CSIRO in tech transfer link with China

AUSTRALIA’S peak research outfit, the CSIRO, has signed an technology transfer agreement with one of China’s largest IT companies to commercialise its wireless technology.

The CSIRO ICT Centre said its landmark deal with the China Electronic Technology Corporation for technology transfer in the areas of wireless antennas would be the first in a long-term partnership.

“With its booming economy and large consumer base, China is fast becoming a significant early adopter of new technologies,” CSIRO Wireless technologies director Dr Jay Guo said.

“This is just the first success in a long term partnership between the two parties.”

He said the CSIRO was confident that the deal would allow the opportunity for “a closer collaboration between China and Australia to extend research cooperation and develop markets for CSIRO’s research.”

The CSIRO is a recognised world leader in wireless technology.

Last December, Dr Guo’s team demonstrated a more than six gigabits per second point to point wireless connection with the highest efficiency achieved for such a system anywhere in the world.

At the time, Dr Guo said the breakthrough was just a first stage towards direct connections of up to 12 gigabits per second.

“The system is suitable for situations where a high speed link is needed but it is too expensive or logistically difficult to lay fibre, such as in congested urban environments, and across valleys and rivers,” he said.

“The system is also ideal for creating networks to meet short term needs such as emergencies and large events.”

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Coonan holds Telstra to 3G promise

GOVERNMENT has completed the first of two audits on regional mobile telephone coverage aimed at ensuring Telstra honours promise that its Next G network will match or exceed the coverage of its older CDMA.

Communications Minister Helen Coonan said in a statement government was closely scrutinising the rural coverage audits as well as Next G handset availability to ensure consumers were not penalised by Telstra’s move to 3G technology.

At the height of the debate over the T3 sale last year, Telstra announced it planned to shut down the existing CDMA network in January next year, but committed to making its Next G mobile network coverage as good or better than CDMA.

Senator Coonan said she welcomed Telstra’s announcement last week of a Next G upgrade that included new cell technology with a 200 km range and higher speeds, but reminded Telstra of its commitment nonetheless.

“The Government is also mindful of Telstra ensuring there is a smooth transition to the new network for its customers, particularly those living in rural, regional and remote areas,” Senator Coonan said.

It is a sensitive issue in the bush, where Telstra CDMA is often the only available network and is heavily relied on. And in an election year, nothing is being left to chance.

“An independent audit comparing Next G coverage with CDMA coverage is a key part of verifying Telstra’s public assurance that it will not shut down the CDMA network until Next G provides the same or better coverage and services,” Senator Coonan said.

“Even if this assurance is met, Telstra has stated that the CDMA network will not be switched off before 28 January 2008,” she said.

A working group established by the Minister is currently considering other issues relating to the CDMA-Next G transition, such as the information Telstra is providing customers, handset availability, coverage, and contractual matters.

But it is network coverage that is most critical – both to rural and regional Australians, and to a Government seeking re-election.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has now completed its audit of CDMA at a broad selection of about 100 sites across the country. The sites include flat, mountainous and average terrain, wet rice-growing country and river flats, and while they include the city and regional centres, the focus was on rural, regional and remote areas.

The field tests and analysis of CDMA coverage was the first of two national audits to be completed this year. The second will test coverage of the Next G network once Telstra advises that the new network is fully deployed.

Regardless of Telstra’s newly majority-private state, mobile phone coverage is a critical issue in rural electorate all over Australia.

The Nationals’ support of the T3 Telstra share offer was not won until it had it had a firm commitment from the company and from the government that the Next G third generation mobile network coverage would be the same or better than the CDMA network on which rural Australians rely.

Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce and NSW Nationals Senator Fiona Nash both actively and aggressively lobbied both inside and outside the joint partyroom to make sure mobile coverage did not suffer either because of the sale or because of the move the 3G technology.

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IBM to jam with auto industry

IBM will collaborate with the US-based Original Equipment Suppliers Association (OESA) to hold the first-ever Automotive Supplier Jam — an online dialogue on automobile industry's general strategy, future, and opportunities for innovation.

It is the first time IBM has targeted the auto industry for a consulting Jam. Telematics and other in-car electronics are expected to form a big part of the 72-hour discussion.

