CeBIT 2013 Updates

Interview with Steve Monaghan, Chief Innovation Officer, DBS Bank (Singapore)

Posted on May 1, 2013 by stefan

This week, Steve Monaghan, Chief Innovation Officer from DBS Bank in Singapore is sharing his time and experience with us on Financial Technology. He will present at the Financial Tech @ CeBIT Conference 2013 on 29 May at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Steve Monaghan, in this interview, explains the challenges of a complex financial Technology and the trends he sees influencing this industry.

He is presenting on International Keynote: Looking From the Outside In – Driving Innovation From A Customer Perspective.

1. Please briefly describe your role and responsibility at your organisation.

As Chief Innovation Officer for the Group I am accountable for building an innovation culture at DBS and driving ‘step change’ innovation initiatives across our various business groups and geographies.

2. What are you presenting at CeBIT Australia?

A core focus in innovation at DBS centers on changing customer experience in an impactful and meaningful way. I’ll be sharing some of our insights, learning’s and failures under the banner of “Looking From the Outside In – Driving Innovation From A Customer Perspective” at CeBIT.

3. What do you think are the main issues that people are facing in financial technology?

There are a broad range of issues in financial technology, from legacy to security. But from a customer perspective, simplicity is one of the key challenges. As an industry invested in complexity, how can we make banking contextual and easily actionable? There are enormous opportunities with emerging technologies to remove complexity in banking and provide customers with new interaction models.

4. Can you describe a current project you’re working on and how the solution/product is helping business to adapt to the challenges of financial technology?

Banking channels and instruments have grown over time requiring customers to learn disparate processes and shoulder the complexity of poor design. We have a number of convergent initiatives around simplifying and enriching customer interaction and engagement.

5. What do you see as the strengths for the Singapore and Australian industry; and how do these strengths compare globally?

Singapore and Australia both have strong banks and resilient markets in a well regulated environment. Globally these strengths give us a competitive advantage of a strong foundation from which to base our continued growth.

6. What trends do you see as influencing your industry?

Digital Darwinism is a key trend I see has having a high degree of influence in the financial industry. Banks are essentially secure information businesses with traditional distribution economics. As you’ve seen in other industries, as the digitization of business and channels accelerate, there are those whom will adapt well and those whom may no longer survive. The transition from traditional bank economics to information technology economics is both a key opportunity and at threat to traditional banking. Another key trend is the exponential growth of information available to customers to influence decision making. While information has become a commodity, insight remains invaluable.

7. What do you believe the future holds for financial technology?

The future is ours to create. Markets like Korea have already seen bank branch traffic reduce by 87%, presenting new challenges in reaching and selling to customers. While a new challenge for banking, there are many other industries whom have gone through similar transformations. One thing is certain, the future of financial technology is bright and growing brighter.

See Steve Monaghan, Chief Innovation Officer, DBS Bank (Singapore), at the Financial Tech Conference @ CeBIT Australia 2013 in Sydney on 28 – 30 May 2013.

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CeBIT – all the fun of the technology fair – AFR

Posted on April 24, 2013 by mel

When Jackie Taranto casts her eye across Darling Harbour Convention Centre’s halls for the CeBIT Australia trade fair, she could be excused for patting herself on the back.

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CeBIT 2013 looms as does end of era – istart.com.au

Posted on April 24, 2013 by mel

CeBIT – the largest enterprise focused technology event on Australia’s technology calendar – kicks off at the end of next month. More than 30,000 visitors are expected for the end of an era event.

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Interview with Tim Dillon, Director Asia, Current Analysis

Posted on April 23, 2013 by stefan

This week, one of the top speakers of CeBIT 2013 Enterprise Mobility conference, Tim Dillon was happy to share his thoughts on mobility in the business environment. He will present at the Enterprise Mobility @ CeBIT Conference 2013 on 30 May at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Tim Dillon, in this interview, focus on the Australian’s strengths in enterprise mobility and the main trends influencing this industry.

He is presenting on Mobile Enterprise Hype or Reality?.

1. Please briefly describe your role and responsibility at Current Analysis.

I’m a Director of the organisation working with IT&T clients to help address and understand issues around mobility in the business environment.

2. Why are you presenting at CeBIT Australia?

I was lucky enough to be asked! I’m presenting because I genuinely enjoy the opportunity to hear and discuss ideas and new thoughts around technology.

3. What do you think are the main issues that people are facing in enterprise mobility?

How to really ensure productivity and business value.

4. Can you describe a current project you’re working on and how the solution/product is helping business to adapt to the challenges of enterprise mobility?

As an analyst I don’t directly work on projects however I’m working with clients that are creating solutions in exciting areas around M2M, NFC, mobile platforms, analytics and future workspaces.

5. What do you see as the strengths for the Australian industry and how do these strengths compare globally?

Despite it occasionally feeling otherwise, we genuinely have a strong mobile network infrastructure that supports iniatives in mobile for business and consumer. We also have some incredibly skilled mobile applications and platform developers that are industry leading and world class.

6. What trends do you see as influencing enterprise mobility?

That’s a long list of trends – innovation and performance lifts in devices, device form factors that include tablets, smartphones, phablets, consumerisation of IT, greater expectations from companies that mobility can address their business needs, the rising tide of device security moving higher into basic MDM.

