Stories by CIO New Zealand

It’s time to recognise outstanding ICT achievements with the 2011 ITEX Computerworld Awards. Entries and nominations are open for ICT Manager of the Year, ICT Project of the Year and Software Developer of the Year.
“The awards are a platform for the ICT profession to showcase and celebrate best practice, innovationand excellence,” says Computerworld editor Sarah Putt. “This year's awards ceremony will take place as part of celebrations to mark Computerworld's 25th birthday, which will make it especially significant."

Vensa Health has just released its new mobile health platform Vensa mHealth+ and the Whanganui District Health Board is the first to implement the new cloud solution.
“Using our system healthcare providers can better communicate with their patients which will in turn improve people's health. Currently around one in ten appointments are missed in New Zealand public hospitals costing the health system millions, and the even greater cost is that each missed appointment represents a lost opportunity for early intervention. mHealth provides a big opportunity to improve health outcomes and is a low cost solution we can use to tackle issues such as hospital outpatient missed appointments in New Zealand,” says Ahmad Jubbawey, CEO of Vensa Health.
The new platform allows primary and secondary health providers two-way mobile text messaging, email, voice and clinical vital sign messaging. Vensa mHealth+ is also capable of interfacing with multiple Patient Management Systems and supports applications such as appointment reminders, lab result notifications, medication reminders, surveys and clinical virtal sign type of messages collection from medical devices.
"It's really important people turn up to appointments so they can get the treatment they need when they need it and don't risk worsening health status. Doctors are very keen to reduce missed appointments as the loss of service is not only costly in financial terms it also means that someone else might wait longer for their appointment. If patients contacted us in advance to cancel or reschedule appointments then hospital waiting times could be significantly reduced. Text-messaging makes it far easier for patients to receive messages and change appointments which will flow on to improved health outcomes,” says Dr John Rivers, chief medical advisor of the Whanganui DHB.
The DHB rolled out the system in mid-May across Wanganui Hospital, Taihape, Waimarino/ Raetihi and Rangitikei health centres.
"We've had lots of positive feedback from people using the system. After two months we're already starting to see improvements, more people are getting in touch to reschedule appointments. As a consequence we're seeing our did not attend (DNA) rates drop. Our figures are at the lowest they have been in two years and as we continue to use the system and collect more mobile numbers we will see things drop even further,” says Jan Denman, outpatient manager for the DHB.
Vensa Health received an investment of $252,000 from the Ministry of Science and Innovation towards the research and development costs of the new mobile health platform.

The market for security software to protect mobile devices including tablets, smartphones and feature phones will reach almost $3.7 billion by 2016, according to a new report by Juniper Research.
Juniper’s new Mobile Security research found that businesses are now beginning to spend more on mobile device security applications, as they become a critical part of enterprise policy.
As more tablets are brought into the enterprise over the next five years, the proportion of tablets featuring security products will also increase and overtake the percentage of smartphones protected. At the end of this period, enterprise and business sales will account for nearly 69 percent of the market, according to the research firm,
Juniper recommends enterprise and IT managers audit the security status of their corporate mobile device deployments and take remedial action where necessary.
“Enterprise users are in the front line against potential security breaches through insufficient mobile security. Companies need to incorporate mobile network connected devices into the corporate network, since this is the easiest way to enforce policies and to audit such devices” says Nitin Bhas, author of the report.
Juniper says the recent series of high-profile security incidents, including the News of the World hacking scandal, has likewise increased public awareness on the vulnerability of mobiles devices.
The research firm says only one in 20 smartphones and tablets have third-party security software installed in them, despite a steady increase in threats. But it expects mobile security products to become mainstream by late 2013; and 277 million mobile devices will have some kind of protection installed by 2016.

Microsoft New Zealand has appointed Jordy Almgren as Enterprise and Partner Group (EPG). He will be responsible for a range of areas within the enterprise account segment, including product, cloud services and professional services, Microsoft said in a press statement.

