CIO

Movers and shakers: Dave Veronese, Andre Mendes,Trudy Rankin, Henare Howard and Colin Smith

A roundup of the latest business technology executive appointments and events in New Zealand and Australia.

Andre Mendes is now interim CEO and director at the Broadcasting Board of Governors in the US.

He has overall responsibility for the US$750 million federal agency responsible for all United States civilian broadcasts abroad. The role includes managerial responsibility for the Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and the International Broadcasting Bureau.

Before this, he was director, global operations for the board, and CIO/CTO.

He moved to the Broadcasting Board after over three years SVP, strategic planning and global CIO at Special Olympics.

In an interview with <i>CIO New Zealand</i> two years ago, Mendes noted the CIO is “uniquely primed to ascend to the CEO and COO positions in technology driven companies”.

The CIO has a “helicopter view” of the company that very few other people enjoy, he stated. The ERP, CRM and e-commerce implementations CIOs work on are “the entire technology strata of a company.”

“…. That helicopter view provides them with an understanding of the business at large including the external, the suppliers, to supply chain environments and downstream, the retailers and distributors.

“That provides unique fodder for a CIO to be an operations leader and eventually, the organisation’s leader.”

Dave Veronese starts cloud consultancy

Dave Veronese has left the House of Travel where he has been CIO for over five years, and before that was its general manager IT operations.

He has started a business, Inde.nz, with Rik Roberts, who was a solution architect for House of Travel. Roberts is a specialist in cloud strategy and migration, application delivery and Microsoft Technologies.

Veronese says the group is specialising in cloud strategy and services, application delivery and optimising technology teams, services and processes.

Veronese says he is using his CIO experience to specialise in executive CIO consulting "to unlock and enhance stakeholder value and co-create great customer experiences by maximising technology systems and capability".

“Our inspiration to start a new company was from gaps in service and capability we experienced in the New Zealand market," says Veronese. "We felt that our experience, combined with certifications in our core competencies, puts us in a great position to be leaders in our specialist technologies."

Colin Smith has retired from his CIO role at Fisher & Paykel Finance after more than four years.

Henare Howard is now project manager, platform services, at Townsville City Council in Brisbane. Howard’s previous roles include project manager ICT for Health Promotion Agency and head of IS operations at King’s College in Auckland.

Trudy Rankin, former CIO at the Department of Conservation, is now a director at West Island Digital in Melbourne. The role involves helping start ups to medium sized businesses through the strategic use of digital technology to “grow revenue, not costs”, she says. “Digital technology, used well, lets business owners focus more on their customers, so they can do more of what they love doing and less of what they don't.”

Justin Robbins has been appointed New Zealand country manager of Sage Business Solutions. Robbins comes to the role following six years as a strategic sales director for Sage in South Africa.

Plan B acquires Turnstone

Ian Forrester of Plan B at the 2014 CIO100 event
Ian Forrester of Plan B at the 2014 CIO100 event

Plan B has acquired voice, video and data network provider Turnstone.

“Following a period of strong growth, investment and the acquisition of Disaster Recovery Group last year, I am pleased to advise that we have reached agreement with the shareholders of Turnstone to acquire their business”, says Ian Forrester, managing director, Plan B.

“Over the past few years with the introduction of cloud services, we have become more intrinsically involved in our customers’ businesses,” says Forrester. “To this end, we have begun a journey to broaden our services to better meet the evolving needs of our customers.”

Turnstone’s core business is voice, video and data networks built for customers using their nationwide IP network. They will continue to operate as a separate division of Plan B while providing opportunities to further enhance Plan B’s solutions in line with our customer requirements.

Send news tips for 'Movers and shakers' to divina_paredes@idg.co.nz

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