7. What do you believe the future holds for enterprise mobility?

I transition in the mindset away from ‘what device is it?’ to ‘which parts of my business operations can I mobilise and how?’

See Tim Dillon, Director AsiaC, Current Analysis, at the Enterprise Mobility Conference @ CeBIT Australia 2013 in Sydney on 28 – 30 May 2013.

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Interview with Stephen Cryan, Former Executive Security Consultant, Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Posted on April 19, 2013 by stefan

Our daily life now depends on a safe and resilient cyberspace. Stephen Cryan, former Executive Security Consultant of the Commomwealth Bank of Australia share with us his thoughts on the future trends of cyber security and the challenges he faced working in the banking industry.
He will present at the Cyber Security @ CeBIT Conference 2013 on 28 May at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.

He is presenting on Building and Security Buy-In for your Cyber Security Strategy.

1. Please briefly describe your role and responsibility at your organisation.

My role was to provide relationship management, security consulting and strategic advice/planning to defined business unit or units supported by CBA Enterprise Services by establishing and maintaining an effective relationship with the business unit CIOs and their leadership teams. One of the primary responsibilities as the aligned security executive is to ensure that there is easy and adequate engagement of the security organisation at appropriate points throughout both development and operational lifecycles.

2. What are you presenting at CeBIT Australia?

I will be presenting a brief look at how I have managed to successfully implement security controls and strategies with the support of the business units.

3. What do you think are the main issues that people are facing in cyber security?

There are many issues facing the modern cyber security professional and from experience the main challenge I have faced is ensuring the business and the security/risk professional are on the same page.

4. Can you describe a current project you’re working on and how the solution/product is helping business to adapt to the challenges of cyber security?

‘Kaching’ is the obvious example that leaps to mind from when I was working at CommBank. We very carefully considered the risks and controls between current banking process and the mobile banking processes with the end result we could re-use a significant number of the existing risk and security controls to ensure the solution was within the group’s risk appetite.

5. What do you see as the strengths for the Australian industry and how do these strengths compare globally?

I believe the strength of the Australian security industry compared to our global counterparts is the collaboration between security professionals. I was once told by a wise man that he doesn’t believe that security should be treated as intellectual property as damage to one bank will have a knock on effect to other.

6. What trends do you see as influencing cyber security?

The media is the greatest influencer of cyber security, an article in a major paper can have a majorly positive or negative effect on a security initiative.

7. What do you believe the future holds for cyber security?

My crystal ball tells me that we will still be outgunned and outnumber as defenders in the future and solutions like user aware firewalls will assist with containing breaches as well as enforcing chinese walls effectively. Obviously, the mobile area will be the new battlefield and I expect to see great controls in Google Play and the App Store to weed out malicious applications.

8. Anything else you would like to add.

I believe things will get worse before they get better but don’t despair, understand your business, support them and eventually something event will support your recommendations. Before which hill you decide to die on……

See Stephen Cryan, Former Executive Security Consultant, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, at the Cyber Security Conference @ CeBIT Australia 2013 in Sydney on 28 – 30 May 2013.

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Interview with Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director IT APAC, Ovum

Posted on April 17, 2013 by stefan

This week, we had the chance to interview another top speaker: Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director IT APAC from Ovum. He will present at the Cloud @ CeBIT Conference 2013 on 29 May at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.

In this interview Dr Steve Hodgkinson share his thoughts on the main issues people are facing in Cloud and the strengths for the Australian industry.

He is presenting on The Organisational Impact of Cloud Services Adoption.

1. Please briefly describe your role and responsibility at Ovum.

I am the IT Research Director for Ovum in the Asia/Pacific region, responsible for the research and advisory services that Ovum delivers to its many subscribers in this region. I work with many CIOs and senior executives on ICT strategy, procurement and organisational strategy conundrums.

2. What are you presenting at CeBIT Australia?

I will be discussing the organisational impacts of cloud services adoption based on research and case studies of early adopters. The focus will be on providing insights into how cloud services actually feel in practice in terms of the benefit/risk tradeoffs and the effect on the role of the IT department.

3. What do you think are the main issues that people are facing in Cloud?

The first issue is that we need to stop referring to “cloud”! It sounds too fluffy and untrustworthy. The reality is that the market leading cloud services are trustworthy, robust and secure shared services. The main issues are all about understanding the new benefit/risk tradeoffs and how to fairly evaluate cloud services vs. alternative sourcing options such as in-house, shared services and outsourcing/managed services.

4. Can you describe a current project you’re working on and how the solution/product is helping business to adapt to the challenges of Cloud?

I believe that there is too much ‘hype and nonsense’ in this marketspace, so my main focus is firstly on providing thought leadership around how to understand the opportunities for cloud services to transform the way ICT capabilities are sourced and delivered, and secondly on documenting and sharing case studies and stories about the experiences of early adopters.

5. What do you see as the strengths for the Australian industry and how do these strengths compare globally?

Australia is a ‘trustworthy’ nation in terms of the quality and integrity of our legal, regulatory and technical environments, and we have a skilled ICT local ICT industry, so we are well placed to become an exporter of trusted cloud services to the world. To do this, however, we need to accelerate the speed with which we embrace both the consumption and production of cloud services so that we are learning as fast as possible how to safely consume and deliver cloud services to support mission critical business processes in both the private and public sectors.

