One of the most engaging customer visits undertaken during Cisco Live in Melbourne was the visit to the brand new, purpose built offices of global engineering and management company, Aurecon Group.

Aurecon’s Melbourne office is based in the growing Docklands area of Melbourne and is a showcase for the use of information technology to enable business innovation, growth and productivity. 

During the visit, Barry Honey, Auercon Group IS Strategy and Architecture Manager outlined the company’s strategic initiative to create innovative new client-facing technology services that will further differentiate its client experiences.  With operational projects taking place all over the world, Aurecon’s vision is grounded in an intelligent network that is entirely scalable and flexible for the future, while nimble enough to respond to immediate business opportunities being working on by the company.

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Cisco TelePresence has received one of the most glowing endorsements possible, with the CIO of the Australian Government speaking to Sydney Morning Herald’s ITPro section about the success of the Australian Government’s roll out of its TelePresence system.

Glenn Archer cites the national Cisco TelePresence system with 37 operational video conferencing sites across the country as being an example of a highly successful government IT project.

2,500 meetings have been held via the system in three and half years and the Government calculates that it has saved around $44 million through reduced airfare and travel costs. In addition, Glenn Archer is quoted as saying that the Government has reduced its carbon footprint by 8,500 tonnes of CO2 through the introduction of TelePresence.

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This year at Cisco Live in Melbourne, we were lucky enough to visit St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne to get an overview of the hospital’s IT strategy and to see some of the technology in action.  Simon Richardson, the CIO for St Vincent’s Health Melbourne, and his team talked us through the hospital’s three main initiatives:

Providing Anywhere, Anytime Access for Physicians with Quick Connect

• St. Vincent’s is providing “Physician Mobility” to its medical staff with Quick Connect. With a quick tap of a card, medical staff have immediate access to clinical applications from 600 desktops and Computers on Wheels (COWS) throughout the hospital. Based on the Cisco Unified Computing System, Quick Connect means that multiple staff can access records at the same time across the hospital’s multiple sites. Staff only need to log on once at the start of the day and can then simply tap their card for subsequent log-ins, wherever they may be. With staff logging on to computers 50 to 60 times a day, this is a huge time savings.

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At Cisco Live in Melbourne last week we hosted a customer showcase panel (see photos here) for attending press and analysts. Alongside St Andrew’s hospital, an Adelaide-based private hospital, and Relationships Australia WA, a not-for-profit which has rolled out Cisco collaboration kit, the IT Operations Manager from Country Fire Authority (CFA), Gary Phillips, discussed the roll-out of a Cisco UCS based data centre platform.

In a country where threat to property and life from bushfires is a major concern every summer, it is important that the men and women tasked to protect us are equipped with the best and most advanced technology available to them. The CFA is the state of Victoria’s dedicated rural fire brigade.

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A dominant theme for the mobile networking industry at this year’s Mobile World Congress was how to cope with exploding demand for mobile data. Part of the answer is new technology but part is better spectrum policy.

Network operators today are facing a stiff challenge to expand infrastructure to keep pace with data traffic growth as more consumers stream HD video on their mobile devices and businesses employ collaboration tools to increase productivity.  As a result, service providers are working harder than ever to manage their networks and scarce spectrum by deploying high quality small cell Wi-Fi in combination with traditional macro cell base stations. This is the “heterogenous network” or Het Net.

Just a few years ago, Read More »

Tags: john chambers, mobile, mobile data, mobile internet, mobile world congress, mwc 2013, Robert Pepper, Service Provider, wi-fi