Housing NZ(MIS100 2010)

By Jess Meyer | Thursday, May 27 2010

2009 ranking: Bubbling Under

Senior IS executive: Ron Peake, CIO (acting)
Reports to: GM for corporate services
Size of IS shop: 61

PCs: 1953
Mobile PCs: 280
Terminals: 347
Hand-held devices: 920
Total screens: 3500

Industry: Health and community services
PC environment: Windows XP, HP, Lenovo
Server environment: HP; Windows 2000, 2003, 2008; Red Hat; VMWare; Citrix
DBMS: Oracle
Address: 28 Grey Street, Wellington
Website: www.hnzc.co.nz
Key IS projects this year: Core infrastructure refresh programme.

Housing New Zealand has been through several changes with regard to IT leadership in the past two years. In 2009, Mark Corbitt took over as information technology manager following the departure of Rob Herries. A year later Ron Peake is serving as acting CIO, while the organisation seeks a permanent replacement. IT staff numbers have risen since Herries’ time, from 40 in 2008 to 61 in 2010. The IT team supports a wider staff of just over 1100.

Housing New Zealand has stated it plans to spend $43 million replacing outdated software systems. However, the Dominion Post reported in April that several aspects of the project have been called into question by two “whistleblowers” at Housing NZ and the operating officer at Technology One, Housing NZ’s current software supplier. The article stated that the multi-million plan includes a replacement of 18-year-old FinanceOne solutions with Oracle financial software. An earlier report quoted Housing NZ spokesman Nick Maling as saying that “Iqanz and KPMG had confirmed the methodology behind a Housing New Zealand estimate that the ETP project could save the Crown-owned company up to $70 million a year.” Peake says there is a core infrastructure refresh (datacentre, core platforms and telecommunications) being undertaken over the next 18 months to modernise and address supportability issues within the current platforms and support the software systems upgrade initiative.

Six hundred screens have been refreshed over the past 24 months. PC hardware is all HP and Lenovo — HP d10, d530, 7100, 7600 and 7700, and Lenovo M57 and M58, all running Windows XP. Server hardware is a range of HP Proliant versions, with standard and virtual operating systems including Windows 2000, 2003 and 2008, as well as Red Hat, VMware and Citrix XenServer.