6. What trends do you see as influencing your industry?

Rising competitive pressures to innovate combined with constraints on funding and access to people and skills means that all businesses are faced with rising imperatives to ‘do more with less’. This means that we have to continually re-evaluate the value added by our activities and focus our efforts on the activities that really count and that we can do well. Cloud services provide a way to tap into global economies of scale and iteratively evolving services to source relatively commodity-like ICT capabilities better, faster and at lower cost. We can then focus our effort on driving innovative business outcomes (looking up and out!) rather than on managing technology (looking down and in!).

7. What do you believe the future holds for Cloud?

I believe that it is inevitable that cloud services will become a significant element of the ICT sourcing mix for all organisations. The market leading cloud services are simply shared infrastructure and application services that actually work! Once this simple fact becomes more widely understood we will see rising adoption of a wide range of cloud services provided by robust and trusted ecosystems of local and global providers.

8. Anything else you would like to add.

I use the phrase “cloudy is as cloudy does” to summarise the key benefit of the cloud services model. For the first time in the history of the ICT industry it is possible to fully evaluate the functionality and performance of an ICT solution before making a purchase decision. Amazing! This is a stark contrast to the traditional “pay up front and hope that it works in the future” approach. Cloud services are distinguished by the fact that they already exist, at scale, and are engineered to support many different organisations efficiently and securely. They significantly reduce the implementation risk and long timeframes that too often plague ICT projects. This has intuitive appeal to business executives because they are interested in business outcomes, not technology headaches.

See Dr Steve Hodgkinson, Research Director IT APAC, Ovum, at the Cloud Conference @ CeBIT Australia 2013 in Sydney on 28 – 30 May 2013.

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Interview with Patrick Vialle, National Demand & Supply Planning Manager, Parmalat

Posted on April 10, 2013 by stefan

We are pleased to have our second interview with Patrick Vialle, National Demand & Supply Planning Manager from Parmalat, who will be presenting at the Supply Chain & Logistics @ CeBIT Conference 2013 on 28 May at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.

In this interview Patrick Vialle highlights the challenges in Supply Chain & Logistics and shares his thoughts on how the CSIRO Mega Trends will influence this industry.

He is presenting on Parmalat’s Journey to Excellence in Demand Planning.

1. Please briefly describe your role and responsibility at Parmalat.

I’m the National Demand and Supply Planning Manager for Parmalat. As such, I lead a team of 16 people, dedicated to ensure supply of finished goods to our customers. Our activities cover Strategic Demand and Supply, tactical activities, project coordination. The team has the lead on the S&OP process for Parmalat.

2. What do you think are the main issues that people are facing in supply chain and logistics?

Demand volatility. In FMCG, people would also face retailer pressure at all level, to optimize costs without damaging the overall service levels.

3. Can you describe a current project you’re working on and how the solution/product is helping business to adapt to the challenges of supply chain and logistics?

We are currently undergoing series of adjustments on the demand planning process. We need to simplify the IT system in a more coherent manner. The result will bring more flexibility in facing the volatility of the demand for a faster response.

4. What do you see as the strengths for the Australian industry and how do these strengths compare globally?

In comparison to the Italian and French industries where I previously worked, one of the Australian industry’s strengths is definitely coming from the employees. The Australian employees have in general a better employee engagement, creativity and a positive attitude. They embrace changes as they know the industry needs modernity in terms of working techniques.

5. What trends do you see as influencing supply chain and logistics?

The CSIRO Mega Trends* will definitely influence supply chain and logistics. The “More for Less” highlights the earth’s limited supplies of natural water and food resources which is challenging us to find a more sustainable alternative.

“Silk Highway” brings attention to the change of the economic balance of the world with a shift from west to east and north to south. Delocalisation of companies in emerging countries is sometimes vital for the business.

The “Forever Young” simply shows that Australia has an ageing population. Therefore, we need to reflect on this demand with a supply of lightened products and more health orientated.

The “Virtually Here” trend underlines the importance of immersing ourselves into the virtual world to a much greater extent than before. We need to be more integrated with our suppliers, have the upstream and downstream more unified to optimise our communication. Social media such as Facebook and YouTube provides us details on our targeted consumers for better market research.

“Great Expectation” brings attention on the rising demand for experience over products therefore the products presentation and the company’s performance are important aspects to take into consideration.

The last trend that is not mentioned into the CSIRO Mega Trends is “Risk Management”. How can we anticipate the supply risks that we can potentially face? Finding the solution before the problem arises is essential in our industry.

6. What do you believe the future holds for supply chain and logistics?

A better optimisation of the supply chain for a better optimisation of the costs. Our industry’s future lies on more integration between the procurement and the supply chain.

See Patrick Vialle, National Demand & Supply Planning Manager, Parmalat, at the Supply Chain & Logistics Conference @ CeBIT Australia 2013 in Sydney on 28 – 30 May 2013.

*For more information on the CSIRO’s megatrends please Click Here

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Interview with David Gee, Chief Information Officer, CUA

Posted on March 21, 2013 by mel

Over the next couple of weeks we will be releasing an interview with one of our top speakers from each conference to give you some insights into what you can expect from the three day CeBIT Australia 2013 Global Conferences program.

Our very first interview of the series is with David Gee, Chief Information Officer of Credit Union Australia (CUA) who will be presenting at Financial Tech @ CeBIT Australia 2013 on 29 May at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.
He is presenting on Reaping the Benefits of a Fundamental Infrastructure Overhaul.

