SHAREPOINT SHOWCASE >> 6NEW PARTNERSHIPS >> 7

CRM SHOWCASE >> 8MICROSOFT ONLINE SERVICES >> 9

THE VALUE OF SEARCH >>10USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN >> 11

TOUCH COMPUTING >>12

>> HOT NEWS:

INTERGENITE PHOTO GALLERY >> 2PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPERS

CONFERENCE 3INTRODUCING SHAREPOINT 2010 >> 4

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>>

Intergen creates the Fastest Ticketing System in the WorldWe’ve all experienced frustration with online ticket purchasing – overloaded, crashing sites and missing out on a ticket regardless of being up at the crack of dawn to book. Thanks to the scale and elasticity of the cloud, this is soon to be a thing of the past. Built on Windows Azure technology, the world fi rst TicketDirect preview site has met with international acclaim. Watch out for the new site in early 2010.www.ticketdirect.co.nz

< Copyright 2009 Intergen Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of Intergen Limited >

As another eventful year comes to a

close, and with our longstanding SMARTS

newsletter turning 21, it’s worthwhile

looking at some of the recent highlights

about how we are engaging with the wider

world as we all look forward to 2010.

Events are a key way for us to engage with

the Microsoft community. We were larger

than life at Microsoft TechEd in Auckland

again this year, running the Hands on Labs

for the fourth year in a row. It is great to be able to share our enthusiasm for

recent Microsoft releases and give people the opportunity to gain skills and

experience the latest software fi rsthand.

During October we ran Dynamics Day, our own two-day conference for users

of Microsoft Dynamics applications. Due to the success of the event, plans for

Dynamics Day 2010 are already underway.

Internationally we have also been involved in several key conferences and

projects. We developed a lot of the content for the Microsoft SharePoint

Conference held in Las Vegas and our one and only Chris Auld presented a

session in front of the international audience. We have been doing a lot of

work lately for Microsoft around their new technologies and new releases.

SMARTS turns This work has led to us helping t

one of the keynote demonstratio

for Microsoft’s premiere develope

event, PDC09 (Professional Deve

Conference 2009), in Los Angele

mid November. It is a huge thrill

things we’ve done on display in

thousands of our peers.

But it has not all been conferen

beta software. We have continu

execute on our strategy, and ha

working hard to improve our ca

and capacity within our Manag

Services team in order to contin

offer you the best support possible for your solutions.

Our goal, and our main focus, is to ensure that you receive maximum

on your investments in IT solutions. One way we can help with this is

ensure that the Application Support and Maintenance services you re

from us are top quality, proactive and that we are always easy to dea

Our recently introduced role of Client Service Manager within Manag

Services aims to provide you with a dedicated person who understan

supports your business from day one.

As this will be the last issue of SMARTS for 2009, on behalf of all the

at Intergen, I would like to extend best wishes to you and your family

holiday season and look forward to working with you in 2010.

>> T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E I S S U

tony.stewart@intergen.co.nz

>>2 >> I N T E R G E N I T E P H O T O G A L L E R Y < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E >

Hard rock, surfboards, moustaches, strawberries and chicken challenges (and who said life was boring?)

Variety is the spice of life, so they say, and you might not be surprised to hear we’ve been busy mixing things up – when we’ve been away from our computers, that is.

We’ve grown moustaches for Movember. We’ve celebrated Intergen’s annual

Rocktober celebration with our very own Golden Axes providing some very loud

entertainment. We’ve picked up an award or two, hosted international speakers,

brought IT to the world... and that’s all just since the last instalment of SMARTS.

From TechEd to the Microsoft Partner Awards, where we received the Microsoft

Partner Award for Enterprise Content Management, to the immensely popular

inaugural Intergen Dynamics Day (see sidebar), we’ve all of a sudden found

ourselves at the end of the year and wondering where the months have gone.

So here’s a fl avour of what we’ve been up to, in pictures.

Intergen Dynamics Day 09– the start of somethingRecognising the market popularity of

Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM products,

and with a 40-strong team of Dynamics

professionals on the Intergen team, we

decided to host a conference in the name

of Microsoft Dynamics and bring together

existing and future users for a one and a

half day event in Wellington for a mixture

of networking, one-on-ones, Q&As and

education. With three streams comprising

more than 20 Intergen speaker slots, a

number of trusty clients on the agenda

speaking from their personal experience,

and with six key sponsors, we knew the

event would pack a punch. But even we

were surprised by a full house – more than

a hundred people, with standing room only

at the keynote, presented by Microsoft’s

Sandie Overtveld, Microsoft’s Director, Asia

Pacifi c ERP Partners.

