Bruce Thompson, who in August resigned from the managing director's job he had held for five years at Hewlett-Packard Australia (he was with HP for 32 years all up), has been appointed a non-executive director of Sausage Software.
Thompson is no stranger to board positions. He is still chairman of HP's Australian subsidiary, is a board member of the Australian Information Industry Association, is a member of Senator Richard Alston's Australian Information Economy Advisory Council, is a trustee of the Melbourne Cricket Ground Trust and the Victorian Education Trust, and is a council member of the Box Hill Institute of TAFE.
"We are indeed fortunate to have secured the services of someone of Mr Thompson's calibre on our board," noted Lloyd Roberts, Sausage's CEO.
Former IBA chief cuts work load
Anne Davies, a former CEO of health information systems developer IBA Technologies, has resigned from her job as the company's director of business development, although she will remain as a non-executive board member and will provide consultancy services to the company for the rest of this year.
"There's no doubt that my best contribution to IBA will be as a board member, able to assist the company's strategy from that position," Ms Davies explained. "My plans are now to take stock, act as a consultant to IBA for a period and consider new opportunities."
Earlier this year IBA undertook a restructuring in which Gary Cohen was appointed executive chairman and Ms Davies moved from CEO to director of business development.
It's all going around at SAP
SAP Australia has laid off 30 staff and will now turn around and hire 30 others over the next two months, according to a report by Sandra Van Djik in Computerworld Australia.
Chris Bennett, who has been SAP's CEO for Australia and NZ for just four months, said the redundancies were needed because of a change in direction for the company and the next round of recruits will have different skill sets from those laid off.
Bennett said SAP has combined its consulting and training staff to form a professional services division - still requiring a director - which has a staff of 170 and is set to grow to 200 over the next two months.
Around the traps
Smart card specialist Catuity has appointed Rob Robins a director based in North America. He recently retired as executive vice president of Visa USA, where he was in charge of the bank card association's division, which markets Visa products and services to merchants throughout the US. Visa USA recently entered a contract covering the use of Catuity software in a smart Visa loyalty program. Catuity has also recently entered alliances with VeriFone and Gemplus.
Experienced company director Peter Bartels has joined the board of Voicenet as chairman. He has been managing director of large companies like Coles Myer, Carlton & United Breweries and Fosters, and is now chairman of the Australian Sports Commission and a director of the Melbourne Business School. As Bartels has joined the Voicenet board, Frank Carr has resigned.
The search is on for a new CEO of AltaVista after Rod Schrock announced that he has suddenly retired. Schrock said he wants to spend more time with his family after long careers with Compaq and Internet search company AltaVista. "I've been working like hell for 15 years," he acknowledged. "I have had a personal goal to spend more time with my family."