2010 CONSENSUS SOFTWARE AWARDS – WINNERS ANNOUNCED

2010 Winners and Finalists on stage with Minister Stephen Conroy (4th from left)

The 11th annual Consensus Software Awards were presented by Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy on Tuesday 29th June at a Gala Dinner at the Amora Jamison Hotel in Sydney.

The Awards identify the most innovative software in Australia and New Zealand. The Major Sponsor was IBM. They were endorsed and supported by Austrade, NZ Trade & Enterprise, Australian Computer Society and New Zealand Computer Society. Program Partners are Clifton’s, Bayard Lawyers, TiE and the Alinement Network.

Page down for a list of the 6 Winners, 4 Highly Commended and 3 Finalists from across Australia and New Zealand. Click here for a list of the Judges

THE 6 WINNERS OF THE 2010 CONSENSUS SOFTWARE AWARDS ARE:

Aviarc^TM    www.aviarc.com
from Core Technology (NZ)

Aviarc allows the developer to create the working software before needing to add the code. And it does so in a way, where the business users can be actively engaged through the whole process – they co-create the application. This is all done via the web. Being highly collaborative means the business users can (via the browser) interact with the evolving application on a daily basis; through the Business Engagement Manager they providing instant feedback.

With the aviarc model, the “requirements” are replaced by a fully working application that looks and feels real because it is real, forming the process, interactions and structure of the application, leaving no ambiguity. Cost and time of construction is greatly reduced compared with other technologies. This is achieved because:

* The construction is greatly simplified and automatable, since the ambiguity of what is required is obviated by an effective conception process.
* The conceived application is passed to the constructor as a specification formed by the working application, this greatly reduces time traditionally spent understanding the specification, flow and logic of the overall application,
* The aviarc model allows for a radically high level of re-use.
* The aviarc architecture allows the developer to start with “working software”, this in turn also removes most of the costly plumbing aspects of development.
* The architecture also makes it much easier to detect problems early and to “go back in time” to fix bugs that are encountered by the user,
* Testing is reduced due to automation and an architecture that supports clean separation and linear complexity.
* The aviarc architecture also makes interfacing to legacy and third party data, middleware and applications easy, integrations are straightforward.

Citation: “Gartner and a range of other industry seers believe that Core Technology are on the cusp of a revolution in the way software will be developed, delivered and supported in the future. The judges agree – aviarc is a paradigm shift in the way developers and business people interface with each other to deliver applications that truly do meet user expectations. Employing Aviarc within an organisation eliminates uncertainty and any potential for developers to misinterpret requirements as its inbred collaboration effectively forces joint ownership and interaction on a day by day basis. With established business in Australia and New Zealand they have a have a huge opportunity to enter the US market.”

Edumate3    www.edumate.com.au
from Excido Pty Ltd trading as Edumate (NSW)

Edumate is a fully integrated, single database, web-architected student learning and school management software solution. It provides a holistic view of a student’s progress from Kindergarten to Year12. Its architectural design as a student-centric hub of shared knowledge enables the collaboration of information by those who have the greatest impact on a student’s educational and personal development.

Edumate is the driver that unites the fragmented knowledge of a student’s profile throughout their school life and puts current information at the fingertips of School Administrators, Teachers and Parents. It deals with all operational areas of a school with a strong focus on the development of every aspect of a student’s capabilities. It gives students the tools to take greater ownership of their learning and develop to their full potential.

These benefits are achieved through Edumate’s highly advanced web architecture which delivers a wealth of accurate, constantly updated student, teaching and management information to meet the constantly changing needs of today’s administrators, teachers, parents and students.

Citation: “The education application software market in Australia, and indeed globally, is a very challenging one with funding constraints, a demand for flexibility, a wide diversity of organisational management in both the government and private sectors.
Edumate has responded to these challenges by taking a holistic approach to the design and build of their offering and with a student centric approach facilitates the collaborative collection of student information – from years K1 to year 12.
What impressed the judges was Edumate’s innovative approach to the challenging education market, the glowing references from its existing customers and a focus on quality support as well as the rate at which it is acquiring new customers.”

