce does just that, and the people behind the product are second to none. I’m excited to join the team,” Harner said.

Mitch Harper, co-founder and CEO of BigCommerce, said Harner shared the BigCommerce passion for building “industry-dominating software and his track record doesn’t lie.” “We’ve got big plans and engineering is at the core of everything we do” Harper added.

According to Harper, BigCommerce has big growth plans in2012, which include doubling headcount across the company to 200 people, over 50 of which will be engineers working from Sydney.

Harper said BigCommerce is currently hiring over 20 talented software engineers in its Sydney headquarters.

CIO confidence; a dead cat bounce?

Beverley Head — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:30:28 +0000

At a time when banks are shedding IT roles by the dozen, it seems counter-intuitive that 83 per cent of the nation’s chief information officers should report they are confident about the future of their business to the extent that 45 per cent expect to hire IT staff in the first six months of the year. The question remains – is this a dead cat bounce?

The term “dead cat bounce” is used by financial traders to describe an unexplained positive trading blip – the premise being that even a dead cat will bounce if dropped from sufficient height. So are Australia’s IT directors just trying to talk up the market?

Jonathan Chapman, associate director at Robert Half Technology, the recruitment firm which sponsored the CIO sentiment research says that the optimism seems instead to be in line with what is happening in the IT recruitment marketplace which enjoyed an “unexpectedly perky” start to the year. “As to whether this is a dead cat bounce or not, only time will tell,” said Mr Chapman.

According to the survey of 100 Australian CIOs, while 45 per cent were planning to increase headcount during the first half of the year, 44 per cent were expecting to stay the same, with 9 per cent planning a decrease. The remainder were unsure of their hiring intentions.

Besides surveying 100 CIOs in December/January, Robert Half Technology surveyed 300 chief financial officers and 82 per cent of them also reported confidence in their business’s prospects for the year ahead. It appears that confidence (or dead cats) is spreading through Australia’s C-suite.

That does resonate with the National Australia Bank’s business confidence survey for December, which was released last week and found a slight uptick in sentiment.

It’s also the case in the US which enjoyed unexpectedly strong jobs growth in January. It was enough to provide a nice fillip for the Australian share market yesterday which managed a 1 per cent hike in the All Ords index on the back of the more positive US outlook.

Mr Chapman said that the CIO survey broadly reflected what was being experienced by recruiters. He said there was stronger demand for IT workers particularly in the property, healthcare, insurance and IT sectors. He acknowledged though that demand in financial services has tailed off.

Of the CIOs planning to hire, 36 per cent said it is mainly due to business growth, 31 per cent attributed their hiring plans to IT systems upgrades and 24 per cent cited rising workloads.

Mr Chapman added that there was particular appetite for IT professionals with business intelligence, business analysis and project management skills.

Yahoo!7 boosts management team

Peter Dinham — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:19:20 +0000

Australian media group, Yahoo!7, has boosted its management team with the appointment of former E*TRADE managing director, Stuart Sayer, in a newly created role of chief operating officer.

Sayers, who will take up his appointment as COO in April this year, has a background in management consulting with McKinsey & Company as well as working with the online investment and broking firm, E*TRADE and the ANZ Bank.

Yahoo!7 CEO Rohan Lund said Sayers has a “deep understanding of transactional businesses” from his time at E*TRADE and the ANZ Bank.

“We’ve come a long way in the past few years and the Yahoo!7 group has grown substantially across a number of digital brands and a diverse revenue mix. Digital advertising is increasingly becoming just one component of our business. We’ve come to realise that every visitor to Yahoo!7 is an opportunity for a transaction, not just an ad impression.

“Stuart is an outstanding talent and will bring a valuable set of skills in managing transactional businesses, understanding complex operations and business transformation to help scale the business to deliver on the vision of Yahoo!7,” Lund said.

NICTA celebrates Skellern's AO, but what about Wi-Fi?

Stuart Corner — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:48:03 +0000

NICTA has issued a press release celebrating the award of the Officer of the Order of Australia (AO to its former CEO, Dr David Skellern, but without mentioning his contribution to the development of Wi-Fi technology.

Skellern was CEO of NICTA from 2005 until the end of 2010 and according to NICTA, "He built NICTA's reputation and oversaw impressive research and commercial breakthroughs…Dr Skellern also made an outstanding contribution to NICTA during his five years as CEO and was tireless in his efforts to raise the profile and importance of ICT to the Australian economy."