“Jams” are moderated forums where a select audience can engage in an online discussion for a concentrated time period. IBM says the intensity of the online has surface, cultivate, and discuss new ideas, to collaborate on developing those ideas, and to drive new kinds of business innovation.

The Automotive Supplier Jam, a cooperative effort between OESA, IBM, and companies within the automotive industry, will be held for 72 consecutive hours from Wednesday.

Jams can help organisations achieve specific objectives like creating new methods for collaborating with partners or uncovering best industry practices. They enable participants to create operations from strategy and produce actionable ideas for general industry innovation.

The Automotive Supplier Jam will leverage tools and processes developed by IBM as part of its Jamming initiatives, including IBM Research's eClassifier – a real-time text analysis and data mining tool that can highlight emerging trends and distil actionable results. The tool lets tens of thousands of participants engage in the process.


Moderators play a critical role in driving the discussion and the Automotive Supplier Jam will include Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, General Motors worldwide purchasing vice-president Bo Andersson, and Toyota North America senior vice-president Gary Convis.

“The Automotive Supplier Jam will enable an innovative and democratic process where, without hierarchy, people across the industry can have the opportunity to come together to present and evaluate ideas,” said OESA president Neil De Koker.

“We expect this event to engage, empower and stimulate thousands of participants, with the ultimate goal of turning ideas into action on critical issues related to transforming the automotive industry.”

After the Jam concludes, IBM and OESA will analyze the discussion threads to identify specific, actionable ideas and strategies that individual companies can apply to their businesses.


Since 2001, IBM has used Jams to involve its more than 300,000 employees around the world in far-reaching exploration and problem-solving. During IBM's 2006 InnovationJam — the largest IBM online brainstorming session ever held — IBM brought together more than 150,000 people from 104 countries and 67 companies. As a result, 10 new IBM businesses were launched with seed investment totaling $100 million.

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Attache hits $10m winner

ATTACHE Software, one of the biggest names in the Australian small business accounting market in the 1980s and 90s will make a triumphant return to the spotlight at CeBIT Australia through its just-launched Attache 7 flagship package.

Developed over the past three years at a cost of $10 million – making it one of the biggest locally developed commercial software launches in years – Attache 7 is the platform’s first generational upgrade in a decade.

Attache managing director Michael Rich says the company has big expectations for the product, which he says hits the market “sweet spot” of SME customers that have outgrown products like MYOB and QuickBooks, but who aren’t big enough to afford the large-scale SQL-based financials.

The Attache 7 product is inexpensive – a typical implementation costing as little as $400 a month – and has retained its reputation for bullet-proof reliability that Attache has earned over its 26 year history.

Attache Software was present at the birth of the PC industry. The company was founded in 1981, and its Attache-branded software was the first PC application in the world to be distributed by IBM.

Mr Rich says despite its low profile in recent years, Attache has been the industry’s “quiet achiever”, with more customers, higher revenue and better profitability than at any time in its history.

The company also enjoys one of the highest customer loyalty and customer satisfaction ratings of any software company doing business in Australia. Though Attache 7 is the first major upgrade to the product in a decade, Mr Riche says there have been 26 point-release updates along the way – and customers like the platform.

Since it was launched late last year, the company has completed more than 1,500 Attache 7 installations, and hopes to compete 6,000 by mid-year. Mr Rich said the overwhelmingly positive reception for the product meant Attache Software revenues were expected to double in 2007.

Attache 7 consists of three components. The Accounts & Payroll software is strong in order processing, stock control, departmental reporting, with bomb-proof reliability, high-speed data entry, seamless integration with Microsoft Office and scalable to 100 users.

The second component is a ‘green’ document manager called Alex that lets users fax and email invoices and statements, pay advices – with batching and tracking – saving time, stationary and cash flow. The company says the Alex savings alone should cover the cost of the Attache 7 product.

The third component, Fast Track, is pay-as-you-go pricing that includes maintenance, the database and optional telephone and classroom support. The product is priced at a monthly amount that can be terminated with 60 days notice.

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Ardmona co-opts supply chain system

LOCAL food processing giant SPC Ardmona has completed pilot testing of supply chain management software from Infor and will roll-out out the integrated system by the end of the year.