Enterprise Tester    www.catchlimited.com
from Catch Limited (NZ)

Enterprise Tester is a fully integrated, web-based test management solution, which provides a world-first integration with Enterprise Architect and JIRA. Utilising a unique transformation framework, which facilitates traceability from UML requirements to test cases and defects, Enterprise Tester enables organisations to improve test scripting and management process whilst reducing software defects, project costs and timeframes.

Reduce Cost
Enterprise Tester’s integration with Enterprise Architect and JIRA provides organisations with a fully integrated, end-to-end solution for only 10% of the cost of comparable solutions. It also provides a minimum of 4% cost reduction for each project in which the product is utilised.

Save Time
Enterprise Tester supports the generation of test cases based on UML models, providing end-to-end traceability and automatic model updates from any party within the software development team. Simple to use features make the utilisation of the tool extremely quick and efficient, whilst the storage and management of test scripts supports a more efficient test process, allowing organisations to increase productivity on each software project they work on.

Increase Quality
Enterprise Tester facilitates ISO / CMMI compliant process implementation by providing industry standard processes and templates automatically. Integration with JIRA allows the recording and management of defects found during testing, these defects link to Enterprise Tester’s script step record which can be traced back to the requirement being tested, giving full end-to-end visibility of defects and their associated requirements.

Citation: “The judges found Enterprise Tester to be unequivocally the best in all three categories of the Consensus judging criteria. The product demonstrates excellence in innovation as it handles a major challenge in software developement – traceability of testing back to requirements. The business strategy, based on collaborating with other products in the areas of requirements modeling and defect management, is a sure winner just when the journey has begun.”

JHMI – Human Machine Interface    www.thalesgroup.com.au
from Thales Australia (VIC)

The Thales Australia NG Human Machine Interface (HMI) named as JHMI is a powerful and sophisticated display system. Developed as the foundation and common platform for the next generation of Air Traffic Management (ATM) products, JHMI is a high performance, flexible and configurable HMI engine making use of modern software engineering design methodologies, concepts and tools. With JHMI, Thales Australia is positioned as a technology leader with a competitive advantage allowing the company to secure future business in the world wide ATM market.

Thales Australia has designed the JHMI with the intention of maximising reuse in an increasingly competitive market. Based on this principle, the new JHMI engine has become the basis for three current products. These products include the award winning Central Airspace Management Unit (CAMU), the JPilot as part of SIMCAT, soon to be accepted by our Airservices Australia customer and the LORADS tactical display component in Singapore.

The JHMI engine provides a complete framework for Air Situation Display applications. Its layered component based architecture allows for deployment in entire system replacements or as an upgrade to existing legacy systems. The software incorporates OpenGL for high performance graphics capabilities that provide advanced capabilities for the presentation of information to air traffic controllers. The design of the system is highly reliable, scalable and adaptable to a broad range of system sizes and complexities.

Citation: “When we talk of “mission critical”, controlling 47% of the world’s airspace must rate at the top of the scale. From takeoff to touch down Thales software manage hundreds of thousands of global real-time aircraft interactions at any one time.
The human challenge of managing the ever increasing complexity of aircraft movements on a global scale has been impeccably and elegantly addressed by Thales new Human Machine Interface Engine (JMHI).
The system has been internationally recognised for its innovation, performance and market potential and is currently in operation in Singapore and Australia with many upgrades and new international proposals on the table. JHMI proves Australian leadership in mission critical technological development”. 

SecureEd    www.netboxblue.com 
from NetBox Blue (QLD)

The SecurED product is the ultimate solution for schools in helping them deliver their “Duty of Care” to their students by providing a safe internet service, at school and at home. It is a gateway based suite of internet, email, e-communications and laptop control, management and security tools that has been specifically developed for schools.

It not only provides the most advanced web filtering controls, email filtering, security and reporting capabilities but also delivers Netbox Blue’s Cyber Bullying Prevention Engine. This total communication management suite gives schools the ability to control and positively manage all forms of electronic communication in a way that has not been offered before.

Netbox Blue developed its innovative and patent-pending SafeChat technology as part of the SecurED solution. This provides total control over the content being used within emails (including emails between students within the school), Instant Messaging applications, Social Networking posts (those of the individual and also their “friends”) and chat sites. Rules can then be applied to these communications, blocking and/or alerting administrators on the use of swear words, bullying terms, racial abuse terms, inappropriate slang terms and other inappropriate language contained within custom dictionaries.

