CIO

Movers and shakers: Russell Jones joins BNZ, Alin Ungureanu now Chelmer CEO

New role for Paul Jepson at Earthquake Commission

Russell Jones is now executive general manager - technology and operations at Bank of New Zealand, leaving his executive GM retail banking role at ASB. He is also a director at healthAlliance.

Jones was with ASB for more than 10 years. He  joined ASB after more than a decade in manufacturing - he was IT director at International Paper in the US, and prior to this, was CIO for Carter Holt Harvey.

In an interview with CIO New Zealand, Jones shared his insight on nurturing a career in business and information technology: “We really need people to recognise that we are in a fast moving industry and that technologies come and go; new tools, new suppliers and new ways of things come out all the time...And in that environment, why wouldn't you rather move around, and develop and grow?"

Alin Ungureanu is now CEO at Chelmer Limited, which provides specialist software solutions to the financial and wealth management industry.

He has just finished up the enterprise architect role healthAlliance where he was the technology lead for the datacentre and telecommunications as a service (DTaaS) programme.

His previous roles include CIO at Oceania Healthcare and Icebreaker, and KPMG director. He is managing director of consultancy TYDY Group and a board member of ISACA Auckland Chapter.

Ungureanu has an MBA from AUT, where he is also completing his masters in health informatics.

Simon Young is promoted to chief product and technology officer, stepping up from head of product development, at Trade Me.

Jeremy Burrows is service portfolio manager at Oranga Tamariki - Ministry for Children. Before this, he was head of ICT at New Zealand Rugby.

Paul Jepson steps up to deputy chief executive - operations at Earthquake Commission, after seven months as general manager. He joined the commission after nearly six years as CIO at ACC. Before that, he was the CIO at Housing New Zealand.

Seequent, a developer of visual data science software, and Perigon, which delivers intelligent wellbore data management solutions, have partnered to deliver the iPoint data management and visualisation software solution to the geothermal Industry.

Seequent, the developer of dedicated 3D modelling solution Leapfrog Geothermal, has been appointed as the exclusive global re-seller of iPoint for geothermal, a set of tools tailored specifically for the geothermal industry to address the long-time challenges of data storage, management and security.

Graham Grant, COO of Seequent, says: “One of the biggest assets a geothermal operator has is the data they collect during the expensive operation of drilling and subsurface investigation along with operational data.

“Our partnership with Perigon is a great way to help our geothermal customers take control over the way their data is managed and used, to better manage risk and make important exploration and operational investment decisions that add to the top and bottom-line.”

Valocity, the cloud-based mortgage lending and valuation platform, has secured growth capital from the NZ-based Huljich family, who have acquired a 25.7 per cent stake in the company. The capital raised from Valocity’s now cornerstone shareholders will be used to accelerate expansion opportunities in New Zealand, Australia and India.

The Huljich family investments include Diligent Board Member Services Inc, where the family invested as the sole pre-IPO funder in 2007, as well as NZX and ASX-listed Pushpay Holdings Limited, where the family holds a 21.8 per cent stake.

Peter Huljich joins Valocity’s board complementing existing board members Jonty Kelt, Debra Hall, Andrew Harris and Valocity founders, Antony and Carmen Vicelich.

Carmen Vicelich
Carmen Vicelich

Endace, a specialist in high-speed network recording, traffic playback and analytics hosting, and Gigamon, which is involved in the convergence of network and security operations to help organisations improve their security stance, have announced a technology partnership to dramatically improve visibility into network traffic for SecOps, NetOps and DevOps teams.

The partnership brings together the EndaceProbe Analytics Platform and the GigaSECURE Security Delivery Platform to give analysts the complete packet-level visibility they need to quickly and conclusively investigate and respond to security threats and remediate network and application performance issues.

“Investigating security threats or troubleshooting performance problems can be a slow, challenging and inconclusive process if you don’t have access to the packets,” says Stuart Wilson, CEO of Endace. “With the Endace and Gigamon partnership, customers have access to a highly scalable solution that delivers the definitive evidence they need to rapidly and accurately investigate and resolve issues.”

Unisys Corporation gets a CIO 100 award for its ongoing secure digital transformation. Unisys CIO Upinder Phanda accepted the award at the CIO 100 Symposium and Awards Ceremony in Rancho Palos Verdes in California.

The CIO 100 award citation characterises the Unisys initiative as “a secure digital transformation journey that is changing its business for the better…The results are a more cost-effective, secure network and improved face of the company to the market.”

Commenting on the award, Phanda noted that Unisys’ transformation aligns with recent Unisys research that shows distinct differences in today’s workplace between “technology leaders” – organisations that have made prudent investments in digital technology to improve their workers’ productivity and collaboration – and “technology laggard” organisations, which have failed to make those investments or have made them inadequately.

Business school INSEAD has received a €40 million donation from André Hoffmann, vice chairman of Roche Holdings, Switzerland, and his wife Rosalie.

André Hoffmann
André Hoffmann

The gift is the largest by an individual in the school’s history, and establishes the Hoffmann Global Institute for Business and Society.

Hoffmann, who holds an MBA from INSEAD, firmly believes in business as a force for good. As a member of the board of SystemIQ, he helps transform economic systems in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum and of the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco.

Credit: Image: Dreamstime

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