The success of the event means only one thing:

there will be an Intergen Dynamics Day ’10.

And while we’re talking about news on

the Dynamics front, Intergen has recently

been named New Zealand’s only member of

Microsoft’s AxPact, a world-wide affi liation

of leading Dynamics AX partners.

Intergenites bring a touch of yellow to the Mary Potter Hospice Annual Appeal

Intergenites get tropical at Intergen’s Surf Patrol

at this year’s TechEd

Intergen’s Rocktober festivities, featuring compères Wayne and Garth(aka Bruce Smith and Wayne Forgesson)

arth

IM

Intergen accepts award at Microsoft Partner Awards: Brent Colbert (Microsoft), Wayne Forgesson, Tony Stewart, Kevin Ackhurst (Microsoft) Rex Wessels in Chicken Challenge

headgear at this year’s Dynamics Day.

>>3>> P R O F E S S I O N A L D E V E L O P E R S C O N F E R E N C E < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E >

When Microsoft decided on a motorsport themed demonstration for the keynote at this year’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) it was all but inevitable that they’d come to Intergen.

With deep SharePoint 2010 knowledge, a proven track record of shipping

under tight deadlines – and our very own race car – we had all the attributes to

deliver something great. A broad team of Wellington-based Intergenites worked

long hours to design and build the ‘Blue Yonder Airlines Racing’ team site in

SharePoint 2010. Working closely with the Microsoft SharePoint product group

and a US-based partner we built a site that combines many of the key features

of SharePoint 2010 with rich Silverlight visualisation and Windows Azure. The

demonstration featured the Intergen Motorsport RX7 rebranded for Blue Yonder

Airlines and includes real in car video and vehicle telemetry.

Wanted: Microsoft SharePoint Expertswith in-house motor racing team

SharePoint wasn’t the only place where Intergen shone at PDC. The Microsoft

Dynamics CRM team took the covers off the forthcoming CRM 5 release and

showed the Intergen-built ‘The Phone Company’ demonstration application

that features CRM 5 coupled with ASP.NET, Windows Azure and Silverlight in

a full xRM customer service and logistics scenario. Please get in touch if you

would like to schedule an early briefi ng on CRM 5.

PDC also signifi ed the ‘Go Live’ date for the Windows Azure Platform. I

delivered a full day Azure Architecture workshop to over 300 attendees to

share many of the extensive Azure best practices that we’ve developed at

Intergen over the past 18 months. We also unveiled an early preview of a

new Azure-based application for TicketDirect. If you’re a sports or culture

fan then TicketDirect will be a familiar name – their software drove 45% of

professionally ticketed events in New Zealand this year. Ticketing really is the

canonical Cloud application – the ability to add more computing capacity on

Chris Auld is Intergen’s Director of Strategy and Innovation.

demand means that mornings of frustration

trying to buy tickets for a big event will

soon be a thing of the past. TicketDirect is

a wholly New Zealand owned company and

we’re excited to be helping them innovate

and take on the multinationals.

If you’d like to discuss anything that

was announced by Microsoft at the PDC

Conference please do feel free to get in

touch with either myself or your Business

Development Manager.

chris.auld@intergen.co.nz

TicketDirect: Fastest Ticketing System in the WorldKeynote demo: Blue Yonder Airlines Racing

Demo launching CRM 5: The Phone Company

>>4 >> I N T R O D U C I N G S H A R E P O I N T 2 0 1 0 < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E >

Mark Orange is the Practice Principal for Intergen’s Portals, Content and Collaboration team.

People of Europe once said, “All roads lead to Rome!” People working with Microsoft technologies can now say, “All roads lead to SharePoint!”

I’ve had some time to refl ect now since the Microsoft SharePoint Conference,

held in Las Vegas earlier this year. While I’m excited about the new and

improved features that I’ve seen, it’s this sense of being at the epicentre

of tomorrow’s Microsoft business solutions that has really stood out to me.

Whether it’s business intelligence with PerformancePoint Services, customer

management with Dynamics CRM, procurement with Dynamics AX, it’s

happening in, on and through SharePoint. If you are managing Offi ce fi les,

publishing an internet site, enabling social networking, interacting with

data from SAP, publishing reports over your data warehouse, orchestrating

business processes, you can do it leveraging SharePoint. And whether it’s

on-premise or in the cloud it all happens on, in and through SharePoint. And

the new version being released next year makes it all easier for everyone:

end users, power users, knowledge managers, developers and system

administrators.

Introducing SharePoint 2010

Power users are empowered through

improved tooling in SharePoint

Designer 2010 and InfoPath 2010. As

a small example, SharePoint Designer

workfl ows can now be confi gured and

published for use on many lists, a

personal point of frustration for me

with 2007. InfoPath, combined with

the new Business Connectivity Services

(BCS), allows rapid development of

more complex forms that can read and

write to line of business applications.

