Government gets look at security software

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

German software house SAP has shown the police, customs and immigration its homeland security product which sifts data from many sources to predict possible undesirable outcomes, not unlike the system used in sci-fi blockbuster Minority Report.

Geraldine McBride, SAP's Australia and New Zealand managing director, said homeland security combined parts of SAP's enterprise resource planning and customer relationship software to make sense of large volumes of data.

The system could act as an umbrella, bringing together data, for example, from customs, immigration, transport and even sporting or cultural events to predict possible scenarios, said McBride, who was in New Zealand last week.

Customs might enter information about dangerous goods into the SAP ecosystem so their passage through the national transportation system to their final destination could be tracked and managed, she said.

Likewise, the system can also generate a complete inventory of a country's civil defence resources and allocate them to a series of events following a disaster, down to a fine level which might include individual items and transportation.

The software would allow the Government and its various agencies to create a portal as the gateway for all the information that is housed across many agencies and bodies.

Following September 11, governments around the world were recognising that a large body of information was available that could have been made relevant if it had been analysed in advance, she said.

For example, the number of people taking flying lessons increased before September 11 and the system would have noted this in an exception report.

McBride said this product was in its earliest stages in New Zealand and no department was yet planning to buy it.

Outside this speculative area, she said the company was doing well in New Zealand with plans this year for double-digit growth.

SAP made $3.8 million on revenues of $27.8 million in 2002 and McBride expects a strong financial return this year.

Companies were starting to spend again but they were pushing vendors harder.

SAP was appointing new resellers for its small and medium business product and recently notched up a deal with motorbike company Forbes & Davies through business partner Eagle Technology.

McBride said many more deals were in the pipeline and the company expected to take about 15 per cent of its revenue from this market.

The remainder of SAP's business would come from traditional big clients such as Telecom, NZ Defence and Mighty River Power.

Another recent significant licence gain was with Whitcoulls, which was implementing systems through its Australian possession Angus & Robertson.

It also landed a $500,000 deal with technology company Rakon.