Enterprises in the Asia Pacific have been the fastest to migrate to IPv6, while the rest of the world is still resisting pressure from the internet and telecoms industry, says Ovum.
According to the research company, this sense of urgency in the AP region has been prompted by the announcement by the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) that the free pool of IPv4 addresses has been effectively exhausted.
Ovum adds that it expects this regional announcement to be followed by other regions.
“There may be a degree of ‘head in sand’ mentality among most enterprise customers, but our research stands in glaring contrast to the industry’s efforts to promote IPv6 over the past several years. Furthermore our research suggests that many enterprise customers think they are already using IPv6, when they are not,” says Ovum in its report, “IPv6 transition – What’s the rush?”
The company also adds that this is not the only reason for AP’s lead on IPv6 adoption: The Asia-Pacific is the top growth region in the world, manufactures many electronic devices and many companies see this as their key expanding region. And many enterprise customers are doing business with a vendor/customer in this region which will influence by the faster pace of IPv6 adoption globally.”
The report says some triggers will motivate enterprises to make the move, including the growing number of new consumer devices, such as smartphones, that will be assigned IPv6 addresses, and the new web applications that will be accessed by these devices.
According to Ovum, IPv6 traffic still accounts for less than three percent of all internet traffic.

Lee Madden has been appointed CodeBlue’s CIO, a newly-created position within the company. Madden will also be responsible for providing CIO services to CodeBlue customers, through the company’s new “virtual CIO” initiative.
“‘The Virtual CIO’ is an initiative to deliver to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) the considerable cost savings and business advantages that dedicated CIOs bring to very large companies,” says Ian Funnell, CodeBlue’s general manager.

An IDC study sponsored by EMC has shown that the world’s information is more than doubling every two years, with 1.8 zettabytes to be created and replicated this year.
According to the study, titled “Digital Universe”, massive server, data management and file growth are not keeping pace with staffing. IDC predicts that over the next decade, IT departments will experience ten times the number of servers (both virtual and physical) and 50 times the amount of information to be managed but only 1.5 times the number of IT professionals available to manage it all.

ASB Bank chief operations officer Russell Jones (photo below) was named CIO of the Year at the CIO Awards dinner last night. Jones took the award, sponsored by NetApp, for leading significant organisational and cultural change in one of the largest IT teams in New Zealand.

The Tairawhiti District Health Board (TDH) has equipped its staff with tablet PCs designed specifically for the healthcare sector.
The health board covers the North Island’s east coast area from beyond Hicks Bay to the Wharerata ranges, and a large portion of its work is done from the main campus on Ormond Road, where Gisborne Hospital is situated.

Gael Hargreaves, CEO, Revera
Where were you educated?

The Getting I.T. Right website initiative has added a holistic framework that enterprises working on business technology projects can utilise.
The non-profit site (www.gettingitright.co.nz) now features ideas on organisational structure, responsibilities of the IT and management team, philosophies, certification and other measures that an organisation can follow to drive IT success.

The deployment of a PC power and patch management solution will see Kiwibank saving up to $24,570, reducing energy use by 163,800 kWh and cutting down CO2 emissions by 32 tonnes within the first year of deployment.
Through its New Zealand distributor Transend, 1E has installed the NightWatchman and WakeUp solutions in Kiwibank’s IT infrastructure.

Four CIOs are in the running for the CIO of the Year award.
They are:

Research company Ovum says almost three quarters of CIOs have deployed green IT in their organisation and a further 8 percent are planning to do so by the end of 2012.
The survey conducted by Ovum canvassed CIOs and IT decision-markers across Europe, the US, the Middle East and Australia and found that the number of companies using green IT grew to 73 percent in the second half of 2010, from approximately 68 percent in the first half.

CallPlus' internally-produced business intelligence solution propelled it to become the sole New Zealand company to make it as a 2011 CIO 100 winner.
IDC, which conducts the annual search, says the award honours companies and their IT teams for innovations that advance business results.