Ribbon Interface

End users get a range of social networking features and a new user interface

that introduces the contextual Ribbon, providing a consistent editing

experience across all the Offi ce clients and Offi ce web applications. Speaking

of Offi ce web applications, these are now baked into SharePoint so users

can open and view Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Excel

spreadsheets directly in the browser within SharePoint regardless of whether

they have the Offi ce desktop installed or not. This means access from any

device with a browser, no more waiting for a client application to load, and no

worrying about having the right version just to view a Word document!

I

write to line of business applications.

Ribbon Interface

INSIGHTS

SITES

SEARC

COMPOSITES

SHAREPOFOUNDAT

FROM BDC TO BCS

Business Connectivity

Services is the evolution of

the Business Data Catalog

that now gives us push

and pull data capabilities

rather than just pull.

< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E > >>5>> I N T R O D U C I N G S H A R E P O I N T 2 0 1 0

Knowledge managers can take

advantage of signifi cant improvements

around the management of global

metadata and content types, metadata-

driven navigation, and extended

document and records management

capabilities. A formal corporate

taxonomy can be centrally managed,

while end users can populate the

informal folksonomy, and knowledge

managers can promote folksonomy terms up to the taxonomy when

appropriate. We have improved Form Services and Excel Services and now

have the new Visio Services. Want to visualise data, processes, or architectures

through the browser using the Microsoft tool users know? Visio Services

lets users publish diagrams from the Visio client application to SharePoint,

allowing other users to view them through a browser without requiring the

Visio client. Provide these diagrams with dynamic data feeds and you now

have a rich visual reporting and monitoring tool.

Need to more easily deploy custom web parts and modules? You need a

Sandbox. Developers now have vastly improved tooling through Visual

Studio 2010 and another deployment option provided by the new Sandbox

framework, essentially a quarantine zone for custom code. There is a

new lightweight theming model, improved accessibility and browser

compliance, and additional user interface features to help improve the

editing and collaboration experience.

For those managing the SharePoint

infrastructure and platform there is improved

tooling for monitoring, backup and restore,

and geographic distribution. Shared Service

Providers (SSP) are now gone, with a more

easily managed farm services model in their

place, and there is more published guidance

and best practices.

These are a few highlights that show there

has been as much focus on improving

core capabilities, such as document

management, web content editing and

search, as there has been to adding new

features like Visio Services and social

networking tools. For more information and

demonstrations of these and all the other

new features and improvements, you’ll have

to come and see us!

mark.orange@intergen.co.nz al

andbox

he

SharePoint 2010 capabilities

Chakkaradeep Chandran

What do you do?As a SharePoint Developer in the Portals, Content and Collaboration team, I build and design SharePoint applications that help our customers to cut costs with a unifi ed infrastructure and rapidly respond to business needs.

How do you make a difference?Being a SharePoint developer, I not only write code but also understand the underlying business problem and the 'hidden gems' within SharePoint.

What do you love about your job?Working with the cutting edge technologies! This is something I love and I’m lucky to work on some awesome projects here at Intergen. I also love the challenge of leveraging other existing technologies which complement thesenew technologies.

A bit about yourself...I am passionate about working with Microsoft technologies and you can fi nd me blogging, tweeting and also speaking at some of the SharePoint conferences. I love movies and music, and enjoy them as I work. I also like to explore the various walks and reserves around Wellington during weekends.

>> INTERGENITE:

Sh P i t 2010 biliti

SITES

COMMUNITIES

CONTENT

SEARCH

AREPOINT UNDATION

VISIO SERVICES

Publish dynamic visual

diagrams of reports and

processes from Visio to

SharePoint so any user

can view them with just a

browser.

>>6 >> S H A R E P O I N T S H O W C A S E < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E >

Mega scale events in the USA, such as the Presidential Debate and the Super Bowl, are well-charted territory for emergency management gurus E·Sponder, LLC, based in St Louis.

New Zealand’s game of choice happens to be rugby,

yet this innovative American company and Intergen

have come together from opposite sides of the

world as partners on a common playing fi eld – in

the Microsoft SharePoint space.

E·Sponder is a market leader in the creation of

software to deliver real-time tactical response

tools to manage large-scale events and emergency

situations worldwide, involving millions of people.

The collective eyes of thousands of emergency

response personnel, including federal and

government agencies, are brought together onto

an information hub that E·Sponder delivers on

Microsoft SharePoint Server, calling on Intergen’s

SharePoint know-how from across the world.