1. Please briefly describe your role and responsibility at your organisation.

I am CIO at CUA and have been at the organisation for almost two years. One of the primary responsibilities of my role is to support the transformation of CUA into a genuine challenger to the major banks through upgrading our IT capabilities. Fundamental to this is ensuring we have the requisite agility, flexibility and scalability to achieve this.

2. What are you presenting at CeBIT Australia?

My presentation is a looking backwards at the last year and what worked well during the IT Transformation that we have successfully completed. In essence, while technology is what we are read in the headlines; this is all about ‘people’ and getting our teams to ‘lift’ and make change happen effectively.

3. What do you think are the main issues that people are facing in financial technology?

‘Change’ – this is occurring all around us and there are new players entering this market that provide both threats and opportunity. To embrace this change and understand how you will play, is the key issue that we all face in Financial Services right now.

4. Can you describe a current project you’re working on and how the solution / product is helping business to adapt to the challenges of financial technology?

We are making significant investment in our IT infrastructures, including the relocation of our data centre and the uplifting our data storage capabilities and systems to ensure their integrity and security into the future. These are all fundamentals that we expect to operate to support our members (customers). There has also been significant work on our Digital and Branch of the Future and in both of these cases it is all about making the Customer Experience as ‘simple’ and ‘rich’ in terms of functionality.

5. What do you see as the strengths for the Australian industry and how do you see these strengths compare globally?

The Australian financial services industry has shown great resilience over what has been a very challenging fiscal period and as a result our financial institutions are recognised as being among the most financially secure in the world. From an IT perspective, we have to remain vigilant and ensure that we match this financial security with cyber security. We expect more and more of our member (customers) to embrace digital channels and our goal is to ensure that we meet these needs.

6. What do you believe the future holds for financial services technology?

‘More change’; we are on the cusp of significant and accelerated change. A great example is the early work on real time payments that is going on in conjunction with the RBA. We are living in a ‘real time’ world and our systems will need to adapt to this reality.

See David Gee, Chief Information Officer, CUA, at the Financial Tech Conference @ CeBIT Australia 2013 in Sydney on 28 – 30 May 2013.

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Key developments in digital productivity

Posted on March 14, 2013 by mel

BuddeComm

With the roll out of the NBN now well and truly underway people are starting to look at what this new infrastructure means for them. This is helped by the experiences organisations have already had regarding the impact of the internet, plus the fact that the current financial and economic climate is forcing cost-cutting and improved productivity.

It is great to see that the debate has shifted to what is needed to transform society and the economy in order to obtain the benefits of digital productivity. The NBN is no longer the story. Instead it has created other, new stories in the many different components of our society and our economy.

With slow-growing and stagnating developed economies and increased competition from the highly productive developing economies there is no other way for the developed economies to maintain their current economic and social lifestyle but to become more productive; and there is no better way to do this than by utilising smart digital technologies.

Within that context perhaps the single most important element will be the smart use of big data. As BuddeComm has been saying for many years, this is also why we need the NBN – not to get faster access to the internet, but to build the right digital infrastructure – infrastructure that has the capacity, reliability, security, etc to allow the country to increase the amount of data needed to create digital productivity, to create a smart country – not just more data but also the capability to connect that data to achieve smart outcomes. The growth in M2M will be phenomenal.

Organisations are starting to understand this, and this is certainly stimulating the shift in the debate. It reflects the increased understanding of people in general regarding the benefits of the digital economy. We therefore applaud the initiative of Australia’s national R&D organisation, CSIRO, in investing $40 million annually into a Digital Productivity and Services National Research Flagship, which is aimed at adding $4 billion per annum to the national economy by 2025.

While that is an impressive amount BuddeComm believes that the real benefits are more far-reaching as the initiative will play a key role in the overall transformation of the economy, a transformation that is desperately needed to maintain the lifestyle we have created for ourselves since WWII. Most people have shifted their personal views of their own future – from earning more money to securing their current lifestyle. Unfortunately most economists base progress on productivity gains, not on lifestyle issues.

One example alone should make everybody sit up and listen. Currently 20% of the national budget (all levels of government combined) is spent on healthcare, and this is set to double over the next 40 years. This, of course, will not happen, as it is totally unsustainable – it would, for example, mean that the total State budgets would have to be spent on healthcare alone.

While it will not happen the alternative, in a linear scenario, will have to be a very dramatic decrease in the level of services and the affordability of medical services. For many years BuddeComm has earmarked healthcare as the key sector that will profit from the gains we can make in digital productivity. The financial gains in healthcare alone could, over a period of 10 years, pay for the total cost of the NBN.

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CeBIT Hannover 2013 – Opening Ceremony – Video

Posted on March 6, 2013 by mel

CeBIT 2013 was officially opened on 4 March by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Watch the full video.

CeBIT Hannover 2013 Opened by Chancellor Merkel – Media Release

Posted on March 6, 2013 by mel

Hannover, Germany, 05 March, 2013 – The world’s largest information technology and business trade fair, CeBIT 2013, was opened yesterday in Germany at an official ceremony by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. As the leading global showcase for the digital industry, the CeBIT event runs for five days from 05-09 March, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors from more than 110 countries.

