Category Archives: Rumour Control Central

ASG has expanded its footprint in the yummy world of SAP with the acquisition of SAP consulting and services provider Progress Pacific. Progress, with 40 staff across Sydney and Melbourne, has a customer list including IAG, ING, PepsiCo and Smiths. The acquisition is worth up to $12 million and is based on a multiple of five times earnings before interest and tax for the 2011 and 2012 years. ASG general manager sales and delivery, Murray Rosa said the acquisition of Progress Pacific would expand the company’s east coast footprint as well as complement the company’s other recent acquisitions, notably Courtland Business Solutions. ASG, traditionally an Oracle house, is intending to cover all areas of the enterprise space-the big dollars-and SAP dominate much of the mining industry. Now Murray, about getting the staff……

Murray ties up some new initiatives

In the words of the Great Monty Python “Here comes another one!”-yes minister, if you’re not board with the number of current government bodies, we have, in full living grey, the Australian Information Commissioner, under the Australian Information Commissioners act 2010. Quite a year. The job is (wading to section 7) “the collection, use, disclosure, management, administration or storage of, or accessibility to, information held by the Government”. There is also a lot of gobbledygook about the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) and something to do with things that may be changed. Or not. To be perfectly clear-

“10  Functions and powers of the Information Commissioner

(1)  The Information Commissioner has the following functions:

(a)  the information commissioner functions;

(b)  the freedom of information functions;

(c)  the privacy functions.

(2)  The Information Commissioner has power to do all things necessary or convenient to be done for or in connection with the performance of functions conferred by this section.”

I can’t wait for the movie. If it’s as riveting as the Potato Marketing board rules then we’ll have cool stuff like “you are allowed to plant potatoes, at eight designated times of the year, are restricted to 13 varieties, and must notify it on a daily basis you intend to harvest”.

Quancocrats, an animal similar to a Quokka but less kicked, comprise Government boards. Western Australia alone has more than 1000 (yes, one thousand).-I’m going for the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporations Selection Committee. Hic. I need to find and fund trips for overseas wine writers to visit Australia. I so want this job.

Should we run a poll on whose cobber is going to be the AIC? Let’s see, I think we should pay him (or her) $1.2M per annum. Sounds good? More follows!AICA

Lets take this down to the coffee shop!

Go cat go

Recently I had case to advertise for a creative sort, a marketing specialist-not terribly senior but a great role-possibly the lynch pin for a modest software development firm. The resumes that arrived were not just ordinary, but were banal to say the least. What are we teaching out University students ? Curtin University stands out-you have some serious answering to do, at least to me. The quality and standard of many of the graduates? -Nothing short of abysmal. I stared into the abyss that is the creative future of Australia…hey wake up, get up, get out of the stupor. Its 2010 and the resource base is unimaginably huge by old fart standards-are we overwhelmed ?

Call that a resume ? This is a resume !

NBN Co, Australia’s answer to archaism, has adopted a brilliant new media plan. The previous cunning plans have worked so very well, being

a/ Coming at you from nowhere, with no public discussion or input,

b/ Making it completely unintelligible, and

c/ Pretending you’re an ignorant Luddite if you cant understand a,b, or how much $43 Billion dollars is such a bargain.

The current cunning plan is to make accessible utterly, staggeringly boring media releases, using as much blue as possible. Blue goes towards credibility as we know.NBN Grooves Tasmania three, count ‘em, three communities are connected to the fibre. It got me moving! Click on NBN Grooves if you’re having trouble sleeping.

October saw a miserly 11% take up of NBN in Tasmania-what does that say about it ? The bottom line ? Nobody can tell us why we have an NBN-nobody. All that is said is that it will open up new markets-where ? What will be deployed by whom -and at what cost?