Stories by Rust Reporters

Hostworks revels in Microsoft deal

South Australian Internet hosting service provider Hostworks has been selected as an accredited application service provider partner of Microsoft and, with its newly elevated status, will be able to market and host selected Microsoft products for corporate and government customers through its ASP service

Around the Australian traps

Graeme Inchley finds a home with friends, AIPC boosts sales team, Eagle flies with lucas, and IDC suffers severe growth

Hot KAZ wins ANZ cheque clearing work

Winning big outsourcing contracts seems to have become automatic for KAZ Computer Services, which this week added the ANZ to its recent string of successes. In its latest "multi-million dollar contract" KAZ will provide ANZ with the Voucher and Image Processing (VIPS) proof of deposit processing system

News briefs

Headline-makers include Aurion, HIC, Nike on a downer, Sears Roebuck and Symbol on a high, Kmart and Symbol looking good, and the DoD with IBM

Interesting movements abroad

Pacific Internet gets new boss, Motorola veteran quits, Gateway gets new face in international job, and Baan's American boss jumps ship

Americans loosen grip on Internet standards body

For the first time in its relatively brief history, the Internet's leading standards-setting body - The Internet Engineering Task Force -- has selected somebody other than an American as its leader. The honour has gone to Norwegian, Harald Alvestrand, a Cisco engineer

Telemedia wins big contract in US

After winning a sizeable contract to provide an enhanced services and billing system to US company ILD Telecommunications, the boss of Telemedia Networks -- an ASX-listed developer of telecommunications software -- has claimed that companies supplying the telecommunications sector are well positioned to withstand the looming recession

Pennington heads operations for Cedar

Chris Pennington has been appointed managing director of the Australian and New Zealand operations of British software developer Cedar. He joins the company from Renaissance Australia, which was recently "integrated" with Cedar

Computershare takes control of Hong Kong registry

Listed Australian share registrar Computershare has bought Hong Kong's largest share registrar by acquiring the 50 per cent of Central Registration Hong Kong it did not previously own for $A40 million in cash. The announcement coincided with the release of Computershare's first half financial results which, despite showing a 76 per cent jump in net profit to $A18.3 million, nonetheless failed to satisfy market analysts.

RAMS set to outsource core applications to Solace

Australian banking and financial systems software developer Solace has begun negotiations over the provision of applications outsourcing services to cut-price home finance provider RAMS Home Loans. If the deal can be consummated it is expected to be worth up to $A15 million a year

ERG buys Motorola's share of joint venture

Listed WA smart card specialist ERG has agreed to fork out $A46 million in cash in order to buy the share of its ERG Motorola Alliance that was previously owned by Motorola Worldwide Smartcard Solutions Division

Perth services group wins investment from Compaq

West Australian outsourcing and systems integration player AMCON Solutions Group has been boosted by a $A3.15 million investment by Compaq Computer as the two companies seek to exploit the WA State Government's "Buy Local" policy

Gloom deepens over US industry

Optimists looking for a swift reversal of the recessionary gloom over the US economy would have been bitterly disappointed by the quantity of gloomy news emerging from the IT sector and by the quality of the companies involved

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