MIS 100 2007(1-20)

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1 University of Auckland

2006 ranking: 1

Senior IS executive: Stephen Whiteside, IT director
Reports to: Director administration
Size of IS shop: 300

PCs: 12,294
Mobile PCs: 2010
Terminals: 250
Hand-held devices: 800
Total screens: 15,354

Industry: Education services
PC environment: Apple Mac, Windows XP, Dell, HP, Lenovo
Server environment: AIX, Linux, Solaris, Windows 2003, Sun, IBM, Apple, Dell, HP
DBMS: Oracle, SQL, MySQL
Address: 22 Princes Street, Auckland
Website: www.auckland.ac.nz
Key IS projects this year: Upgrade of HR systems; new city data centre; enhancement to online presence, eResearch.


As New Zealand’s largest university and research centre, the University of Auckland wants to grow its research income so that by 2012 it is double the 2005 income figure.
Stephen Whiteside, director of IT, says the university’s IT team of 300 is focusing on improving student services via “quite a large number” of new process and service improvements. “The Government is reviewing the way it funds tertiary teaching and learning so that research funding is now more based on outcomes. A key driver for the IT team is therefore to provide measures and reporting around teaching and learning systems and to improve the quality of our indicators.”
Challenges the university faces are the low unemployment rate, which decreases the number of students choosing to study at Masters degree level, and lack of affordable suitable student accommodation within Auckland.
To address these and other challenges, Whiteside says collaboration and connectivity between systems and locations is important. As are new education delivery channels such as e-research, which allow researchers to collaborate online to complete work they can’t complete individually or in person. Access, processing, and storage computer grids are used to facilitate shared online international research.
Whiteside says observing international universities and their innovations around research and funding is helpful and international collaboration supports the growth of local research activity.
The university, for instance, has a close relationship with the earthquake engineering division of the University of San Diego and access to its ‘shake table’. There is also international research collaboration on medical analyses such as bio-engineering of the human heart, physiological modelling and geno-mapping.
Scheduled legislative acts like the Public Records Act, effective from 2010, creates work for the IT team and developing improved document management and supporting systems is a key activity for 2007 along with process enhancements in HR and student administration areas.
Telecommunications and international data networking needs are well supported by the KAREN research and education data network, and this has removed a lot of barriers to national and international connectivity, says Whiteside. Whiteside says local telecommunications costs still have a prohibitive effect on teaching, learning and research. “We still need to be able to provide our students with a much better deal for remote access to our campus. Students are often time poor because of travel or part-time work commitments, so the need to record lectures and provide more flexibility accessing learning material is important. Access to true broadband services is still woefully inadequate in New Zealand and we need that access to become far more ubiquitous.”
Whiteside says while new voice system investments are VoIP, the benefits are contained because the university does not have a large number of dispersed and remote sites – VoIP will therefore continue to be implemented “very incrementally”. Wireless technologies will be significantly expanded in 2007 and identity management technologies enhanced to allow visiting academics to wirelessly access the network.
The university will implement a new data centre in 2007, and investigate a combined disaster recovery centre with other universities including the University of Waikato.
2 New Zealand Defence Force

2006 Ranking: 3

Senior IS executive: Derek Locke, chief information officer
Reports to: Chief of New Zealand Defence Force
Size of IS shop: 300

PCs: 14000_
Mobile PCs: 3500
Terminals: 0
Hand-held devices: 500
Total screens: 18,000

Industry: Government and defence
PC environment: Windows XP, Compaq, Dell, IBM,Toshiba
Server environment: Solaris, Other Unix; Windows 95/98, 2000, NT; Compaq; HP9000; OEM Intel-based
DBMS: Oracle, SQL
Address: Defence House 15-21 Stout Street, Wellington
Website: www.nzdf.mil.nz
Key IS projects this year: ERP system upgrade; infrastructure and telecommunications upgrade; server replacement.


