La Trobe University's Director of Data & Analytics Anthony Perera leads a data and analytics centre of excellence that brings together data, analytics and data science operations that previously existed as distributed “pockets” of capability within the university structure.It is driving a major three-phase program of work, the first phase of which - standing up an Azure-based enterprise data analytics platform, or EDAP - was completed last year. The focus through 2022 was on the second...

Horizon Power has completed a large-scale migration of applications and workloads from its data centres to a private cloud run by Macquarie Cloud Services. The shift to private cloud was for several reasons. The WA government wants agencies and owned companies to have more of a cloud mindset. In parallel, the government has set ambitious targets to reduce whole-of-government carbon emissions, and exiting its data centre was seen as a key way for Horizon Power’s Technology team to do its...

In this week’s episode of the iTnews Podcast, Police bank chief executive office Greg McKenna talks about the banks ongoing whole-of-bank transformation which has been on the path of renewal as customers increasingly seek digital channels.

Head of Information Security and IT, Elliot Colquhoun. Airwallex is an Australian finance unicorn ($1bn+ valuation), and Colquhoun runs its IT and information security operations. The company has spent the past two years overhauling its application landscape and upgrading computers - a 50/50 Windows/Mac end-user environment. One of the reasons to do this, however, is that Colquhoun believes the state of internal systems is a signal to developers and builders about the quality that should be...

Executive Director of Information Systems & Technology, Hamish Cameron was a guest of the podcast back in mid-2021 when he outlined his ambitions for a mobile workforce transformation program, equipping 6000 sworn and non-sworn staff with a smartphone. Almost two years on, they are now in live pilot, and the podcast discusses device choice, applications developed and loaded, and UX efforts being run in parallel. Outside of the transformation, we also discuss IS&T’s efforts to...

In this weeks episode we’re joined by Alex.Bank chief executive Simon Beitz. As Australia’s newest bank we’ll discuss future plans and how the bank ensures its technology foundations are capable of scale and instilling the right processes while keeping the customer at the forefront of its mission. We’ll also talk about the early days of sleeping on shed floors as team mapped out its digital banking journey.

Our guest this week is John Cox, the CTO of Coles Group. There’s a lot of interesting things happening at Coles, including an in-progress shift to an events-based architecture. This has wide-ranging use cases, from in-store replenishment and reducing out-of-stocks on ecommerce orders, to anticipating customer service and listing next-best actions for team members. We also discuss the Group’s IT strategy, and why adoption of cloud services is not a specific strategic pillar.

What does it take to set up the IT infrastructure at a zoo from scratch? It’s not something many IT managers will do, but Alonzo got the chance to, and shares a very different kind of startup story. This talks to the evolution from a one-person IT shop to the gradual build-up of resources and systems, and particularly how the zoo leant on technology partners to create innovative systems, from point-of-sale, to telecommunications, to accepting a wide variety of electronic payments. A specific...

We begin this episode with a special message from editor-in-chief Ry Crozier. We look forward to bringing you new episodes in 2023!

In this week’s episode of the iTnews Podcast, RBA chief information officer Stephen Smith describes the wide-ranging technology agenda and infrastructure currently being pursued by Australia’s central bank.

PEXA runs core platforms for e-conveyancing and financial settlements of property transactions in Australia. It also has a growing insights business, and is expanding internationally. Chief Technology Officer Eglantine Etiemble talks about some of the projects underway, from a “big program of change” around customer and employee experience, to the rearchitecting of PEXA’s backend around a modular and API-first driven approach. She also walks us through the company culture and what she looks...

New episodes coming soon! Register for the State of IT 2022 report: itnews.com.au/state-of-it-2022 Strandbags has re-platformed its Australian and New Zealand websites with Shopify Plus and a mix of plug-ins under what it is calling ‘Project Future’. In this week’s iTnews podcast, CTO Stuart Freer and head of digital & data delivery Paul Erskine discuss the origin, status and next steps for Project Future, as well as a new set of transformations beyond it.