Netbox Blue’s SecurED innovation also protects laptop use (or PCs at home) by loading the SecurED Laptop Agent on each laptop. The Laptop Agent replicates and implements the same individual policies and rules (synchronised on an ongoing basis directly from the SecurED gateway solution) that apply to students within the school’s network on the laptop, wherever the laptop is accessing the internet.

Citation: “NetBox Blue met all the criteria to be a deserving winner of a 2010 Consensus Software Award. Packaging their solution in a box as an appliance provides schools with the easiest way to mitigate the risks associated with providing individual students with internet access.
The SecureED laptop agent extends this coverage beyond the school firewall to enable schools to enforce their own rules on laptops they provide to students for extra-mural use. The performance of the product is proven, with over 100 schools now using the product in 18 countries and a good number of education industry bodies also providing product endorsement.
With a satellite office in Taiwan and channel partners established in several offshore markets, NetBox Blue seems well-positioned to capitalise on its strategic partnerships with the likes of IBM, Canon, VMware and ESET. The product also has good potential in the public sector providing a logical extension market”.

The Café Simulation    www.abw.org.au
from Australian Business Week Limited (NSW)

ABW programs give secondary students the opportunity to take responsibility for their learning across the curriculum by running their own simulated business. The Café is aimed at students in years 10 and 11 in high school and is intended to take them through the process of establishing a simple one person business initially making only sandwiches and evolving into a full range café and allowing for expansion up to 5 cafes. To achieve this transition the simulation operates through two phases. Participating students form into teams of ten supported by both a teacher mentor and a business mentor recruited from the local business community.

The first phase is a simple non competitive phase where each team can play “what if” on a set of products, costs and selling price that relate to a typical sandwich shop during one week of operation. Stage one starts with one person making and selling sandwiches at a specified price, and contending with fixed and variable cost such as rent, overhead and wages.

Participants are challenged to make enough sandwiches and sell them at an appropriate price so that they can achieve a positive outcome after all expenses are subtracted. Once participants have an understanding of cost of goods, turnover, breakeven, and profit and loss they are ready to move on to Phase Two, the competitive phase.

Participants start with a single Café and have the scope to expand up to 5 Cafes. In this fully competitive phase, participants can vary Café, size, location, and quality, staff level, maintenance, and extend into outdoor dining. They are constrained by market demand which varies across product lines but they can promote sales using advertising and in café promotions. Participants can adjust their financial position via borrowing and investment, motivate employees and management via bonus structures and make a contribution to community support.

Citation:“ABW is a lighthouse for the rest of the community in delivering on the ‘Clever Country’ concept. It has taken up the challenge of developing both a creative and innovative society with its exceptional simulation application. ABW has designed Café Simulation Software, which is not only a very innovative piece of software in its own right, so that it adheres to the highest standards of both education learning principles and application development. It brings both of these areas of excellence together in its state-of-the-art e-learning environment, creating a truly exceptional educational solution. Café clearly exceeds the threshold for an Consensus Award in all the areas of Innovation, Performance and Potential.” 

THE 4 HIGHLY COMMENDED OF THE 2010 CONSENSUS SOFTWARE AWARDS ARE:

ACE    www.aceondemand.com
from ABM Technologies (Pilbara Group) (QLD)

The ACE application was born out of a requirement for the development of enterprise-wide cost and performance modelling for large organisations with thousands of users. ACE provides a powerful combination of detailed enterprise-wide modelling and multidimensional analysis, using the in-built OLAP Client application or integrated into IBM Cognos, as used by clients such as the United States Coast Guard, University of Wollongong and Southern Cross University.

The ACE application was originally created to build Activity-Based Cost models but has evolved into a generic modelling solution, capable of providing solutions for:

* Cost Modelling
* Profitability Analysis
* Budgeting and Planning
* Performance Management
* Environmental Management Accounting (Carbon Accounting)

The ACE suite of applications includes: ACE – Modelling Engine ACE Reports Extract – An application to transform the ACE model into OLAP cubes OLAP Client – An application to create basic reports and dashboards

The ACE application is fully web-based and is provided as an on-demand solution (ACE on-demand). ACE and ACE on-demand are currently modelling over $US8.55 billion in expenses globally.