The CeBIT event remains the single largest and most important business technology event in the world, according to Hannover Fairs Australia Managing Director Jackie Taranto. Hannover Fairs Australia is the organiser of the CeBIT Australia business technology showcase held each May at Darling Harbour in Sydney.

“CeBIT is the one place where the world’s leaders, major technology companies and the foremost ICT experts are gathered in one place, sharing knowledge and experience to increase growth and development in the ICT industry, encompassing the CeBIT global theme of the ‘shareconomy’,” Ms Taranto said.

‘Shareconomy’ is the concept behind shared use of data, knowledge, resources and infrastructure. Services and intangible products are now increasingly being shared by means of state-of-the-art technologies. This trend is being driven by the many and varied solutions emerging from the ICT industry.

Delivering a keynote address at the CeBIT opening, the Chief Executive of aerospace giant EADS (the Group – comprising Airbus, Astrium, Cassidian and Eurocopter) Dr Thomas Enders said the tools of this ‘shareconomy’ presented opportunities for all industry sectors and called for cross-industry collaboration to close the innovation gap.

“We need to increase the speed of innovation, without compromising on safety. The motto of CeBIT 2013 is ‘shareconomy’, which is something we can bring to life by sitting round a table and working together to close the gap,” said Dr Enders.

CeBIT 2013 features exhibitors lending fresh momentum to the Shareconomy trend with exciting services and applications that are provided via innovative cloud, social business and collaboration platforms. Exhibitors include the world’s leading technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Salesforce and Samsung among many other.

In her opening speech, Chancellor Merkel echoed Dr Enders concerns and placed a heavy emphasis on tech start-ups, stating that to create growth the industry needs to have an answer as to where the growth is going to come from.

“We have to ensure that we develop a start-up culture. The IT industry is without doubt one of the possibilities and one of my dreams … is to create the same founding conditions for all small IT companies everywhere in Europe,” Chancellor Merkel said.

With more start-up’s in Australia than ever before, the CeBIT Australia event will also include an emphasis on this space in 2013, while continuing to provide a platform for Australian business communities to embrace and understand the fast-changing world of digital technology from around the world.

Ms Taranto said CeBIT Australia 2013 will provide industry as whole, from SME to enterprise, regardless of audience or market, a holistic and in-depth understanding of emerging trends and technology developments allowing the progression and enhancement of business models.

CeBIT Australia will arrive from 28-30 May, 2013 at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour.

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Adapt or Die – CeBIT Australia 2013 will Inspire, Educate and Excite – Media Release

Posted on March 6, 2013 by mel

Sydney, February 21, 2013 – The largest business technology event in the Asia Pacific, CeBIT Australia, is gearing up for its biggest year yet as it celebrates twelve years in Sydney from 28^th – 30^th May 2013.

The Australian arm of the world’s largest trade fair, CeBIT Australia 2013 will focus on helping the Australian business community embrace and understand the fast-changing world of digital technology from around the world.

The organiser of CeBIT Australia, Hannover Fairs Australia Managing Director Jackie Taranto, said the line-up of conferences and show floor themes had been carefully defined through active engagement with industry and government. They aim to deliver insights into new business technology and innovations essential for organisations to remain competitive in a challenging economic environment and fast-changing business landscape.

“More than ever, businesses are recognising the importance of incorporating new technologies into their business and CeBIT Australia uniquely gathers solution providers under one roof to provide knowledge transfer and the answers businesses need to stay ahead,” Ms Taranto said.

“With technology advancing and changing at such a rapid pace, it really is a case of adapt or die, now or never. Businesses need to be agile and constantly addressing the needs of their customers. CeBIT Australia 2013 will help them stay competitive.”

An entirely business-focused event, CeBIT Australia 2013 will provide industry as whole, from SME to enterprise, regardless of audience or market, a holistic and in-depth understanding of emerging trends and technology developments allowing the progression and enhancement of business models.

Throughout the three-day event, seven overarching business trends will be highlighted in the show’s themes. Shaping not only the conference program, but also on the exhibition show floor and theatres, experts will be on-hand to offer businesses deep knowledge and expertise.

The industry-driven themes addressed at CeBIT Australia 2013 aim to help businesses understand how to better manage, integrate and benefit from the huge amounts of information being created by business. They include Business Intelligence (BI) and Big Data, Cloud, Financial Technology, Enterprise Mobility, Cyber Security and Supply Chain and Logistics all contribute to the management of this data.

“We want to help educate every business and help them up-skill their knowledge so they understand the process of securing this plethora of data, analysing it and then utilising it in the most effective way,” Ms Taranto said.

On target to host 500-plus exhibitors and more than 30,000 visitors, CeBIT Australia will offer attendees the chance to explore current technology solutions and integrate industry knowledge into their business models. By providing the best possible strategic support to attendees, CeBIT Australia 2013 will help both developers and suppliers of digital solutions, as well as users.

CeBIT Australia 2012 was a record year for Hannover Fairs Australia, welcoming 32,573 visitors and 519 exhibitors, with a foreign delegation of more than 70 companies from partner country India. The 2013 partner country will be confirmed in the coming months.

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IT start-ups could help European economy, says Angela Merkel – The Australian

Posted on March 6, 2013 by mel

IT start-ups could help the moribund European economy find growth again but they need a friendlier playing field that operates across state borders, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In her keynote speech as she opened CeBIT 2013, the world’s biggest technology show, in Hannover, Germany, Ms Merkel said tech start-ups could serve as a growth engine for Europe but EU states needed to get together and provide a simpler, more standardised regulatory framework for them.

