Software developer's association, Software Queensland, has announced its new chair and committee as it heads into association's second year of representing software developers in Queensland. Founding committee member and former treasurer, Kon Kakanis, takes on the role of chair. Kakanis is director, sales and marketing for Sundata and is also a member of the ICT Industry Workgroup representing a number of key associations in lobbying to Government on procurement and industry development issues.

Business imaging vendor, Konica Minolta Australia, has appointed Frank Mellish to the newly created position of general manager, sales and marketing, Australia, based in Sydney. Mellish joined Konica Minolta in 2003. Prior to being promoted to the new position he was marketing director. Previously, Mellish spent more than a decade with IBM where he launched the Thinkpad Brand in Europe and was responsible for marketing PC products to the small-to-medium business sectors on a global basis. He also worked for CSC as the global vice president, marketing, based in Los Angeles.

Enterprise infrastructure provider, Aruba Networks, has appointed David Humphries as the country manager, responsible for the sales of Aruba for Australia and New Zealand. Humphries comes to Aruba with 20 years experience in the Australian Networking Industry. Most recently Humphries was at Avnet, where he was managing the networking arm of its distribution business. Before that, he held various sales roles at Memorex Telex, Xylan (acquired by Alcatel), Arrowpoint Communications (acquired by Cisco) and network management company, Concord Communications (recently acquired by CA).

Intelligent Business Research Services (IBRS) has appointed high profile industry analyst Dr Kevin McIsaac to a senior research role. Dr McIsaac was formerly research director Asia Pacific with META Group, prior to its take-over by Gartner. Dr McIsaac is an expert in infrastructure, operations and vendor management and works with CIOs and IT management teams on strategy development and the key issues associated with running IT as a business. His first report, entitled:" Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) – Who Dares Wins" examines the impact of the SAS communication protocol on the storage market.

Online training and recruitment company TodayCorp Pty Ltd, has acquired privately held Impart.

Business performance software vendor, Hyperion, has appointed Thomas Palmer as director of sales for the company's Australia and New Zealand operations. Palmer, who the company considers one of its top 5 sales executives worldwide, joined Hyperion Solutions in 1999 as strategic account manager in Atlanta. Prior to joining Hyperion, Palmer held senior business development, sales and marketing positions at Cap Gemini Insurance. His experience also includes stints as director of sales & marketing at Business Intelligence and e-business consulting firm Blackstone and Cullen Inc., account manager at National Education Training Group, and business systems consultant with the Atlanta office of Arthur Andersen S.C.

Business intelligence vendor, Business Objects, has named John Schwarz chief executive officer. Company founder, Bernard Liautaud, continues as chairman of the board and assumes the new role of chief strategy officer. Schwarz joins the company from Symantec Corporation, where he held the position of president and was responsible for leading the company's six lines of business. At Symantec, Schwarz played a key role in the recent combination of Symantec and VERITAS. Previously, he spent 25 years at IBM Corporation working in development, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. He was general manager of IBM's Industry Solutions unit, a worldwide organization focused on building business applications and related services for IBM's large industry customers.

Business solutions consulting firm, Votar Partners, has appointed Laurie Ward as NSW/ACT strategic business development Manager. Ward joins Votar Partners after a career of more than 20 years in the IT industry, working for companies such as ICL Australia, NCR, Seagate, Aspect and most recently Advanced Data Integration.

Research group, Gartner, has issued a warning that the current shortage of skilled labour is negatively affecting the Indian call centre industry.