Envirostep    www.med.govt.nz
from Ministry of Economic Development (NZ)

Envirostep was developed by MED, to simplify the understanding, assessment and communication of business environmental performance, and to make environmental management available to small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in New Zealand. It filters and translates the multi-dimensional complexity of business environmental management, presenting it to users as an easy to use online tool.

Business users can engage with Envirostep at three different commitment levels (starter, improver or performer), which dictates the number of questions they answer (and their potential maximum score). This avoids beginners being overwhelmed, yet retains a challenge for high performers. User get immediate access to a report, recommended improvement actions, action plan and supporting links once they have completed any category of questions.

MED chose to make Envirostep free-access and New Zealand specific, and went to great lengths to ensure its credibility. It provides users with a quantitative performance assessment (developed by recognised professionals in business environmental management using 1000minds software to objectively assign weightings).

Envirostep can also be tailored to specific needs (of sectors or organisations) by adding ‘modules’, which are additional categories of questions (public access or restricted to defined users). The ‘owner’ of a module can view user responses, providing them with a performance assessment and communication tool for their members or supply chain, and quantitative data to support environmental initiatives and corporate reporting.

This platform is now freely available to public sector entities and not for profit business support organisations in New Zealand, enabling them to develop their own applications quickly and cheaply, without the inevitable bugs and inefficiencies that would occur were they to develop a tool from scratch.

EVRIS^TM    www.enterpriseclarity.com.au
from Enterprise Clarity (NSW)

EVRIS^TM enables enterprise visibility of planning by the Production Scheduling team, for optimal conversion of inputs into final products. (Presently, scheduling in many ‘flow’ environments is intuitive and reliant on tools such as spreadsheets, which are incapable of monitoring the many dynamic drivers that impact schedule execution.) EVRIS^TMis a true ‘sense-and-respond’ capability allowing the enterprise to detect and turn to advantage, experience in schedule execution.

Mars’ experience indicates the information and insights available through EVRIS^TMis of real consequence to executive level decision-making, including which products (SKU’s) to “kill” due to under-performance and modelling the plant for optimal returns.

EVRIS^TM creates repeatable, fast and facts-based insight into where the enterprise must transform to become adaptive to the challenges in its business. Given the rapid cycles of process manufacturing, EVRIS^TMis a key capability informing enterprise management on vital factors including which orders are unsustainable, which products under-perform and which operations are sub-optimal.

EVRIS^TM Benefits:

• Detailed schedule run information
• Schedule by modelled resource
• Planned run cost information
• Schedule planned value
• Scenario dataset and result capture
• Planning and scheduling collaboration
• Continuous Improvement valuation and justification

The price-point and operating skill requirement positioning of EVRIS^TM provides a strong ROI proposition and therefore vast global commercial opportunity exists. A final benefit emerging is the aging workforce scenario across many countries of the globe. EVRIS^TM offers the ability to capture the knowledge of the aging expert scheduler for re-use, improvement and leveraging.

Skillspeak    www.skillspeak.com.au 
from Conquest Consulting (NSW)

Skillspeak has been developed to be the ultimate solution for those who manage intellectual resources in organisations. It has as its domain the talent that people carry between the ears and is only relevant while still working for the organisation. Amazingly, very few organisations know in any reasonable form, what skills they have employed, even less being able to summon them when needed. They are more likely to know where each and every paper clip is, than where the crucial skills reside which underpin the business and its strategic direction.

Skillspeak uncovers all skills, including those gained in earlier employment and in previous positions in the same organisation. It provides real competency-based Recruitment, Development, Promotion and Placement. It achieves this by utilising an underpinning science called Talent Management Forensics. The exclusives Skillspeak brings which are not present elsewhere are – Heuristic design – Skillspeak models itself to organisational requirements by learning from its users from the very start. This is opposed to other solutions which need to make far greater investments in setup processes which delay any value beyond the patience threshold of users.

Skillspeak also produces a skills dependency report showing the degree to which the team is dependent on each and every individual team member. These reports are used for manpower balancing in teams and exposing excessive “silo” management. Unique trend reports show how the organisation is moving towards the ideal mix of skills to meet all strategic objectives set by management. Skillspeak brings a level of forensic treatment that is needed to properly manage this most valuable of all resources – “work evaporates in the hands of an expert” – our business is simply creating experts.