The hub is a real-time command centre, powered

by highly visual tools such as 3D Geographic

Information Systems (GIS) mapping and layers of

documents, web forms and communication feeds,

often represented on a Microsoft Surface table for

instant touch response to any given scenario (see

page 12 for more thoughts on touch).

E·Sponder’s President, Rob Wolf says, “Intergen

came to our attention through a successful project

involving SharePoint integration for one of our clients

in New Zealand, and they more than proved they had

exceptional SharePoint understanding and capability.

The relationship is going from strength to strength, due

largely to their innovation, willingness to get involved

and their agile way of delivering smart outcomes.”

With some runs on the board for E·Sponder, Intergen

is proud to be regarded as a partnering resource

for a company that leads the way in emergency

management and communication technologies.

As Wayne Forgesson, Intergen’s Director of

Marketing, puts it, “With technology breaking down

geographical barriers, it just goes to show you can

form deep partnerships and complete world-leading

work wherever in the world you are.”

US emergency management gurus turn to Kiwi SharePoint talent

In this year’s Microsoft New Zealand Partner Awards,

Intergen won the Business Productivity Enterprise

Content Management Partner of the Year Award,

based on Intergen’s work on the development of

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s website.

For New Zealand businesses operating

internationally, one of the most accessible vehicles

for information is NZTE’s corporate website:

www.nzte.govt.nz.

As the government’s national economic agency,

tasked with improving the international

competitiveness and sustained profi tability of

New Zealand business, NZTE needed to consolidate

several existing websites into one in order to interact

with businesses on the most customer-centric footing.

Replacing ageing homegrown technology whose

maintenance costs were mounting, NZTE needed to

select a strong technology foundation for their path

ahead, with national and internationally targeted

websites on the cards. In making the decision to

Winning SharePoint solution provides “a platform for the future”

go with SharePoint, rather than simply selecting a

content management system, they thought it more

important to look for a platform that set them up for

the future.

NZTE’s Applications Architect, Mike Gilbert says:

“SharePoint stands out as a single enterprise-wide

solution that delivers on so many levels, be it

internet, intranet, shared information or business

intelligence applications.”

Now supported by a robust and extendable

SharePoint platform – one of the fi rst SharePoint

public-facing internet sites to be developed in the

country – the new website has provided a single,

integrated and content rich platform, refl ecting the

diversity and complexity of the various business

streams underpinning it.

NZTE project sponsor, Julian Moore, says: “The

new site is all about the users, about the market

information, products and services that our clients

require, and meeting the needs of other New Zealand

businesses. The SharePoint platform enables us to

do this today, and gives us tremendous capability to

build on this in the future.”

>>7< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E >>> N E W P A R T N E R S H I P S

Jaana Krause

What do you do?I’m the Service Lead for Microsoft Dynamics. Based in Wellington, I am responsible for delivering Application Support and Maintenance Services for our Microsoft Dynamics customers throughout the country.

How do you make a difference?Our project teams are doing a great job of delivering the best solutions for our clients. My goal is to ensure that, after a successful implementation, our customers receive support services which will bring value to their business and foster long-term relationships.

What do you love about your job?It’s all about people and relationships. For me the job means making the best use of my skills and working together with a great team to ensure we do our best to make customers happy.

A bit about yourself…I grew up in Germany. After studying and working in Kiel – which is in the northern part of the country – for about eight years, I decided to come to New Zealand to gain experience and explore the beautiful country. In my spare time I like to be active, travel a lot and spend time outdoors in the amazing New Zealand countryside as much as possible.

>> INTERGENITE:

The partnerships we form with like-minded, forward- thinking technology providers are critical to the quality, and breadth, of solutions we offer, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Microsoft Dynamics space.

Getting the data in is easy; using it to drive your business decision making has always been the challenge.Zap Business Intelligence software offers the advantages of new generation

technology – powerful, simple and practical. It is a user friendly, web-based,

highly scalable BI solution tightly integrated with Dynamics NAV, AX and

CRM. Zap unites your business with a common picture for understanding and

improving corporate performance:

Focus your business through a centralised information portal. Zap allows you

to defi ne business objectives that are visible and measurable across the whole

company. This brings your plans and budgets to life with a central system that

can be reviewed hourly, daily, weekly.

Proactively detect issues and opportunities at the earliest possible stage.

When objectives aren’t met, the system will alert you and allow you to

analyse, understand and report on the underlying problems.

Reduce manual reports and processes with automation. Many businesses

spend a huge amount of staff time and money on creating manual reports and

spreadsheets, particularly for end-of-month fi nancial reports. Zap lets you automate

the reporting process in a central system that can be accessed across the business.