St Vincent’s Health Australia (SVHA) has set up a new enterprise-wide system to record, manage, and analyse data about incidents involving patients, clients, and residents. This includes falls, along with any safety hazards, across their hospitals, aged care facilities, and services nationwide. Manager of Clinical Governance Informatics, Edel Murray, told the iTnews Podcast Team that the application called SVHA Riskman replaced five previous instances of a system formerly known as just...

Hansen Yuncken is using 3D modelling software to ‘walk’ customers through the sequencing of their construction projects, improving transparency and explainability of risks such as time delays. In this week’s episode of the iTnews Podcast, Rexine Jones - who is both CFO and CIO of Hansen Yuncken - discusses the company’s use of Autodesk’s BIM 360 software. She also details the lived experience and advantages of having finance and IT led by a single executive.

NEW EPISODE Suncorp Group has set a target to exit owned or leased data centres by early 2024, with 90 percent of workloads destined for public cloud and 10 percent for a hybrid cloud environment hosted “in close proximity” to its chosen public cloud infrastructure. That ambition is to run largely in the cloud, with applications either virtualised or containerised, with few exceptions.

New episodes coming soon! Australian start-up Humanitix re-invests 100 percent of the profits from event ticket fees into education projects for disadvantaged kids. The start-up had to transition its operations online when the pandemic hit, and has since expanded from its ticketing core into helping hard-hit event organisers run virtual events and - when borders reopen - safer in-person events.

New epissodes coming soon! Cyber security has rocketed to the top of corporate risk registries in recent years. But few board members attain their place due to any deep subject matter expertise.  In this week's CXO Challenge, we speak to Roger Sharp the founder of North Ridge Partners, and the chair of several large listed companies in the finance and travel sector in Australia. Sharp talks about the need to take an holistic approach to the subject.  We also discuss the challenge generally...

We'll be back with new episodes soon! Original Description: Travel insurer Cover-More Group cut 15 percent of its enterprise application portfolio as part of a global consolation of its IT operations at the height of the pandemic. The ASX-listed company – which operates in 22 countries – juggled the project, which is ongoing, while putting out spot fires during one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the travel industry. Speaking as part of the CXO Challenge services on The...

We'll be back with a new episode soon! Original description: Deakin University has spent the past 18 months modernising its approach to software delivery, adopting standard CI/CD tooling and removing manual effort in order to get code into production faster. In this week’s CXO Challenge on the iTnews podcast, director of software engineering Aaron Whitehand shares the university’s modernisation story so far, covering its adoption of DevOps practices, automation and standard tooling.

We'll return with new episodes soon! Auswide Bank’s chief transformation officer Rebecca Stephens describes the multi-faceted transformation she was brought in to lead and run at the start of this year.

We'll be back with new episodes soon. For now we flash back to our discussion with Zip Co's former director of security and IT, Peter Robinson. Original Description: When Zip’s director of security and IT Peter Robinson joined the company two-and-a-half years ago, he was its only security staffer.  The company - ASX-listed and a major player in the ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) boom - has scaled up rapidly in that time, growing from 100 people overall to over 1000. The story of that...

We'll be back with more interviews from Australia's technology leaders soon! BPAY Group is making headway with its goal to bring innovation to Australia’s payment system through its developer portal, and by expanding its global reach and cloud-based approach.   In this week’s CXO Challenge on the iTnews podcast, BPAY Group chief information officer Angela Donohoe shares how the e-payment company is building new foundations and enhancing its current systems.

We'll be back with more interviews from Australia's technology leaders soon! Bendigo and Adelaide Bank will put more than 700 staff through a new cloud workforce training program before the end of this year as its public cloud migration starts to heat up. In this week’s iTnews podcast, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank chief information officer Andrew Cresp discusses the bank's new cloud guild with Amazon Web Services, dubbed Unleash.