Synatalk Quarterly Newsletter – December 2011
Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for a Happy New Year!
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your valued support during the year; it is much appreciated as always. For most organisations it has been a year of ups and downs and that’s no different for Synateq. However, we are definitely on an up at present, having recently won two awards: Best ICT Service Award from TasICT and the Transend Chairman’s Award at Transend for the most innovative business improvement within their organisation. More on those later.
As an old fellow who has seen the promise of technology slowly evolve over the years, it’s a source of real pleasure to see that promise turning into reality in so many ways. That includes the evolution of mobile computing, development of business intelligence capability that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to implement, and the evolution of workflow capability within software that can genuinely streamline business processes, drive cost out of your business and allow you to get the manual processes out of dealing with your business partners. These are all things we have seen our customers embrace over recent years. But what has become clear is that in difficult times the desire to find ways to do things better, smarter, and faster is heightened. We have definitely seen this trend accelerating over the last year.
So, once again, thank you for your support and we look forward to partnering with you to solve next year’s challenges!
Best Regards,
Chris
PS Synateq will be closed for a break from 22nd December to 6th January 2012.
Zero time lost, Zero calls lost, Zero lives lost … an award winning Triple Zero result as Ambulance Tasmania relocates its HQ and Communications
Centre
In a deft move, Synateq Project Manager Peter Gartlan managed the risks of relocating the Ambulance Tasmania Headquarters and Triple Zero Communications Centre as a two stage process. Firstly enabling staff to relocate when the new building was ready, while the core system remained in the old building. And secondly relocating the core system on a separate schedule at the least-risk time.
In preparation for the move, the fail-over environment was re-designed by Peter and comprehensively tested off-line to confirm its integrity. Peter also decided to test the fail-over in the live environment in order to fully validate its integrity prior to the relocation, despite the inherent risk from a live test.
After substantial planning, briefing and coordination of Ambulance Tasmania management and staff, DHHS IT Services in Hobart, and third party suppliers 3tc in the UK and Telstra in Sydney, the Live Test of a full fail-over of the Triple-Zero Communications Centre to a backup server located in another part of the city was conducted at 4.30am on a Tuesday morning. It worked flawlessly on the first attempt. For the first time ever, the Triple Zero Communications Centre was running in its backup environment. This was a significant achievement, especially considering the critical nature of the service.
The success of the fail-over/fallback test with zero downtime provided another significant outcome; it provided a process for performing the migration of the Communications Centre systems from the old location to the new location. Basically the new location was configured as the fail-over site, and the fail-over process was expected to perform the migration. But other contingency plans were put in place as part of the migration process in order to further mitigate risk. All stakeholders were also rigorously informed and, if necessary, trained in the contingency plans in preparation for the relocation.
An additional risk was that the new server environment was a VMware virtual server cluster, but the Guardian CAD system used was not supported in a VMware environment. This was mitigated by significant planning and strenuous testing by the Project Manager and DHHS IT Services staff. 3tc Software, the UK-based suppliers of Guardian, subsequently certified their Guardian product on VMware, based solely on the testing methodology and outcomes of the Ambulance Tasmania project.
As with the backup fail-over test, the process operated flawlessly, and the Triple Zero Communications Centre commenced operating from its new data facility at 5am on a Tuesday morning. None of the contingency plans were required, and all the Communications Centre operators asked what all the fuss was about. The subsequent report from the Synateq Project Manager to the Ambulance Tasmania CEO noted, “Zero time lost, Zero calls lost, Zero lives lost … a Triple Zero result”.
Dominic Morg
an, CEO of Ambulance Tasmania, commented that the planning, execution, and delivery of the ICT migration were highly professional and successful, and he complimented the Project Manager and his team on their expertise, diligence, thoroughness, and quality.
Synateq was the recipient of the Best ICT Service Award for the outstanding project management of the Ambulance Centre relocation.
Outage Optimiser wins Transend Chairman’s Award for Innovation and 
Improvement
Last issues feature project, the Outage Optimiser module of the Asset Management Information System developed by Synateq for Transend Networks, was recently awarded the Transend Chairman’s award for Innovation and Improvement. Congratulations to all involved.
Take a look at using technology for customer experience management
Adobe® Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP) software (formerly Adobe LiveCycle® and CRX) represents the evolution of enterprise content management and business process management technologies toward customer experience management.
Watch these Adobe videos to understand how the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform allows you to use your existing infrastructure to improve the customer experience.
Talk to William Lo if you’d like to know more.
Winner of the $250k Greentree competition announced
Kimberly Accommodation is the Australian winner of the $250 000 Greentree software and implementation prize. The final position was hotly contested and finalists representing a range of business types included Newcastle Airport and the NSW Asthma Foundation. Congratulations Kimberly Accommodation and we hope you enjoy the benefits of your new Greentree finance and ERP system.
Synateq is the Tasmanian partner for Greentree. Learn More >
QlikView takes top honours for performance satisfaction in business intelligence software survey
QlikTech, recently announced that in a comprehensive survey of companies using business intelligence software products, QlikView ranked first among the BI Giants peer group, continuing to outpace larger rivals such as SAP (Business Objects), Oracle (Hyperion) and IBM (Cognos), in customer loyalty, performance satisfaction, bought for features, inclination to purchase more licenses, overall competitiveness, and product quality. The BI Survey 10, conducted by the Business Application Research Center (BARC), is the world’s largest independent survey of Business Intelligence (BI) and Performance Management (PM) users.
Mark it in your calendar!
February 24, Technology Update for new QlikView Version 11
The release of QlikView 11 brings new levels of capability and manageability to the QlikView Business Discovery platform. Here’s 5 reasons to upgrade:
- Improve collaborative decision making with social Business Discovery.
- Gain new insights into opportunities and threats and relative business performance with comparative analysis.
- Expand QlikView usage to additional devices, including smartphones, with mobile Business Discovery.
- Enable a broad spectrum of users to jointly develop QlikView apps with QlikView’s rapid analytic app platform capabilities.
- Improve the manageability and performance of QlikView with new enterprise platform capabilities.
Click on the image below to find out more.
27th April, Synateq sponsor the Australian Institute of Company Directors Annual Luncheon.
Guest speaker is Australian Rugby Union CEO John O’Neill. Look out for more details in the next issue of Synatalk.