The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), which integrates and manages three services – army, navy and air force – faces some “big issues” in 2007. But these are good challenges that will make the NZDF more professional and agile, says CIO Derek Locke. They include rolling out a new strategic plan, and development of robust governance structures, with a new senior management team led by the Chief of Defence Force, Lieutenant General Jerry Mateparae.
The combined organisation has a vision of being “the best in everything we do” with a mission to secure New Zealand against external threat, protect sovereign interests and take action to meet likely contingencies in areas of strategic interest to New Zealand.
To complete these strategic changes, NZDF has received additional funding of $4.6 billion over 10 years (beginning from the 2005/06 financial year) to support the Defence Sustainability Initiative (DSI). Locke says there is subsequently a lot of focus around new recruitment to support DSI and to counter a significant drop in personnel numbers.
Like many public organisations, Locke says NZDF is committed to a “huge” knowledge management project called Information Management and Exploitation which addresses storage issues around unstructured data. NZDF is also investing heavily in disaster recovery and business continuity projects, including pandemic planning, and is considering the effects of global warming on IT-supported systems.
Key NZDF IT systems are ERP systems supported by SAP software, email and other messaging systems, and operational systems that support war fighting. These systems must be capable of being deploying rapidly for overseas use, and there is pressure on IT systems and staff as a result of multiple military deployments, including ensuring NZDF has enough people, equipment and bandwidth. “Bandwidth at home is barely sustaining us and we are constrained by the lack of a high speed bandwidth network servicing the country. The demands of email, data and voice traffic are all exceeding our bandwidth capability, and yet we are still ensuring we meet our operational commitments. NZDF would be one of the biggest users of telecommunications in New Zealand,” says Locke.
He says ‘minimum broadband’ services should start around 100Mbps, particularly for large organisations with SAP-type applications that require “fat pipes” to be deployed to full potential. NZDF is investigating the use of dedicated satellite capability, and is in initial discussions with potential providers for a large satellite connection to be used mainly for data and in remote areas. Mobile technologies are important, says Locke, and NZDF is currently rolling out Blackberry devices to staff. “We have people travelling overseas for two weeks at a time and you cannot use anything other than GSM technology in the main for that.”
ICT projects for 2007 include investment in business intelligence tools and server virtualisation software from EMC – NZDF aims to reduce server numbers from 750 to around 200 within two to three years.
Defence is also extending its investment in Nortel, Cisco and Juniper VoIP technologies, and is looking at trialling 802.11-based wireless technologies. “There’s a lot of misconception about wireless technologies and data security,” says Locke. “We use wireless in our enterprise systems and there are more secure wireless solutions available now – there’s no reason that wireless can’t be used.”
3 Fonterra Co-operative Group
4 University of Otago

2006 Ranking: 4

Senior IS executive: Mike Harte, director, information technology services
Reports to: Chief operating officer
Size of IS shop: 230

PCs: 12,470
Mobile PCs: 1430
Terminals: 0
Hand-held devices: 38
Total screens: 13,938

Industry: Education services
PC environment: Windows XP, Apple Mac, Linux, Toshiba, Dell, Lenovo, HP
Server environment: Novell, Unix, RedHat Linux, VMS, Windows, Apple Mac, IBM, HP, Digital Alpha, Compaq
DBMS: Oracle, SQL
Address: Leith Street, Dunedin
Website: www.otago.ac.nz
Key IS projects this year: FMIS project; second data centre; application migration project – all in-house corporate systems on Windows/Oracle/Java platform.