Provide self-service information. Managers and executives can access information

anytime, anywhere. No longer do they need to make successive requests through

others who may have alternate priorities or limited resources at peak times.

Enable fact-based decision-making. With accurate company information at

their fi ngertips, employees at all levels can make more informed decisions to

maximise performance.

Extending the Intergen partner ecosystem, extending the value from your investment

Putting the clientclient in Client Relationship Management

Introducing CRM4Legal

Client Relationship Management (CRM) is an important business strategy that

differentiates a law fi rm from its competition. Historically, however, law fi rms have

built their structures around the services they provide – like practice groups, service

innovation, marketing and branding – rather than the client experience.

By providing a complete view of the client experience within a law fi rm, using

the core technologies provided by Dynamics CRM and CRM4Legal, a fi rm can

get a complete picture of the relationships that form the client experience.

This information can then be used to help the fi rm become more effective at

meeting clients’ current and future needs.

When a fi rm can anticipate and respond to the needs of clients, and align its

services accordingly, it can begin to build client value.

It’s important to understand that CRM is a business strategy, and a platform

with enormous potential. CRM4Legal is an application designed to help fi rms

achieve this strategy by providing targeted, tactical tools. CRM4Legal supports

the entire law fi rm through a set of modules organised by functional area:

marketing, business development and client care. These form the centralised

database through which all practice groups and service areas in the fi rm can

access the information and the tools they need to be more effective with clients.

By placing the client at the very centre of the CRM solution, communications

and interdepartmental teamwork and information sharing can be

improved and a winning fi rm-wide client relationship management strategy

implemented, ultimately increasing profi ts and reducing costs.

If you would like to know more about how CRM4Legal or Zap can add value to

your business, please email simon.bright@intergen.co.nz

>>8 >> C R M S H O W C A S E < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E >

Innovation at the right pricefor Waikato Milking Systems

As a New Zealand-owned business with 30% of their equipment sold outside of New Zealand, Waikato Milking Systems competes on an international playing fi eld that is price and market conscious to the extreme. Key to their success is competitive, accurate and timely pricing.

For Waikato Milking Systems, winning contracts

is very much driven by the ability to quote and

price competitively for the unique characteristics

of each individual market, which is in turn

infl uenced by different market mechanisms,

currencies and dealer arrangements.

With this in mind, Waikato Milking Systems

needed to replace their ageing bespoke price

book solution for pricing management. Their

platform was increasingly unsupportable,

not easy to update and it couldn’t deliver the

rapid turnaround in quoting and pricing that

was required.

They needed a world class CRM-driven

solution capable of integrating with a

CRM provides a platform for fl exibility and growth

MedRecruit stitches up the competition in Deloitte Fast 50

Innovation and forward-thinking in technology have been core to MedRecruit’s business strategy – and the benefi ts are striking and

quick to materialise.

Coming second in this year’s Deloitte Fast

50, MedRecruit’s Managing Director, Dr Sam

Hazledine, attributes a large part of the success

to this innovative outlook and having the right

core systems in place to make it all happen.

Whether it’s a case of matching doctors with

great jobs and great lifestyles, or helping

hospitals fi ll vacancies with the right doctors

and minimum fuss, MedRecruit proves it can be

done very successfully. Their point of difference

is the ease of making it happen, which again

comes down to the technology behind the

scenes, by bringing doctors and hospitals

together in a one-stop online web space where

it’s easy to connect with opportunities.

Early on, MedRecruit invested in the

latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform

to manage all the extensive interactions

and communications that happen in a job

placement process.

Sam Hazledine says, “We wanted something that

was understandable and absolutely simple because

we didn’t want the technology to get in the way.”

Having the ‘engine’ fi rmly in place, MedRecruit and

Intergen then came up with an interactive website

built around CRM as the core technology, creating

a site that would be the hub for smart and easy

recruitment online. With clever technology and a

great user experience combined, MedRecruit has

created a winning formula, unique to Australasia

– so winning, in fact, that they were named the

second fastest growing company, and the fastest

growing services business in the country. As a one-

stop web shop, www.medrecruit.com saves money,

time and valuable hospital administrative resources.

And the practice of matching doctors not just to

jobs but to lifestyles leads to 57% better retention.

customised pricing management system. They

identifi ed Microsoft Dynamics CRM as an out-of-

the-box solution that could be tailored to their

specifi c pricing requirements through integration

with the third party Experlogix quote confi gurator.

Waikato Milking Systems General Manager, Dean

Bell, says: “We felt confi dent that we were investing

in a state of the art platform, but not one that we

had to fi t our business to – rather, one that fi t all

the drivers of our business.”