A subsidiary of Coca-Cola Amatil, SPC Ardmona has until now done much of its plant management and strategic planning manually using Excel spreadsheets.

However, the company said as its business had expanded the volume of variable factors – from the cost of production, labour and freight, to the various seasonal fruit cycles – meant its manual systems were no longer viable.

After a successful pilot test of the Infor SCM AP system, SPC Ardmona corporate planning manager Mike McCormack said the company decided to proceed with a full roll-out because the solution had demonstrated the ability to deliver a “tactical model to help optimise our current facilities and drive cost out of the business.”

“(Infor AP would) enable us to balance the multitude of variables and averages in our industry and thereby assess the most likely cost-effective outcome of any decision for the business both in the short and long-term,” Mr McCormack said.

The company sought a solution that was able to cover broad “what if” scenarios that traded-off labour costs against fruit degradation and storage costs, and factor in market demand and other economic conditions affect production – and come up with the both long-term and short-term strategies.

Infor was this month awarded ‘Application Vendor of the Year 2006’ at Woolworths annual IT Supplier of the Year Awards.

The award recognised Infor’s participation in Woolworths’ massive national distribution network project in Australia. The project is underpinned by Infor SCM Warehouse Management 2000, and on completion next year will represent the largest and most complex retail distribution network in the southern hemisphere.

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VOIP to ‘rob’ telcos of $20 billion by 2011

NEW communications players like Skype and Google are set to ‘rob’ traditional carriers of US$18.2 billion (A$23.2 billion) in revenue by 2011, according to new research from UK-based Analysys.
Companies like Skype and Google were successfully fostering novel forms of communication among online communities and potentially posed a major threat to core communications revenue, the report said.

Skype and similar voice over IP services could account for 5.4 per cent of the global fixed line telephony market in 2011.

Though growth among these VoIP providers had been seen as incremental, they would increasingly substitute for traditional communications services, the “Opportunities for Non-traditional Players in Communications Markets” report said.

“Online communities and portals create a market for communications that occupy a middle ground between one-to-one and one-to-many interactions,” the report’s author Stephen Sale said in a statement.

“The success of many of these services calls into question established ideas of user behaviour and suggests alternative means of addressing the communications market,” he said.

“Non-traditional players can capitalise on their presence online and in end-user devices to make inroads into telecoms companies’ core revenues.”

The market for content aggregation of on-demand video by online retailers is likely to be about US$820 million by 2011.

It also found that online players would fend off competition from direct-to-consumer portals – and the mobile sector – to take more than 60 per cent of the music aggregation market worth US$4.3 billion by 2011.

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Outraged Microsoft to fight MP3 ruling

MICROFT has vowed to fight an “outrageous” federal jury ruling ordering it to pay US$1.5 billion in damages to Alcatel-Lucent for patent infringements involving MP3 technology.

“We think this decision is completely unsupported by the law or the facts,” Microsoft deputy general counsel Tom Burt said in a statement.

The company has also warned that the ruling could open the floodgates to legal action being taken by Alcatel-Lucent against hundreds of other MP3 licensee companies.

Microsoft said the lawsuit involved converting audio into MP3 format on personal computers.

The dispute dates to 2002 and 2003 when networking firm Lucent (which was subsequently acquired by Alcatel last year) sued PC makers Gateway and Dell over claimed patent infringements. Microsoft then sued Lucent over the claims – which involved software running on PCs – and Lucent counter-sued.

Microsoft has called the ruling outrageous. It says it properly licensed MP3 technology from the German research outfit Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft for US$16 million in 1997 and 2004.

“We think this verdict is completely unsupported by the law or the facts,” Microsoft’s Mr Burt said. “We will seek relief from the trial court, and if necessary appeal.”

"Like hundreds of other companies large and small, we believe that we properly licensed MP3 technology from its industry recognised licensor – Fraunhofer.”

“The damages award seems particularly outrageous when you consider we paid Fraunhofer only $16 million to license this technology.

“We are concerned that this decision opens the door for Alcatel-Lucent to pursue action against hundreds of other companies who purchased the rights to use MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, the industry-recognized rightful licensor.”

The appeal process is expected to be a lengthy one.

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