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CeBIT Hannover 2013 – An Overview – Media Release

Posted on March 6, 2013 by mel

CeBIT is the world’s leading high-tech fair and an important ideas incubator and catalyst for change for the digital industries, public authorities and ICT professionals. It traverses all the latest trends and market developments, new products and solutions. This year, more than 4,000 companies from 70 nations will come to Hannover to showcase their latest innovations. Following is an overview of the key themes, events and display areas in 2013:

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CeBIT Hannover 2013 – Opening Ceremony Key Note from Tom Enders CEO of EADs’s – Media Release

Posted on March 6, 2013 by mel

A high-tech Mars Rover vehicle is operated by processors from the last century. In this respect, games consoles are head and shoulders above them. It was with this metaphor that EADS’s CEO, Tom Enders, confronted the participants at the opening ceremony of this year’s CeBIT trade show.

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Push for unified spatial framework

Quote

Posted on November 22, 2012 by mel

CHRISTOPHER JAY

Article excerpt from Financial Review | 22 November 2012

The Australian and New Zealand governments have decided on major initiatives over the next year to implement a massive modernisation and extension program for national mapping, location, imagery and spatial data information, in a search for large scale improvements in national productivity.

The approach is being set out in detail at a three-day conference in Canberra, Spatial@gov, held at the National Convention Centre, organised by CeBit Global Conferences. The program has a string of high profile government and private industry representatives, covering virtually the whole spectrum of the spatial industry.

The underlying approach was set out in no uncertain terms by the two responsible ministers, Martin Ferguson, federal Minister for Resources, Energy and Tourism and New Zealand’s Maurice Williamson, Minister for Land Information. The plenary sessions were chaired by Dan Paull, CEO of the national mapping data agency PSM Australia, which will have currency of some of the enhanced data bases anticipated under forward planning.

The framework of the overall program was outlined later in the morning by Drew Clarke, Secretary of the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, which will be playing a central coordinating role in the ongoing program.

The day before, the national geospatial group, SIBA (Spatial Industries Business Association) elected former federal politician and surveying specialst, Gary Nairn, as chairman. Mr Nairn emphasised that SIBA would be promoting a unified approach from the geospatial industry to support essential government initiatives, including standard approaches to coding of spatial data on both sides of the Tasman.

After a welcome to country from Agnes Shea, an elder from the local Ngunnawal tribe, Mr Ferguson said that from a political perspective, location data must become a greater part of planning and delivery of services, in order to get greater results from resources available.

Spatial policy issues were growing in importance, not just in Australia but in New Zealand as well. Last week in Wellington the joint Australian and New Zealand spatial body, ANZLIC, had decided on 10 specific principles to guide spatial policy in both countries in future.

“This is a highly complex business, and there are a lot of moving parts that need to be consulted,” Mr Ferguson said. “I can assure you it has been discussed at Australian cabinet level. I’ve been particularly pleased by the increasing co-operation of the PSMA. For government, our job is to work on greater integration of spatial decisions with policy.

“I heard locational information described as the glue that holds policy together. That is the first time I’ve heard it described that way, but it does make sense. The benefits of the spatial industry are now well proven.”

Mr Williamson emphasised that spatial data was to be a basic part of policy consideration by New Zealand departments and agencies, “even those that have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table. In Britain Yes, Minister is a comedy. In New Zealand it’s a documentary. We should be out evangelising the importance of spatial data to the rest of the community,” he said.

“Geospatial is even more than the glue which holds the economy together, it’s the bedrock on which the economy depends. It’s just a phenomenally exciting time to be involved in geospatial policy.”

Mr Nairn urged a united front for the spatial industry in advising governments. “Having been a federal member of parliament for almost 12 years, and a minister and parliamentary secretary for more than three years, I understand very well the importance of industry representation and how best to interact with government,” he said.

“Industry representation 101 is to have a united industry with one voice. Government doesn’t always understand the internal idiosyncrasies of diverse industries so look for peak organisations that represent the broader industry.”

Mobile Wallet Trial ‘Start of Something Big’

Posted on September 27, 2012 by mel

The days of New Zealanders having to lug around an overstuffed leather wallet may soon be over with Auckland Transport, Telecom and Westpac today revealing details of their “mobile wallet” trial.

The trial, announced earlier this year, is in collaboration with Gemalto, Thales and Paymark. The six organisations have worked together to develop a virtual mobile wallet that can hold multiple cards – including a credit card and transport card.

The three partners say that the “proof of concept‟, revealed at the Thales test laboratory in central Auckland today, is further evidence that mobile wallet technology will soon be a reality in New Zealand. They emphasised today’s demonstration is simply the first stage of a much bigger vision, which will see mobile payments and other mobile wallet services rolled out nationally, involving multiple vendors and service providers.

Speaking about the progress they have made in the trial, Telecom’s Chief Product Officer Rod Snodgrass said “Telecom built the Smartphone Network with smartphones in mind, as people are doing more than ever on these devices. This trial takes the use of mobile payment technology to a whole new level. We are all accustomed to storing our address books and diaries in our phones. Well, now we can store our wallet there as well. This is not simply another application – it truly is a “mobile wallet‟, which will hold multiple cards and secure applications, providing a fast, convenient and safe way to purchase goods and services.”