The upshot? A mobile salesforce can apply price

adjustments, fi ne-tune sales prices, currencies and

margins. Tasks that were previously measured in

days are now capable of happening automatically,

and new products can be released quickly to

the market. The downstream effects of greater

accuracy, faster turnaround of quotes and speed

to market are enormous, proving the grass really

can be greener with the right technology in place.

>>9< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E >>> M I C R O S O F T O N L I N E S E R V I C E S

Over the course of the past two years, the raised market awareness of cloud computing, combined with tough economic and market conditions, have contributed to a signifi cant shift in the way we think about IT services.

For years we have been used to using software installed on our PCs or within

our organisation’s walls. There is now an increasing movement towards having

these solutions delivered through online services.

One model of delivering cloud-based solutions is called Software as a Service

(SaaS). This model has been available to the market for many years and relies

completely on internet access for its delivery. Customers and organisations

do not pay for ownership of any software; instead they only pay for the

consumption of the services provided by the software that is hosted in the

cloud. The consumption of such services by the customers is only possible over

the internet through a web-based interface.

About two years ago, Microsoft unveiled a new model of cloud-based

offerings called Software + Services. This model differentiates itself from SaaS

in a number of ways. Software + Services solutions combine the scalability

and accessibility provided by cloud-hosted services with the power, fl exibility

and rich experiences provided by software running locally.

Software + Services also gives organisations a “middle ground option” by

supporting the deployment of hybrid solutions. These particular solutions

deliver a portion of the services using traditional on-premise systems, while

delivering the remaining services through cloud-hosted systems. This strategic

and architectural fl exibility produces a framework through which security

of information storage can be achieved by housing sensitive data on local

systems, while non-sensitive data can be stored in hosted infrastructures.

The ins and outs of Microsoft Online Services and BPOS

Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Standard Suite

(BPOS) is a Software + Services offering made available to

the market through Microsoft Online Services. These services

are hosted by Microsoft and supplied to organisations

throughout the world over the internet.

BPOS currently comprises several products: Microsoft Exchange Online

Standard, Microsoft SharePoint Online Standard, Microsoft Offi ce

Communicator Online Standard and Microsoft Live Meeting Online Standard.

Microsoft is betting big on online services such as BPOS and Azure (see page

3 for more information), and it’s a safe assumption that within a few years,

the applications that information workers use will increasingly have a cloud

component to them – if they’re not hosted online in their entirety. In the

meantime, however, there are a number of reasons why organisations should

at least be trialling BPOS now to see if the business case makes sense.

There are a number of opportunities to utilise some or all of the BPOS

applications, for organisations of all sizes. These include:

• Outsourcing email. For many organisations, and IT shops in general,

running an Exchange Server – or any mail server – can be a complex

endeavour, requiring signifi cant infrastructure and skill. Migrating to a

hosted service such as Exchange Online often makes sense, and could

save signifi cant operational capital.

• Trialling Unifi ed Communications. If you are interested in understanding

how unifi ed communications could benefi t your organisation, trialling

Offi ce Communications Online is the way to go: by testing out the

online presence, instant messaging and voice capabilities, you and your

organisation can quickly determine the benefi ts that will be accrued.

While there are some limitations (e.g. integration with PABX telephony

solutions is not currently possible),

this is an ideal way for organisations

to quickly improve productivity with

minimal effort and outlay.

• Online conferencing. Most

organisations are facing travel

restrictions, so being able to meet

virtually online, sharing desktops and

viewing presentations and documents

can all minimise the need to travel –

across town or across the country.

To fi nd out more about how Microsoft’s

Online Services – and BPOS in particular

– can help your organisation, feel free to

contact us. Alternatively you can also visit:

http://www.microsoft.com/online/en-

nz/default.mspx.

david.porta@intergen.co.nz

David Porta is Intergen’s Unifi ed Communications Service Lead

>> M I C

Tnifi ed ead

>>10 >> T H E V A L U E O F S E A R C H < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E >

If it’s 10 times more expensive to fi nd a new

customer than to better serve an existing one, then it must cost at least that much to recreate a document instead of searching – and fi nding – an existing one. Search technologies have revolutionised how we locate and use information.

How many of us have wanted to know the answer to something have resorted

to typing the question into a web search engine to get what we need? Forget

using our brain – searching’s so much easier.

While ‘Google’ has become a verb due to its pre-eminence in internet web

searching, the ability to search for information within an organisation is often

overlooked, even though the ability to search represents an obvious way of

increasing productivity and making better use of existing resources.

Search technologies have been around for years, but adoption is still relatively

limited – organisations that implement portal and collaboration solutions

typically implement the packaged search tools that come with their core

solution, but beyond that, there appear to be few organisations that go to

the extent of implementing a specialised search solution. And this is when

virtually all of us use a web search engine every day.

