KEY POINTS:
Getting technology to work properly can be a nightmare: just ask Fonterra. The Independent Financial Review reported yesterday that problems linked to the installation of new SAP software were behind supply chain issues for Fonterra Brands New Zealand, which have kept some of the company's products off supermarket shelves.
Earlier this month the Business Herald reported that Fonterra Brands' Perth business had been stung by problems with an unrelated JD Edwards software installation.
Just three days after the Herald's coverage, JDE's owner, Oracle, sent out a media release headed: Customers respond positively to Oracle's commitment to JD Edwards.
The release said: "Organisations in New Zealand are responding positively to Oracle's commitment to Oracle's JD Edwards applications, demonstrated by net new customers as well as customers upgrading their pre-acquisition deployments."
Oracle acquired the JDE business as part of its acrimonious takeover of PeopleSoft in 2004 and has continued to invest in the brand, despite customer fears it would fade away after the merger.
Oracle's PR firm in Auckland told the Herald that last week's JDE media release and the Fonterra Brands issue were not related.
Meanwhile, Peter Idoine has been appointed managing director of Oracle New Zealand, replacing Robert Gosling who was last year promoted to the Sydney-based Australasian role of vice-president for technology sales.
Idoine has been New Zealand country manager for Sun Microsystems.
The apple of their eye
Last week's Interrupt, which dared to discuss the business case for Apple's newly launched iPhone, resulted in a bountiful crop of fruitful feedback from Apple loyalists.
Your columnist was variously berated as being ignorant, cynical, or just a "tosser" by Apple fans, a group notorious for dishing out email blastings to any commentator whose writings are less than 110 per cent effusive about the company.
Having such a die-hard base of active supporters out there must make life quite easy for Apple boss Steve Job.
Bristling new PR
Former Computerworld editor Paul Brislen may have swapped jobs over Christmas but his name still popped up on the editorial page of the weekly industry magazine's first 2007 issue.
Brislen's new role is external communications manager for Vodafone and in that capacity he was invited to respond to a reader's gripe about the mobile phone company's data charges.
Last month (when Brislen was in his old job) Computerworld ran articles about a Vodafone customer who ran up a surprise bill of almost $5000 over two days while using Vodafone's data roaming service in Australia.
Vodafone suffered from a revolving door effect within its public relations department last year with several spokespeople departing. With this shaping up to be an eventful year for telecommunications in general, and Vodafone in particular, the company has done well to snare Brislen, who is an articulate techie communicator, particularly on TV. He joins Vodafone's other new external communications manager, Elinore Wellwood, whose background in corporate and government PR should complement his skills nicely.
Brislen's replacement at Computerworld is former Independent Financial Review journalist Rob O'Neill.
Store it away
Storage may not be the sexiest of IT topics - industry journalists forced to endure conferences on the topic often refer to it as "snore-age" - but it may be the next goldmine for consultants.
Auckland-based IDC analyst Ullrich Loeffler managed to stay awake long enough to write a 35-page assessment of the local storage market, which he says is expected to grow faster than the overall IT market between now and 2010.
Loeffler says while data and storage management has become a major challenge for businesses, most firms have yet to adequately address the issue.
"Despite the fact that many New Zealand companies are struggling to cope with exploding data volumes, new regulatory compliance obligations, and increasing storage complexity, only a very small percentage of these businesses have developed long-term storage strategies," he says.
"Storage solution providers have an opportunity to provide storage consulting services to help customers address their business challenges and to maximise the return on investment of their storage investments."
Some industry training provider is no doubt rushing out a how-to-start-a-storage-consultancy-business course as we speak. Expect sales of NoDoz pills to spike.
Hasta la vista XP
The full force of Microsoft's marketing muscle hits town next week with the official consumer launch of Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system and Microsoft 2007 Office application suite.
Times have changed since the halcyon days for Microsoft when people queued at midnight to buy a copy of Windows 95. Global IT consultancy Gartner predicts Vista will not become the dominant operating system until 2009, by which time it will account for 55.4 per cent of the market compared with its predecessor XP's 40 per cent.
Next week's Connect will take a detailed look at the impact of Vista and Office 2007 on consumer and business IT markets.
