There is no other IT project as politically charged as the NBN. Politics and ideology will determine this project, not technology. The 2013 election may be the event that produces a different network to the one that was envisaged in 2008. Every strategy needs a plan B and that is the likely outcome of the NBN. In early 2013 there is little or no disruption to such a change of outcome because the rollout has not reached a critical mass. However, any visions, or intentions, that hinged on the full fibre rollout may be trimmed in line with the altered network. Organisations will have a lot of time to plot their telecommunications requirements on the modified NBN. But they may also be able to realise the original NBN if they are willing to pay a higher price under a ‘user pays’ principle.

Many organisations in Australia rely on SAP software for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. To get the best results out of their data, a significant number of organisations have implemented a data warehouse alongside operational systems, and are combining SAP software with best-of-breed technologies for customer relationship management and system integration. Whilst SAP software continues to provide important functionality, it pays to understand to what extent standardisation of ERP functionality makes economic sense, and from what point onwards standardisation reduces the organisation’s ability to deliver unique and valuable services. Standardisation is desirable only if it leads to a system landscape that is simpler and sufficiently resilient.

Most organisations run a large percentage of their workloads on VMware’s hypervisor, yet they are reluctant to virtualise their production Oracle Databases. The three common reasons given are: lack of support, poor performance and increased licence costs. The first is Oracle FUD, the second is a lack of understanding and testing, and the third needs to be examined on a case-by-case basis, but can result in a reduction in cost. For many organisations moving some, or all, of production Oracle databases to an existing Intel/VMware platform is a low risk, high value strategy that should be examined.

IT managers and purchasing officers need to be aware of recent changes in Microsoft’s licensing and evolving interpretations of licensing terms, or face surprises during true up and licensing negotiations that Microsoft will use to its advantage.

Clients will see fewer IT services providers responding to requests for work in 2013 as many have been forced to reduce staff to stay profitable. To attract respondents and get competitive pricing, clients must convince both struggling and viable providers they have a greater than 30% chance of success and no-one has the ‘inside running’ to win the business.

As outlined in a previous research note1, CIOs need to ensure that external-facing websites support an appropriate range of browsers. This is to ensure websites can be accessed by the largest possible percentage of users per dollar spent on development and testing. The very public nature of the issue means that it is wide open to criticism. Many CIOs have been called on to explain their position. Astute CIOs will have a clearly defensible support policy that can stand the test of public scrutiny. The methodology presented in this research note will enable CIOs to ensure that their organisations can: Determine the right mix of browser platforms to support. Develop a matrix of supported browser versions, supported by a robust rationale. Develop a website compliance statement and associated defensible policy statements.

While the capability to filter content to corporate-issued smartphones and tablets is a capability that a number of organisations are interested in, very few organisations have taken this step. Most organisations are taking the view that the risk of an employee accessing inappropriate content while on a 3G/4G connection, and offending their colleagues, is low, and best managed through line managers and policy. Typically these trusted staff are also reasonably senior, hence their being issued with a corporate device. The perspective changes, though, if the organisation is concerned about field staff wasting time. In these instances, restrictions are seen as an aid to productivity and the device is heavily restricted.

Organisations, large and small, have invested time and money over the past 5-10 years in improving ICT project success. Skilled project managers, governance groups, increased executive awareness and improved processes have all combined to improve the probability of a successful project. However, recognising when to cut the losses of a failing project is still a problem for many organisations. Either they never terminate a failing project or they delay in making the decision to terminate it. Either way the consequences can be devastating.

This month, there has been a lot of discussion regarding cloud computing services, in particular new offerings launched by a number of companies globally. More interesting for outsourcing however is talk around technical, legal and administrative vulnerabilities when contracting out IT services. The continuation of the Queensland Health Payroll review, which has flagged problems that can arise when procurement processes are not properly scrutinised, is just one example of these problems.It is clear that many of these vulnerabilities are still not properly considered by companies when outsourcing or off-shoring and are often caused by a failure to properly monitor vendors.