Management
Issue No. 29 - June/July 2006
OBS keeps Microsoft on the same corporate page
Making bits of computer equipment and software work happily together is the stuff of nightmares. When tackling that, it pays to have high-powered help.
Adelaide-based OBS Pty Ltd has built a business on forging solutions for corporate IT problems — with a little help from powerful friends. Established in 1999 by Brian Cook and Brett Campbell, OBS was Australia's first Microsoft Gold Partner and has since made a name for itself supplying Microsoft SharePoint technology - not just here.
“Often the barriers which OBS faces are not technology factors but people factors,” says OBS business development manager, Abel Podger.
“With new technology and new ways of working, many people in an organisation will resist change. OBS has become an MS Gold Partner of choice for many organisations due to our ability to address cultural change and to facilitate end user training and skills transfer within the projects as well.”
Abel says OBS and Microsoft collaborate “in structured and unstructured ways” using the Office System and the SharePoint platform.
“OBS has been chosen by MS to deliver the collaboration platform for the MS Government Innovation Centre, and the Strategic Services Framework (SSF) which is the core platform for the whole-of-government licensing in South Australia. www.innovationsa.net has a public view, and also has membership based entry into many of the leading edge technology projects in SA.”
Abel points to its work for the Austereo radio network to illustrate what OBS does.
Austereo, a decentralised business wanted to be responsive to listeners and give each station the resources and authority to monitor its own market and adapt to local competitive pressures.
Normally centralised functions such as marketing, sales and programming are locally handled by Austereo units and executives encourage the autonomous stations to collaborate so that work done in one market can be utilised i...