The University of Otago will continue to enhance its international reputation as a research-led organisation and has recently completed a strategic direction to 2012.
From an IT perspective, director of IT services Mike Harte says the strategic planning has identified a number of imperatives that will require IT management to better understand business needs and to closer align these to IT strategy. “A key issue is alignment. We need to understand what the organisation’s needs are going forward and what it needs in terms of IT governance and leadership — that is where we feel we can add value.”
Questions being asked include whether the university has the appropriate advisory bodies, input groups and access to customer response to help align business and IT and how to ensure IT becomes more customer driven. A further focus is IT organisational structure. Harte has started seeking ideas from all IT staff and a representative group of customers regarding how the division can be organised to best meet the needs of its customers. Harte says this process will take a while but the inclusiveness is highly popular and likely to produce the best outcome.
“It’s a little like a ‘State of the Nation’ survey: I have been in this role for two years and this is a chance for me to revisit existing perceptions and where I see IT as a division moving forward and how we are viewed and delivering. We are looking at our customers’ needs and wants and where we add value and also at obstacles to delivery. Staff are providing individual and team submissions.”
As a large New Zealand university, Harte says there are ongoing challenges around service management, including IT support, delivery, capacity and prioritisation. There is increasing demand for new and improved IT services, along with a large number of systems projects potentially important to the business. IT management is therefore seeking greater involvement of senior management in prioritisation of IT work.
Like other universities, a need to comply with the pending Public Records Act from 2010 is important and Harte says “significant IT input” will be required for this project.
For network connectivity and security, the university is also reviewing identity management and authentication, authorisation and access processes to the core network and services, particularly as a result of investigating ‘capability building’ on the KAREN research and education network. “KAREN is a wonderful tool for research but a key issue is identity management. If we want to collaborate across organisations, then we must be part of a federated identity management system that allows staff to be authenticated back through their own organisation.”
Harte says a wireless network pilot launched last year received positive feedback from students and delivers secure wireless access. “If a laptop gets a virus we can shield the servers from it. If someone tries to hack into the wireless network, they will be shut down. Wireless is a key project for us to improve service to students and we envisage having a wireless cocoon over the campus by the end of 2007; 65 per cent of our students own their own laptop.”
The university is building a second data centre. It is in the design phase and is in response to the original data centre reaching capacity plus the requirement to reduce overall business risk.
Harte says there are distributed campuses — two sites in Wellington, one in Christchurch and one in Auckland; and there is now an Invercargill campus following the merger with the Dunedin College of Education.
Connection is currently via Telecom WAN links. However, traffic between all campuses will soon be running over the KAREN network’s 10GB backbone and Harte says traditional telecommunications services are likely to be reviewed as KAREN is bedded in.
The university would like to put together an “elegant” mobile computing solution, says Harte, as it presently supports a mixture of hand-held devices on mobile networks along with academics working overseas. “Blackberry technology works very well as do the range of Windows Mobile devices. This year we are evaluating those technologies and looking for a single, cost-effective solution that we can support from an enterprise point of view.”
VoIP is being researched and while the university has distributed PABX systems, it is looking at the next generation of VoIP technology. The university has multiple sites and the benefits of VoIP may balance or outweigh the investment costs, says Harte.
5 Telecom New Zealand
6 Ministry of Social Development
7 Fletcher Building

2006 Ranking: 8

Senior IS executive: Paul Knight, chief information officer
Reports to: Chief financial officer
Size of IS shop: 250

PCs: 4877
Mobile PCs: 1855
Terminals: 1641
Hand-held devices: 287
Total screens: 8660
Industry: Manufacturing
PC environment: Windows XP, Citrix, Dell
Server environment: OS4000; Other Unix; Windows 2003, 2000; Linux; Dell; IBM; HP
DBMS: SQL, Oracle, Progress
Address: 810 Great South Road, Penrose, Auckland
Website: www.fletcherbuilding.co.nz
Key IS projects this year: ERP system upgrade; IP telephony; payroll system upgrade.


Fletcher Building is a New Zealand-based building materials manufacturer and distributor comprising five major segments – infrastructure, building products, steel, distribution and laminates and panels.
Fletcher Building has a strong and growing base in Australia, Asia and the South Pacific. It employs more than 15,000 people in New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands and North and South America. Recent growth has been built on a three-point strategy: Improving the reliability of earnings, maintaining and improving internal capabilities and taking up external growth options where they meet acquisition criteria. Business objectives going forward include enhancement and adaptation of the business mix through investment and operational changes.
“We will continue to invest in both internal and external opportunities, although there may be changes in emphasis from time to time. For example, we are now looking more seriously at potential acquisitions outside Australia and New Zealand,” said CEO Jonathan Ling in a recent address to shareholders. Fletcher Building is also planning continued expansion in Australia and New Zealand.
CIO Paul Knight says the business and technology strategies of Fletcher Building are well-aligned and over the coming 12 months, Fletcher Building will embark on IT projects including ERP, payroll systems, investment in VoIP technologies, wireless infrastructure and hardware upgrades.
8 Carter Holt Harvey