When he and Neil Weste jointly won a Clunies Ross award in May 2010 for their work on WiFi, NICTA said the award had been gained "for their work in founding Radiata Communications in 1997. Radiata Inc built wireless LAN chips based on research led by Dr Skellern at Macquarie University, in collaboration with CSIRO. Radiata demonstrated the world’s first IEEE 802.11a chipset in September 2000 and was acquired by Cisco Systems later that year."

Radiata was acquired by Cisco in 2001 and Skellern moved to the US as technology director of Cisco's wireless networking business unit. Since then CSIRO has successfully asserted its intellectual property rights over a number of Wi-Fi patents and is reaping many millions of dollars in royalties.

Changes at the top at CSG

Peter Dinham — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:36:24 +0000

There has been a boardroom shuffle at Australian-listed IT services company, CSG in the wake of Denis Mackenzie stepping down as managing director but remaining a major shareholder of the company and his intention to return to the business later this year in a part time executive role.
CSG Chairman, Josef Czyzewski announced the changes to the board and senior management and made note of Denis Mackenzie’s contribution to building CSG (ASX:CSV) over 16 years including almost 11 as Managing Director. “His vision enabled CSG to become a major IT and print services provider with a significant presence across mainland Australia and New Zealand.”

Mackenzie will be replaced as managing director by Julie-Ann Kerin who was for four years Group General Manager of CSG’s Technology Solutions division. Kerin has more than 20 years’ experience in software and services companies in Australia, Asia, Europe and the US.

Czyzewski said it was intended that Denis Mackenzie will re-join CSG on 1 July in a part time executive role focused on corporate and business development, and would also be invited to rejoin the Board.

“Ms Kerin’s appointment heralds a new phase for CSG to focus on sustained growth. Her long history in the industry, coupled with her understanding of the CSG business, strong management skills and good customer relationships, will be of great value in ensuring a smooth transition to new leadership. Julie-Ann’s strong national and international business and IT experience will be a critical element in CSG's focus of delivering value for shareholders,” Czyzewski said.

Julie-Ann Kerin said that, after a period of growth through acquisition which has seen CSG business significantly expand both its geographic and customer reach, “there is now an opportunity to optimise the returns from the platform that has been created.”

CSG also announced that Philip Chambers, currently an Executive Director of CSG and formerly the Managing Director of Fuji Xerox Australia, would replace David Ward as Group General Manager of Print Services Australia. Czyzewski said Ward had elected to bring forward his planned retirement to January 2012 from June 2012.

Czyzewski said it was also the CSG board’s intention to appoint an additional independent nonexecutive director.

Less jobs in softening ICT employment market

Peter Dinham — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:37:17 +0000

The Information Technology Contract and Recruitment Association (ITCRA) has warned of a contraction in Australia’s ICT job market in the next 12 months, after a slowdown in employment towards the end of last year.
According to ITCRA, a review of its SkillsMatch data for 2011 and industry data showing softening employment in a “jittery” market, found that vacancies for ICT professionals dropped 20.1 per cent last year.

ITCRA CEO, Julie Mills, said that while a slowdown isn’t unusual towards the end of a year, the market as a whole was looking jittery. “The Vacancy Report from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations showed vacancies for ICT professionals dropped 20.1 per cent in the past year.”

“The Longhaus Australian Tech Index, which measures the health of the Australian ICT industry, decreased 2.9 per cent by 31 December 2011 – the most significant decline since the second quarter of 2009. This drop was put down to a less demanding labour market in the last three months,” Mills said.

And, Mills says that data from ITCRA’s SkillsMatch showed that in the last quarter of 2011 it took recruiters and employers in most states “much longer to find and hire candidates.”

“The average number of days taken to fill a role increased in the ACT, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia, with the most substantial increase in the ACT. In the third quarter of 2011 it took an average of 26.4 days to fill a role, jumping to 41.4 days in the fourth quarter.”

SkillsMatch also identified continuing gaps between the top 10 skills offered by candidates, and those required by employers, according to ITCRA. “Five of the top 10 skills requested by employers – systems administration, telecommunications, testing, Java and SQL – don’t appear in the top 10 skills offered by candidates,” Mills said.

“Following an upgrade in December 2011, SkillsMatch is now also able to provide an indication of ‘skills fulfilled’, which shows us how often recruiters were able to hire someone with the particular skill they required. For example, our data shows that 35.66 per cent of hirers looking to fill project management roles in 2011 were successful in finding someone with that skill.

“The majority (59.7 per cent) of those looking for employees with C# experience were able to fulfil that need, while only 3.16 per cent of those needing workers with telecommunications experience were able to meet that demand. This data shows there are still opportunities in the market for recruiters and job candidates.”

