Stories by: Richard Wood

Australian IT research company Ideas International intends to raise $4 million ahead of listing on the Australian Stock Exchange next month.

It's easy when you're in a high-pressure job such as IT management to avoid industry and community involvement. Who the hell has the time? But when issues arise where an understanding of IT knowledge and skills will really make a difference to our society, then may I humbly suggest you are obliged to be involved.

It's acceptable dogma in Australia that there is a skills shortage in IT.

Time to suck and see

Mobile commerce, or wireless Internet, has proven to be a starting point for a lot of grandstanding by folk of opposing views, à la WAP is dead. The last one I heard was "WAP is dead, long live WAP", referring to its constant evolution into something that might one day be successful. People get so hung up on the labels. I couldn't care less whether WAP succeeds. What I want to know is, when will I be able to do banking and other transactions using a phone, and when will I be able to browse the corporate intranet and global Internet on a phone or handheld device?

The promise, or at least the premise, of most IT projects has been to make businesses more efficient. Dramatic technological developments have driven and hyped the gains, which have then been sold, often, in used-car fashion.

Much ballyhoo abounds about supply chain efficiency gains. Twenty, how about twenty-five, thirty per cent off costs.

Forget the WAP wobbles. Jump on the mobile Internet horse and get rockin', says Claus Hansen director of mobile communications at Schlumberger. "Get on with it. Attract quality content and start to educate your subscribers towards data."

IBM has belatedly let the world know of its $3.4 million software sale to the Australian Stock Exchange. Despite IBM announcing it on October 16, ASX deputy managing director Angus Richards has said the deal was signed at the end of June.

E-marketplace vendor I2 Technologies wants its technology to help feed the poor and provide global disaster relief.

Unisys is talking tough and keen to take on competitor CSC in Western Australia with the extra resources it's picked up in its joint venture deal with BankWest. The creation of the joint venture company Unisys West "opens up the doors in a number of initiatives involving outsourcing and facilities management with IBM infrastructure", said Unisys WA state manager Murray Rosa.