2006 Ranking: 10

Senior IS executive: Pat O’Connell, chief information officer
Reports to: Chief executive officer
Size of IS shop: 150

PCs: 5000
Mobile PCs: 1500
Terminals: 800
Hand-held devices: 1000
Total screens: 8300


Industry: Manufacturing
PC environment: Windows XP, Dell, IBM
Server environment: Windows 2003; Solaris; Linux; AIX;
Compaq; Dell, iSeries, pSeries; Sun
DBMS: DB2, Oracle, SQL
Address: 640 Great South Road, Manukau City, Auckland
Website: www.chh.co.nz
Key IS projects this year: M&A support; legacy system migration.


Business integration and growth are on the agenda for Carter Holt Harvey — which was purchased for $NZ3.3 billion by entrepreneur Graham Hart in March 2006. A softening economy exacerbated by a challenging export market is the main challenge faced by Carter Holt Harvey, says CIO Pat O’Connell. He says new business integration and synergistic use of existing IT capability are key IT goals for the group. “Accurate information, fast information and optimised planning are all important to the business, and are processes in which IT has a significant impact.”
In the coming 12 months, Carter Holt Harvey will continue a number of upgrade projects in the areas of ERP, business intelligence and financial systems. Hardware upgrades and work on server virtualisation are also on the agenda. O’Connell says Carter Holt Harvey has not made a significant investment in VoIP to date, but this year will extend data connectivity through access to 802.11-based wireless networks and mobile technologies. The e-channel is an additional focus area, and like many organisations in this year’s MIS100, Carter Holt Harvey is planning to upgrade disaster recovery and business continuity systems.
O’Connell says all IT functions are conducted in-house with the exception of SAP development and support, which is outsourced to former Carter Holt Harvey subsidiary Oxygen Business Solutions.
Ongoing acquisition activity by Hart’s Rank group also continues to provide challenges.
“We are constantly reviewing options for synergistic integration from all aspects — operations, application portfolios, licensing, and technologies, as we bring more business under the Carter Holt Harvey umbrella,” says O’Connell.
9 ANZ National Bank
10 Massey University
11 Progressive Enterprises

2006 Ranking: 13

Senior IS executive: David Morrison, manager IT
Reports to: Managing director
Size of IS shop: 64

PCs: 1900
Mobile PCs: 100
Terminals: 2000
Hand-held devices: 400
Total screens: 4400

Industry: Wholesale and retail trade
PC environment: Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, CE; Compaq/HP
Server environment: OS4000; Unix SVR4; Windows NT, 2000, XP; Compaq; iSeries; NCR
DBMS: DB2, Oracle, SQL, Teradata
Address: 80 Favona Road, Mangere, Auckland
Website: www.progressive.co.nz
Key IS projects this year: Systems integration.


A focus on sales, customer services and integration of IT systems are key priorities for Progressive Enterprises in 2007.
Acquired by Woolworths Australia in 2006, Progressive Enterprises continues to seek to leverage synergies in New Zealand with the new parent company.
David Morrison, IT manager for Progressive, says significant improvements are to be expected in the supply chain as a result of implementing Woolworths’ supply chain systems. From these changes IT will help their primary customer – the supermarkets – to deliver competitive advantage to Progressive Enterprises.
The support of senior management for IT, along with the necessity of an upgrade following the acquisition, is reflected in the IT project line-up for Progressive over the coming 12 months.
Progressive Enterprises is a light outsourcer, outsourcing IT education, some applications development and HR payroll.
12 Air New Zealand
13 Inland Revenue Department

2006 ranking: 11

Senior IS executive: Ross Hughson, chief information officer
Reports to: Colin McDonald, deputy commissioner business development and systems
Size of IS shop: 320


PCs: 7623
Mobile PCs: 1066
Terminals: 50
Hand-held devices: 200
Total screens: 8939


Industry: Government and defence
PC environment: Linux, Windows 2000, Acer, Dell, HP, IBM, Sun
Server environment: Linux; MCP; Novell; Solaris; Windows 2000, Server 2003; Dell; HP Others; Unisys
DBMS: Access, DMS, Oracle, Progress
Address: 12-22 Hawkestone Street, Thorndon, Wellington
Website: www.ird.govt.nz
Key IS projects this year: KiwiSaver supporting systems; internal and external correspondence imaging; VoIP network and Genesys call centre system; systems to support student loans changes for amnesty and zero interest.