Mills suggests recruiters should continue to focus on building and maintaining connections with a strong candidate database while focusing on “sourcing job seekers who have the skills most requested by employers.”

MacRae leads TechnologyOne's HR and payroll business

Stephen Withers — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:15:24 +0000

Enterprise software provider TechnologyOne has appointed Paul MacRae as general manager for human resources and payroll - not to run those internal functions, but to lead the strategic direction of research and development, customer support, sales, marketing and consulting services across the human resources and payroll business line.

"Our HRP solution will be the first product to be launched on the cloud following an internal trial and Paul will be able to draw from this experience to offer a proven solution to our customers," said executive chairman Adrian Di Marco.

Mr MacRae was most recently general manager of Talent2. He previously ran Aurion's national sales team, and launched MessageLabs (now part of Symantec) in Australia.

"TechnologyOne is a perfect example of a great Australian business offering sophisticated and top quality software and the chance to work with amazing people, while contributing to keeping jobs on-shore," he said.

Mr MacRae's predecessor, Iain Rouse, is now working on the development of TechnologyOne's cloud strategy.

Exec care role for NEC appointee

Peter Dinham — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:21:31 +0000

Communications systems integrator, NEC, has appointed a new chief of its maintenance and support services business, NECare, with the company pursuing a goal of becoming the ‘leading ICT services provider of choice’ in the Australian market.
Ross Magee, director of customer delivery at NEC, announced the appointment of Philip Belcher as Executive General Manager NECare , and said the appointment reflected NEC Australia’s commitment to further expanding its ICT services capabilities in the UC market.

“Phil brings with him a wealth of knowledge, both as a leader and an industry expert to enable the company to provide better services to our customers and build on NEC’s reputation. In this role, Phil is responsible for driving growth and maximising profitability in the NECare business, directing the organisation to become the leading ICT services provider of choice, helping customers gain business value from the communications revolution,” Magee said.

Magee said Belcher would provide maintenance and support services that provision the unified communications sales and channel teams, serving some 1200 customers across 11,000 locations throughout Australia.

Belcher has more than 25 years’ experience in senior executive roles with IT organisations, including as Managing Director of DataCraft Australia until it was acquired and integrated into Dimension Data Australia. He was also director of the enterprise line of businesses for Cisco Asia Pacific and Australian managing director of Storagetek, Radware and PM Partners.

BlueCentral promotes 20 year veteran

Peter Dinham — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:17:57 +0000

Managed hosting services provider, BlueCentral, has promoted Simon Oliver to the role of general manager – clients and strategy to oversee all client services teams and with responsibility for driving the company’s product and service offering.
Oliver has 20 years IT industry experience, including12 years in the IT consulting and hosting services industry, and joined BlueCentral team in 2010 as business development manager and subject matter expert. Oliver previously worked at Macquarie Hosting, Webcentral and Destra.

David Burkett, Director of BlueCentral said Oliver was a “highly regarded and incredibly talented hosting specialist, bringing a wealth of experience in relationship management and strategy development to this new role.”

1st Executive launches intern program

Peter Dinham — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:58:39 +0000

Melbourne based consulting firm, 1st Executive has launched an internship opportunity program for businesses and young professionals, including IT graduates, looking to gain experience in the workplace.
According to1st Executive director, Andrew Thoseby, a free, 20 day service to industry is provided through the internship opportunities, with the program designed to open career doors for students and post graduates.

Thoseby said university students who are looking to gain experience in job industries, but are finding it too difficult to do their own bargaining, have enrolled in the program which he says has been designed to assist “young talent and future leaders.”

“Internship opportunities are not easily landed and can be hard to find for undergraduates. 1st Executive will use its national network of clients and contacts to secure host companies,” Thoseby said.

“Candidates from a variety of markets have applied including engineering, accounting, marketing, and IT and while some universities require work experience as a part of the academic curriculum, many courses do not.”

Thoseby said he was always surprised to meet IT professionals, engineers and many other “skilled and talented young people cleaning my office or driving cabs when there was supposed to be a talent shortage.” “We also saw overseas students coming into Australia specifically for an internship and then taking their expertise back to a competitive economy - we wanted to do something about that.”

According to Thoseby, the company has been overwhelmed by the volume of interest from young people and is also receiving ten or more briefs a day from potential hosts. “We have been delighted at how many companies are willing to give their time and attention to helping young talent prepare for future employment.”