The business case is easy: While the adoption of search tools is lower than

it should be, those tools can deliver myriad ways of locating and navigating

through the volumes of information that exist, enabling reuse of information,

empowering users and increasing productivity, or even to help the legal

discovery process. Any organisation that can improve how its users locate, use

and reuse information must also achieve an advantage over organisations

that don’t allow this.

That said, search engine adoption rates are due to increase. Not only are we

likely to see an increased adoption for reasons of effi ciency and effectiveness,

there are a myriad of products which are designed to solve the challenge of

locating information and data – and Microsoft is in the middle of this activity.

Over the past few years, Microsoft has invested signifi cantly in search. At

a consumer level, Bing is Microsoft’s foray into global web search and is

growing market share against the incumbent providers – an area where it

has publically stated it wants traction and market share. At an enterprise

level, Microsoft has grown its range of search products that are designed to

search across multiple information repositories and data sources. Whether

you’re looking to search across the data contained in a SharePoint solution,

across an enterprise, or provide large-scale search services to thousands of

simultaneous users, Microsoft has a search solution to fi t the requirement.

Currently Microsoft’s search solutions comprise three core offerings:

SharePoint Search, allowing search within and across SharePoint, websites

and email and traditional fi le stores; Search Server Express, a free solution;

and fi nally, at the high end, there are the Microsoft FAST offerings – designed

for high-volume, large-scale requirements where there are thousands of

simultaneous users, but also applicable for many innovative search uses.

More than text

When we think of search, many of us probably think of typing a keyword into

a text box and getting a list of textual responses in return – after all, that is

the typical way in which search engines are used. These days, search engines

can not only access and make sense of a plethora of

types of data, they can also enable different ways of

navigating this information. Spatial search in particular

has started to gain traction within the enterprise. Not

only are online mapping services useful for obtaining

directions, they also provide a real world method of

displaying and accessing information. Want to know

how many customers are located in a particular

suburb? Display a map with their addresses plotted on

it. The visualisation of data over a map enables us to

navigate and think of data in new ways.

For a solutions provider such as Intergen, we see a

growing need for search based on a number of key

drivers: the need to increase productivity and react

faster to customer and market needs; the ability

to locate and reuse information, saving hours of

productive time; and the ability to empower users –

at all levels – to access and utilise data in new and

interesting ways, allowing more informed decisions

to be made. As an organisation dependent on the

access and sharing of knowledge, we expect to

increase our investments in these areas ourselves, and

we also expect to see similar interest amongst other

organisations looking to better use their resources.

tim.howell@intergen.co.nz

ng Value Using Search

>>10 >> T H

If it’s 10expensive

customer than tan existing one, then it must cthat much to recreate a documof searching – and fi nding – aSearch technologies have revwe locate and use informatio

How many of us have wanted to know the ans

into a web search engi

ng VaFindi Tim Howell is Intergen’s Marketing Manager

O N E >

>> INTERGENITE PROFILE

>> U S E R E X P E R I E N C E D E S I G N < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E > >>11

What have those gun UXdesigners been getting upto lately?

In short, we ve been busy! It s been an exciting year for our Experience Design

team with a full and varied workload. It s been heads down, bums up as

we have delved into some interesting and exciting projects.

Of greatest significance this year for the UXD team is the change in the way

that we now organise ourselves, with the User Experience Designers now residing

in the Portals, Content and Collaboration practice. This is a natural place for us

and strengthens our relationship with the more technology-focused disciplines

and naturally leads to better communication, providing more value to you — and,

of course, your customers!

We haven t been very good lately at bragging about what we have been doing

so thought it high time we provided a brief snapshot of the

breadth of what we have been producing over the last

few months.

Royal New Zealand NavyAs part of the Navy s recruitment activity, Intergen

has worked closely with the Navy to design, build and

deliver the new recruitment website, www.navyjobs.mil.nz.

This was an important project for Navy recruitment and

has produced an effective and tailored online channel.

The result of this collaboration is a website that provides

a wealth of dynamic content and interactive experiences

that act as a powerful tool to inspire potential recruits

to join the Royal New Zealand Navy.

Student Job Search (SJS)In this current economic climate there are fewer job vacancies and the competition

in the market is fierce. Employers are receiving as many as 100 applicants for

single jobs that they advertise. This is where Student Job Search comes in. SJS

is a free service that pre-screens and shortlists candidates as part of their service

to employers.

The Intergen Experience Design team was tasked with designing a website that

helps SJS achieve their goal of bringing students and employers together in an

intuitive, compelling and seamless manner.

