Last week we got to celebrate the great work of those in our public sector with announcement of the finalists in the 2012 IPANZ Gen-i Public Sector Excellence Awards.
Held jointly between Institute of Public Administration New Zealand (IPANZ) and Gen-i, these awards recognise a sector committed to achieving excellence.
Cloud computing isn’t just a phase we’re going through; it’s a significant change in the way companies use information technology. It’s as big as the shift from standalone desktop PCs to networks and the internet.
Although cloud computing saves money and makes life much easier for large companies, the benefits for smaller business are greater. Moving servers and applications to the cloud means company owners and managers no longer have to double as the support department.
Soon
New Zealanders will tap smartphones instead of EFTPOS or credit cards to pay for things.
It makes sense; we take our smartphones with us everywhere we go. They’ve become as essential as a wallet; we rarely leave home without either, so combining the two in a single device promises to make life easier and safer.
Many of the latest smartphones, such as the soon-to-launch Samsung Galaxy SIII, HTC One X and BlackBerry Bold 9900, already have mobile payment technology built-in and more are on the way. They work as contactless payment devices, equipped with near-field communications or NFC technology.
Mario Müller’s presentation at last month’s Telecom Cloud Services Summit in Berlin was an eye-opener. Müller is the BMW Group’s vice president of IT infrastructure and his company is looking at using the cloud to manage its telematics data footprint – that’s the information travelling to and from cars.
By 2017, there will be 5 million BMW vehicles on the road equipped with machine-to-machine (M2M) capability, which is pretty exciting for a BMW owner. Picture being able to turn on your auxiliary heating from your phone, so that when you get to your parked car on a cold day it’s already warm for you.
Yesterday, we announced that we will be conducting live client trials of Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile technology later this year in preparation for the evolution of our XT network to 4G.
4G will deliver an even faster mobile data experience for our clients.
We look forward to helping our clients harness the capabilities 4G enables to adopt new applications in areas such as cloud computing, mobility, video and collaboration tools.