Fletcher takes over development at ComOps

Stephen Withers — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:58:12 +0000

ComOps has appointed Don Fletcher as its general manager of development.

"Don brings a breadth of experience in strategic and tactical product development and has a proven track record in bringing to market cutting edge products which will bolster our efforts to address the needs of mid-to-large enterprise organisations in Australia and New Zealand," said general manager Daniel Sheahan.

Mr Fletcher previously worked as ERP solutions architect and developer at McWilliams Wines, and co-founder and CTO of ERP specialist Clear Objective.

Salesforce.com hires former US CIO

Stephen Withers — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:48:22 +0000

Salesforce.com has appointed Vivek Kundra as its executive vice president of emerging markets.

"Vivek Kundra is an amazing technology visionary who opened the eyes of millions to the transformational power of cloud computing," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "His disruptive leadership is just what the industry needs to accelerate the social enterprise."

Mr Kundra was previously CIO of the United States, the first person to hold that position.

He previously served as CTO for the District of Columbia and as the assistant secretary of commerce and technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Mr Kundra holds a MS in management information systems from the University of Maryland and is a graduate of the University of Virginia's Sorensen Institute of Political Leadership.

Steve Jobs doll maker caves to pressure from Apple and Jobs family

Stephen Withers — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:38:41 +0000

In Icons' "12in collectible figure" of Steve Jobs won't be going on sale after all.

In Icons drew a lot of attention when it announced it would be selling a Steve Jobs doll ("12in collectible figure" may be more accurate, but it's also on the verbose side).

Compared with many representations of well-known figures, the prototype was a remarkable likeness to the extent that some people thought it fell into the 'uncanny valley' where the resemblance is so close it doesn't really look like a model but the slight lack of realism makes it seem somehow creepy.

Anyway, Apple claimed the doll was in breach of its trademarks, even though no representations of any Apple products were to be included as accessories. Lawyers representing Apple and the Jobs family put "immense pressure" on In Icons to cancel the project, and the company eventually caved.

A statement on the In Icons web site reads in part "Regardless of the pressure, I am still Steve's fan, I fully respect Steve, and his family, and it is definitely not my wish or intention that they be upset. Though we still believe that we have not overstepped any legal boundaries, we have decided to completely stop the offer, production and sale of the Steve Jobs figurine out of our heartfelt sensitivity to the feelings of the Jobs family."

In Icons 'aims' to make full refunds to those who pre-ordered the doll.

Former head of Hutchison Australia, Kevin Russell, named Optus COO

Stuart Corner — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:52:39 +0000

Optus has appointed Kevin Russell, the founding CEO of Hutchison Telecommunications (3) in Australia to the newly created role of chief operating officer.

Optus said he would be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the mass market segments of Optus' business as well as the Wholesale and Satellite division. "As such he will be responsible for the Optus Consumer, Optus Small and Medium Business, and the Optus Wholesale and Satellite businesses as well as Optus' wholly owned subsidiary, Virgin Mobile," Optus said. He will report to Optus CEO Paul O'Sullivan.

Optus made no comment on the creation of the COO role, but the move will clearly free O'Sullivan to focus more on the company's strategic priorities in a year of significant challenge and change.

Russell said: "I'm returning to Australia at a very exciting time in the telecoms industry with the rollout of [LTE] and the National Broadband Network both gathering pace."

Russell has spent the last five years in the UK as chief operating officer and subsequently chief executive officer of Hutchison Three UK, where, according to Optus he was responsible for leading the turnaround of the business.

Prior to that he was CEO Officer of Hutchison Telecoms Australia, which rolled out Australia's first 3G network. He started with the company as its COO and became CEO in 2001. He left to take up the UK role in 2007.

Earlier roles included chief financial officer at Partner Communications in Israel and director of finance for Hutchison Telecom International.

Sam Saba to lead Ericsson in Indonesia

Stuart Corner — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:57:25 +0000

The CEO of Ericsson Australia, New Zealand & Fiji, Sam Saba, has been appointed to head Ericsson in Indonesia.

His departure (to a then unspecified role) was foreshadowed in December when Ericsson's current global CTO, Håkan Eriksson, was named as the hew head of Ericsson ANZ & Fiji, starting in February. Saba has already spent five of his 17 years with Ericsson in Indonesia. He also spent five years as head of services and sales for the Middle East & country manager for the UAE.

Before being appointed head of ANZ (in April 2010) he was manager for the Telstra account. As head of ANZ, he is already a member of the leadership team for Ericsson in South East Asia and Oceania.