AXAAXA s existing website had become outdated and was in need of a refresh, both

for internal content contributers and public website visitors.

AXA identified the value of their web presence and wanted to leverage it, thereby

getting closer to their existing and prospective customers. The user-centered

methodolgy that the Experience Design team employed combined nicely with

the new AXA global positioning standard which encapsulated customer-centric

values. AXA is all about people, not products, and now getting expert advice

has never been easier.

Michelle O LoughlinWhat do you do?I m a User Experience Designer. My rolewithin a project is to make sure thateverything looks great and is totally usable.This often involves creating prototypes andseveral design concepts before refining thedesign into something that really works.

How do you make a difference?I try to identify and understand what theuser wants or needs from a website and —coupled with the functional requirements —I base my designs around that. I try not todesign for design s sake and believe thatthings should not only look good but alsoserve a valuable purpose.

What do you love about your job?I love the variety I get in my work. Eachproject is completely different and has itsown unique challenges. I also get toexperiment with new design trends andpush the capabilities of technology withinmy designs.

A bit about yourselfI m from Bristol in England and have beena designer for almost 10 years now. I workedin London for four years before movingover to Wellington 18 months ago. I m nowenjoying a much more balanced lifestylehere and trying to see as much ofNew Zealand as possible.

Find out how Intergen s User-Centred Design approach canbenefit your web or application project. Contact Mark Delaney at

mark.delaney@intergen.co.nz

www.navyjobs.mil.nz www.sjs.co.nz www.axa.co.nz

Smarts 21_Final.indd 11 11/19/09 11:21:54 AM

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT INTERGEN:

Auckland: +64 9 966 3070 info@intergen.co.nzWellington: +64 4 472 2021 www.intergen.co.nzChristchurch: +64 3 964 0017Dunedin: +64 3 477 5648Sydney: +61 2 9969 0088 www.intergen.com.au Perth: +61 434 122 880

< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E T W E N T Y O N E >>> T O U C H C O M P U T I N G

The recent release of Windows 7 has signalled a wave of new devices that support the concept of multi-touch: the ability to physically touch the screen of a device, and control and manipulate data and images on-screen using one’s fi ngers. Both laptop and desktop PCs are being provided with these.

While popularised

by Apple’s iPhone, the

concept of touch-based

computing has been around

for many years; in fact, Microsoft,

through its tablet PC initiatives, has

long trumpeted the usefulness of touch

computing, albeit using a stylus instead

of a fi nger.

With multi-touch capabilities built into the

core capabilities of the operating system,

and major PC and notebook manufacturers,

including HP, Dell and Acer, delivering these

Touch computing: Is it the business?

devices to the market, the reality is that many information workers could

be contemplating using a touch-screen device in the near future. Whilst

the hardware manufacturers are hopeful the arrival of Windows 7 and

its new capabilities will spark a new round of PC upgrades, the question

being asked by many observers relates to the benefi ts these multi-touch

devices will deliver to the wider market.

No doubt consumers are a key target market for

these solutions, and there are numerous ways

in which end users can take advantage of the

multi-touch user interface – if not

for productivity reasons, defi nitely

for entertainment. The ability

to fl ick through music, videos

and documents, zoom into and

manipulate photos, and “fl ick” though

music album covers are all made more

enjoyable through a touch-based user

interface – as has been proven by the

widespread adoption of Apple’s iPhone

and iPod touch devices.

For business users the value is less clear.

For what uses will we replace the keyboard

or mouse with a touch-driven interface?

Those of us who are information workers

are unlikely to replace our trusty keyboards

with an on-screen version – we simply won’t

be productive enough. And while “fl ipping”

through fi les and pictures is no doubt fun – it’s

hardly going to increase anyone’s productivity.

For basic tasks, then, touch could be seen as a novelty more than anything

else. That said, there are opportunities to rethink how we interact with

complex information, such as data and volumes of information, touching

the screen to sweep, zoom and dive into data – bringing to life some of the

concepts fi rst demonstrated in movies such as Minority Report. Right now,

scenarios such as these are still fi ctional, but it’s only a matter of time – and

probably not much time – before software vendors start to leverage touch to

showcase a new range of capabilities.

For user experience designers and software developers such as Intergen, we

need to become cognisant of how these technologies affect what we do. How

do people interact with pages and content now, and how could this change if

they are using a touch-based user interface? What other new usage scenarios

arise when using this kind of technology? To what extent will this type of

technology take off, or will it remain a bit player amongst the numerous other

ways to interact with applications and the web?

Regardless of the answers to these questions, the multi-touch capabilities of

Windows 7 create new opportunities for developers and users alike, giving us

all another way of creating and consuming information and data.