Inland Revenue Department has a busy year ahead thanks to Government commitments like the KiwiSaver and the student loan amnesty period and zero-interest scheme — examples of legislative changes that drive demand for new systems and extra flexibility and competency within the IRD IT team.
CIO Ross Hughson says in addition to these, IRD has a full ICT projects schedule for including upgrading and modernising core legacy applications like FIRST. Developed in the late ‘80s, FIRST is fast approaching 20 years and modernising this legacy application along with others will help deliver better business agility in a demanding legislative change environment.
Hughson says another challenge is continually working with the business to leverage existing information so that IR can be better informed and deliver on its outcomes. “How do we leverage off the information we hold in our data warehouse more successfully than we do at present? There is very good information in there that we could use to better assist customers with compliance and to help staff identify cases of non-compliance.”
IRD also has a lot to gain from the e-channel and developed a new e-business strategy in 2006 to help deliver on targets including the online processing of 80 per cent of IRD transactions within five-years (the present rate is 20 per cent.) Hughson says IRD is comfortable with the ‘e-enablement’ services it offers, but hasn’t marketed these to customers and education and promotion is required to build customer confidence. “Lots of countries are looking at the electronic benefits of online tax payments and access to information; we plan to drive that uptake over the next few years. The more we can expose services online, the more streamlined the whole process can be.”
He says this approach is also in line with Government e-strategies, and IR is keen to collaborate with the e-channel goals of other government departments. IRD is also redeveloping its intranet to improve internal efficiency and access to information, and to automate staff internal processes.
14 Auckland University of Technology
15 University of Canterbury
16 New Zealand Police
17 Land Transport New Zealand
18 ASB Group
19 Bank of New Zealand

2006 Ranking: 21

Senior IS executive: Paul Tait, chief information officer
Reports to: Chris Bayliss, general manager technology and operations
Size of IS shop: 300

PCs: 4000
Mobile PCs: 1685
Terminals: 385
Hand-held devices: 1268
Total screens: 7338

Industry: Finance and insurance
PC environment: Apple Mac; OS/2; Desktop Unix; Windows 2000, XP; Dell; IBM
Server environment: AIX; HP Unix; SCO Unix; Sun; Windows 2000, 2003; HP Intel-based; xSeries, iSeries, zSeries
DBMS: DB2, Informix, Oracle, SQL, Sybase
Address: State Insurance House, 16 Willis Street, Wellington
Website: www.bnz.co.nz
Key IS projects this year: Re-use of components through service oriented architecture; strengthening online and mobile banking capabilities.


Strategic priorities for the Bank of New Zealand in 2007 include building retail banking presence through excellent service. This will be achieved through offering customers new and unique ways to save money on fees and mortgage interest, as well as ways to earn higher interest on deposits.
“We’ll also be looking at ways to streamline the customer banking experience further, making it easier, cheaper, and faster to bank with us. Our latest offering ‘TotalMoney’ encompasses all of these things and based on the extremely positive response we’ve had from new and existing customers, it’s the packaged solution they’ve been waiting for,” says CIO Paul Tait.
Tait says a key business challenge for the BNZ is in creating the ability to be as nimble as smaller niche banking players. “However in saying that, our success at the Cannex Banking Awards shows that not only are we the best value for money in terms of the large banks, but our home lending, personal lending, and credit cards offerings are strongly competitive with anything available on the market.”
The regulatory moves afoot in respect of unbundling and opening up the Telecom network, as well as portability, are all positive and will enable improved service opportunities for the BNZ, says Tait. “The other major challenge is the cost of mobile termination fees as a result of the high interconnect fees that are being passed on to customers. These significantly threaten the profitability of pushing our services online at costs customers will find acceptable. For example, it is expensive to preserve free calling into our 0800 numbers for account enquiries from mobile phones. Some innovative thought is required to continue to deliver cost effective personal mobility for customers, something we are working on presently.”
20 healthAlliance