Westpac Chief Information Officer Peter Fletcher, said “over the next 3-5 years, mobiles will become our customers‟ key banking tool for transactions, product research and other banking needs. Westpac is committed to delivering a market leading mobile proposition and the mobile wallet trial is an important step as we help Kiwis move towards a mobile banking future.”

Auckland Transport Chief Operations Officer, Greg Edmonds, said “mobile phone technology will form an important part of the mix of payment options for transport services in the future. We look forward to the introduction of this technology providing further choice for commuters in the way they pay for transport.”
The next phase of the trial will see 30 plus participants test the new mobile wallet technology at contactless Point of Sale terminals, across Auckland Transport’s network and top up their Telecom Mobile Accounts on their mobile. The technology is expected to be available near the end of 2013.

Learnings from this next trial phase are expected to enable the collaboration partners to further build on the proof of concept and develop an even wider and more valuable mobile wallet proposition for consumers.

This mobile wallet trial is another step towards a full rollout of NFC technology within New Zealand. It comes off the back of Paymark, Telecom New Zealand, 2Degrees and Vodafone New Zealand’s announcement in April 2012 of their intention to form a Trusted Services Manager (TSM), which will establish a robust, open ecosystem for NFC-enabled New Zealand.

See Roxanne Salton, Snr. Product Manager – mCommerce and Advertising, Telecom NZ, at the Future of Payments Conference in Sydney on 16 – 17 October 2012.

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CSIRO enters commercial Big Data

Posted on September 6, 2012 by mel

Australia’s flagship government research agency – the CSIRO – has ramped-up its Big Data project work on behalf of both public and private sector clients, calling it the most revolutionary and potentially transformative IT technology to emerge in years.

The CSIRO increasingly offers its services on commercial terms, and is using its strength in high-end mathematics and computing to help Australian customers take advantage of Big Data capabilities.

Alan Dormer, the Government and Commercial Services theme leader within the CSIRO’s Digital and Productivity Services Flagship, says Australia is still a long way behind the US in extracting that potential that Big Data can offer. But it is a huge area of focus, and that Australia is following its usual path as an enthusiastic early adopter.

Mr Dormer will present at the CeBIT Global Conferences’ Big Data event being held in Sydney on October 31 – November 1. He will outline the Big Data impact on the economy and society, running through a host of project examples that the CSIRO has been engaged in.

Mr Dormer says sophisticated commercial and government users in Australia are well aware of the generic capabilities of Big Data projects. But until it is applied to a specific organisation, it is difficult to get a read on its value.

“It’s not the product that’s the issue. It’s the customer knowing what to do with it,” Mr Dormer said.

“We basically do research in this area (on behalf of clients.) So as people see what’s possible, they tend to get more ambitious in terms of (what they want to do with) Big Data,” he said.

“The appetite grows with the eating (for clients.) And we have the largest concentration of mathematicians in the country, so we have been pretty active in this space.”

The CSIRO projects are at the sharp end of research, rather than commercial implementations or consulting. These projects usually involve its officers writing applications specific to the project, and sometimes taking advantage of the supercomputing facilities at CSIRO.

Among the projects so the CSIRO has engaged with so far, the focus has been in government services (including looking how people interact with services,) financial services (including payment security and fraud) and at the disaster management area.

Customers have included the federal Department of Human Services , the United Nations and AusAid, and NSW Fire and Rescue.

Mr Dormer says the agency is now starting a focus on the retail sector, an area where he said Big Data will have an enormous impact. “It’s going to make a huge difference to the way that people deal with customers – and that includes clients, or citizens, depending on the organisation dealing with them.”

See Alan Dormer, Science Leader, Government and Commercial Services, CSIRO, at the Big Data Conference in Sydney on
31 October – 1 November 2012.

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Splunk on Volume, Variety, Velocity

Posted on September 3, 2012 by mel

Australia’s corporate sector has taken to burgeoning Big Data market in the same fashion it has taken to other waves of new technology; as early innovative adopters, according to Daniel Miller, the local country manager of Nasdaq-listed big data veteran Splunk.

Big Data issues are not just about data volume. The variety of different kinds of data, and the speed at which it is growing are added complexities. It is unstructured and ballooning.

Consider that every 60 seconds Google serves more than 694,445 search queries, or that 600 videos are uploaded on YouTube videos, adding more than 25 hours of content, or that 168,000,000 emails are sent.

Or that every 60 seconds 695,000 status updates are published on Facebook: or 79,364 wall posts and 510,040 comments. And those numbers don’t include all the machine-generated data that results from each of those human creations.

Set up in Australia just two-and-a-half years ago with a single employee, Splunk has been one of the most active technology transfer drivers for Big Data in this country. It has quietly created a significant, fast-growing subsidiary with nine employees and a trajectory that will double head count again in the next 12 months.

“Australia has always been an early innovative adopter of new technology, and that has been no different with Big Data,” Miller said.

Splunk is bringing one of its senior commercial and technical experts to Australia to speak at the Big Data Conference in Sydney on October 31 to November 1, an event presented by the CeBIT Global Conferences group.

But where most of the Big Data vendors and services providers tend to be consultants on the Google-inspired Hadoop and Maproute systems, Splunk brings different products and different value propositions to its customers. It has its own distributed indexing architecture and its own search language.