THE 3 FINALISTS OF THE 2010 CONSENSUS SOFTWARE AWARDS ARE:

BCM in Box    www.bcminabox.com
from BCM Solutions Pty Ltd (NSW)

BCM in a Box software is a unique, comprehensive solution that will enable any organisation to meet its Business Continuity Management (BCM) objectives – efficiently, effectively and consistently.

The software uses a relational database to combine both planning content management with the resulting document management to ensure business continuity plans are produced and stored (ready for use) using consistent reference data and methodology.

Software highlights include:
* Programming logic to discreetly enforce a stringent methodology over business continuity planning activities
* An “all-hazards” approach that focuses on dependent resources for a business process
* An integrated workflow covering all planning activities including review and approval (governance)
* Comprehensive reports that provide visibility of organisation-wide resource dependencies and priorities
* Event Management which enables remote control and direction over recovery activities
* Testing, Event Management and Plan Activation are integrated with the plan building / generation process.

The software supports and delivers the following full life-cycle of BCM activities:
* System configuration and reference data maintenance
* Business Impact Analysis
* BC Plan strategising and generation
* BC Plan Testing and Reporting
* Management Review and Approval
* Enterprise Reporting and analysis
* BCM Programme Governance
* Event Management / Plan Activation
* Document Repository for Approved BCM documents

The result is a powerful, flexible and simple business continuity management system.

R.Review    www.remesys.com.au 
from Remesys (NSW)

R.Review provides managers with secure access via a web browser to consolidated data including employee, market, budget, salary, bonus and performance data enabling managers to make informed salary and bonus decisions for their employees. R.Review provides a means to easily, accurately, and consistently review and update employees’ remuneration.

R.Review is a unique solution in that it:
* is extremely easy and intuitive to use;
* provides managers with a guided process for completing salary and bonus reviews for their team members;
* provides managers with access to all the information that they require in a central source;
* significantly reduces the occurrence of errors;
* ensures and tracks compliance with the organisation’s guidelines;
* streamlines the process for the HR team enabling them to focus on strategic deliverables;
* allows management to report on progress and outcomes and take action where required;
* provides real time reports;
* provides password controlled, role-based access for significantly improved security;
* provides an audit report to track all actions; and
* is extremely flexible and designed to be modified so that processes, fields, reports, and alerts meet each organisations unique requirements.

From R.Review’s earliest inception, we realised that no two organisations implemented their salary and incentive reviews the same way. As such, we ensured that the technology choices we made would enable organisations to easily configure the system based on their requirements, and where required, enable Remesys to customise the processes within the system.

Teeme
from B3 Technologies Pty Ltd (NSW)

The word Teeme is derived from two words – team and meme (defined as – an idea that, like a gene, can replicate and evolve). As the name suggests the product enables evolution of ideas within teams. The basic unit of collaboration within Teeme is an idea – it can be shared and evolved collectively through the Web application. The typical team collaboration has following three aspects –
* Content creation
* Communication on content
* Interactions among team members.

Teeme not only enables a micro-level collaboration at idea level it also unifies the above 3 aspects of team dynamics at the idea level. The Teeme model is based on the concept of tree. A leaf represents an idea. Evolution of ideas thus forms a branch. And these branches form the tree. The ideas can connect differently to form different types of tree and thus provide a way to capture specific team collaborative pattern.

A leaf not only captures idea as content it also provides the following tools –

Tags – This supports the general concept of Folksonomy at the leaf level. The users within Teeme are represented as unique tags. Using these user tags Teeme can encapsulate user interactions at the leaf level as well. By this feature user can request others to perform specific task, select options, vote on an issue and seek authorization.

Talk – This is a communication tool for the leaf level content. The content related discussions can be captured right with the content using this.

Links – A leaf can also point to other related trees within Teeme using Link mechanism.

Thus a leaf fuses content, user interactions, discussion and other external linkages. These communication and interaction can evolve the idea into different leaf. And thus the tree grows. Not only the tree captures the evolution of content but it also retains the discussions and user interactions which were responsible for the evolution. Any decision made by the team can be fully traced using this tree model – benefiting enterprises in auditing, governance and compliance.