Jtec wins big regional ATM order

Jtec has won a contract to supply ATM equipment to form an Asia/Pacific region backbone voice and data network for New Skies Networks. The Aussie company will supply its J7000 InterXchange, which will be used to compress voice and data traffic over New Skies Networks' satellite links to provide substantial savings on satellite bandwidth, explained Laurie Willis, network projects manager for New Skies Networks. Jtec will also provide ISDN back-up of New Skies Networks' services in case of terrestrial circuit failure.

Willis added that the Jtec digital equipment will replace a mix of analogue and digital gear that was unable to provide the required quality of service. "The extensive feature set of the Jtec product range, coupled with their service and local support lets us provide the quality of service expected by our clients, both within Australia and internationally," Willis said. "The results have certainly been impressive, with a quantifiable reduction in transaction bandwidth consumption."

New Skies Networks, which maintains earth station infrastructure across Australia, providing both C and Ku band access to both Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean satellites, is owned by Dutch company New Skies Satellites.

Born-again miner wins US National Guard

Secure wireless communications company Third Rail, a Western Australian company that was known until September as AMX Resources, has won an eight-year contract with the New Hampshire National Guard. The deal calls for the supply of a turnkey communications system to deliver voice, data and video traffic across Third Rail's wireless system. Wayne Loxton, managing director of Third Rail, said the contract could be worth as much as $US450 million.

Under the terms of the contract Third Rail has been granted exclusive access to radio spectrum that had been granted to the New Hampshire National Guard by the Pentagon and will be able to use spare capacity to service other military and non-military customers and to customers in new markets. Loxton said the deal opens enormous opportunities for Third Rail, which is already in negotiations with other potential users. Loxton explained that the contract is the first step towards Third Rail achieving its goal of establishing a national wireless communications infrastructure to meet the needs of US customers in the military, government and education sectors.

Ironically, Third Rail also made headlines during the week when it severed its last ties with its former life as a mining company by selling its Golden Cities and Kunanaling gold projects to Goldfields Ltd for about $A12.5 million.

Objective gains US DoD accreditation

Recently listed software developer Objective Corporation has had its record management software certified by the US Defence Department in accordance with the US military specification US DOD 5015.2. The spec defines requirements based on operational, legislative and legal needs that must be met by record management applications that are acquired by the US Department of Defence.

"The achievement of this certification has been two years in the planning and is crucial to winning contracts in the US Department of Defence and US Government markets," noted Tony Walls, Objective's CEO Asia/Pacific. "It is also a crucial step in cementing our mission to become the leading supplier globally for enterprise knowledge management in the government arena. It will significantly raise the profile of Objective Corporation globally and in the US."

Objective's products have already been selected by the Australian Department of Defence as its standard for enterprise document and records management.

Citadel Securix offers services in SingaporeAustralian IT security company Citadel Securix has negotiated an agreement that will allow it to provide full consulting and managed security services to the broadband customers of Singaporean company 1-Net. Phil Michod, CEO of Citadel Securix, explained that 1-Net provides the infrastructure for the Singapore Government's Singapore ONE (One Network for Everyone) initiative to deliver broadband services to government, business, educational and domestic users. Michod added that 1-Net provides more than 200 multinational and local companies with direct connections, server co-locations and Web hosting services.

"I believe this is the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial relationship," Michod added. "IT security is now a fundamental concern for any business, particularly with the scope of broadband communications, and we look forward to working with 1-Net to assist companies secure their growth."

Intellect is at it again in Asia

Adding to a host of substantial export orders this year, West Australian smart card specialist Intellect has received an order for 4000 multi-function terminals to be supplied to Bank Central Asia (BCA) Indonesia. The bank has already installed more than 8000 of Intellect's multi-payment terminals.

Daljit Bahia, Intellect's regional sales manager explained that the latest order is important because the bank is expected to be a major force in Indonesia's recovery from "economic malaise" and a driver for the modernisation of the country's financial infrastructure. "We regard Indonesia as a major market for our solutions and now the country is gaining stability there is strong demand for e-commerce related solutions to upgrade banking and financial institutions," Bahia said.

While most of Intellect's recent export orders have come from Europe, the company won a multi-million dollar contract to supply hardware and software for Malaysia's Government MultiPurpose Card project in June.

KAZ wins BP contract at DJs

KAZ Computer Services has won a two-year business processing outsourcing contract to manage imaging data capture for all the customer credit operations of the David Jones retail operations. The terms of the deal require KAZ to make use of its DIPS software, imaging and data capture technologies, which are able to process large volumes of documents with same-day turnaround.

"The David Jones contract is significant for KAZ in that it further expands our base of long term business processing outsourcing contracts and adds to our extensive list of large blue chip customers," noted Peter Kazacos, managing director of KAZ. The company moved into the business process outsourcing arena in June when it bought the Ausdata Group, Kazacos noted (Deal Makers section of The Rust Report, June 2, 2000).

Installation briefs

eGlobal Holdings, which is to become a major shareholder in smart card specialist Com21, has won a deal to supply services, smart cards and readers for the integration of smart card facilities into a medical insurance system that is being developed for the Social Insurance General Company of Shenyang in China. Under the terms of the deal Coms21 will supply up to 2.8 million cards and readers over two years. The deal is expected to generate revenue of about $A10 million for the Australian company.

A newly-opened computer facility at the CSIRO's Parkville laboratory in Victoria houses a locally-designed, very high-performance computer that will be dedicated to the design of new drugs. The machine, which was a joint venture between chip manufacturer AMD the Co-operative Research Centre for Cellular Growth Factors, is built on a Beowulf cluster of 64 one-gigaHertz AMD Athlon processors and is claimed to be able to achieve processing speeds of 265G-FLOPS. The machine was designed by PhD student Kim Branson.

Computershare has signed up as the first Australian user of the international financial extranet operated by Radianz, a joint venture between Reuters and Equant. "Our decision to transfer client applications on to the Radianz network and become a content provider in the Radianz community is consistent with our strategy for making Computershare a global company," claimed Penny Maclagan, director of Computershare Technology Services. The announcement of the deal coincided with the formal opening of Radianz's Australian presence in Sydney.

Keycorp claims to have received an initial order worth more than $A1 million for smartcards to be used in an Australian project, but is keeping quiet about the identity of the buyer. "Further details on the name of the customer and project will be announced in early 2001," a company statement explained.

Cisco Systems has completed a Dense Wave Division Multiplexing infrastructure for Telecom New Zealand. The project is the biggest DWDM system that Cisco has installed to date and will be used as Telecom's core optical transport platform to increase the speed and amount of data that can be distributed across its network. Subcontractors on the installation were ConnecTel and Prime Communications.

Kiwi Internet financial services provider Unity has installed the IP Media Processor Internet telephony gateway from Avaya (formerly the Enterprise Networks Group of Lucent Technologies) to allow its customers to speak to a call centre agent while browsing the Unity Web site. A spokesman said the Media Processor takes any type of Web traffic - text, e-mail, voice or voice-over-IP - translates it into digital format and sends it through to the PABX as if it were coming from a public switched telephone network.