Like the rest of the Big Data sector, Splunk focuses on unstructured data – but its real focus is in the massive volumes of machine-generated data. According to research group IDC, about 90 per cent of the data in today’s organisations is machine generated – by websites, applications, servers, networks, mobile devices and the like.

The whole value proposition of Big Data rests on the notion that these massive pools of unstructured data hold tremendous value, Mr Miller says. The trick to unlocking that value rests in being able to handle such massive data volumes, being able to handle lots of different types of data, and being able to handle the sheer speed at which new data is being generated.

Splunk’s Enterprise product collects, monitors, indexes and analyzes the machine data generated by IT applications and infrastructure–physical, virtual and in the cloud. This machine data is massive in scale and contains a definitive record of all transactions, systems, applications, user activities, security threats and fraudulent activity. This data is largely untapped; Splunk helps organisations unlock its value.

Mr Miller says the Splunk platforms differ from competitors in that they contain an in-built dashboard and tools, as well as specialist visualization features that simplify the trending and results information generated by vast pools of raw data.

As the largest information technology user in the country, the Federal Government is expected to become a big user of Big Data toots, and will be a focus for Splunk.

Mr Miller says local customers are often reluctant to talk about precisely what they are using Splunk tools for – sometimes because they are still in test “suck it and see” mode, and sometimes because they don’t want to reveal a competitive advantage.

But the company has made strong inroads in the University sector – especially as Big Data systems are well suited to development and research environments – and Mr Miller expects strong growth among public sectors customers in the coming year.

See the latest in Big Data Innovations and trends at the Big Data Conference in Sydney on 31 October – 1 November 2012.

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Payments and identity biometrics

Posted on August 29, 2012 by CeBIT Staff

Any discussion about the future of payments that doesn’t have identity management in the opening sentence will inevitably miss the point, according to payment security expert David Birch.

Security issues and privacy remain paramount. But as the battlelines are drawn in the coming era of digital money, phone-based payment services and the cloud, identity management will become paramount.

A founding director of UK-based specialist Consult Hyperion, Mr Birch says the mass migration of payment data to smart infrastructure presents huge opportunities if the identity issues are dealt with upfront..

With the move from dumb infrastructure to chip-based cards well underway in this country, the chips themselves will soon be integrated into mobile phones and other devices. And from there the payment smarts will move into the cloud.

Mr Birch, who is the international keynote speaker at the CeBIT Global Conferences Future of Payments event on October 16-17, says a more sophisticated thinking needs to be applied to identity issues.

“There is a battle coming, and it’s not about the actual payment systems anymore,” Mr Birch said. “It is about identity, and the management and control of identity.”

“Because once I know who you are – that I am sure of your identity – the moving of money or payments to you or from you becomes a relatively easy thing,” he said.

The rapid evolution currently underway in payments systems can cause nervousness among consumers and user groups over privacy and security concerns. But assuming a discussion about these changes includes consumers of these services – that is, everyone – then the changes will actually improve the privacy and security situation in the payments ecosystem.

Mr Birch says the problems with identity in a 1.0 world rested with having to share too much information with too many people in order to establish identity. For example, producing a drivers license as proof of age identity to get into a bar, a consumer is actually sharing a variety of other information – age, address, expiry date – which are all problematic in identity theft and the like.

David Birch will be delivering an International Keynote on Payments Innovation in Europe at Future of Payments event on October 16-17.

And the guy standing at the door to the bar – or his colleagues – really don’t need to have or retain that information.

“This is problematic because by the time you have used your drivers license for identity purposes over and over, the more people you will have shared your information with. And the more people who know who you are from an identity perspective, the more problems that are presented from an identity perspective,” Mr Birch said.

“It is actually a lot less complicated in the online world because there are cryptographic techniques that let you prove things about yourself without disclosing everything.”

This new world requires a new way of thinking about identity and the a new way that customers will think of their relationship with trusted companies. A bank that issues a customer with a debit card, for example, already has that trusted relationship. And ways of making payments evolve and new finance structures emerge, consumers may be encouraged to think of the traditional bank infrastructure not necessarily as a place where money resides, but where a trusted identity resides.

That smartphones and other mobile devices will become payment devices is not a new thing, but as the payment data moves into the cloud, these device will drive the consumerisation of identity management systems.

And biometrics will almost certainly play a big part, Mr Birch says. And despite all the objections from consumers over the years about biometrics, it will become a mass market phenomenom – because of the convenience factor.

Apparent moves by consumer behemoths like Apple and Google in the biometric space is critical to the acceptance of such systems – with the selling point always about consumer convenience.

“I am a fan of biometrics, but only in the right place,” Mr Birch said. “And it has to be understood (be the consumer) as a convenience technology.”

“If the role of the biometrics is to connect you to the device, and then the device (your mobile phone) is used to manage identity, then it is convenience. The phone can then be used for a variety of identity matters (from banks, to reward programs, to government healthcare and citizenry).”

“So biometrics has a big role to play in this.”

Mr Birch says the developments in the payment sector are picking up pace, and the discussion about identity management is crucial in order to bring consumers on board with the changes.

“Proper identity infrastructure that is managed properly and by the right people presents an enormous opportunity. And that is the discussion that needs to take place and is taking place.”

David Birch will be delivering an International Keynote on Payments Innovation in Europe at Future of Payments event on October 16-17.

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