tenders Archive

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Busy week

Gosh, it’s been a busy week; been doing so much I’ve hardly had time to self-promote about it. Outrageous.

The last issue of Nett with my mug on the editor’s page came out last Friday, including my interview with twin brothers Brian and Vincent Wu, founders of clothing retailer Incu.

The best interviews to do are the ones that defy your expectations. Plenty of small business owners aren’t shy about telling you how great they are, which gives you plenty of material for the story, but leaves you feeling a bit cheap and dirty at the end of it. Not these guys! You definitely don’t expect successful fashionistas to be friendly, humble and modest, but Brian and Vincent really are and I’m sure that has a lot to do with their success.

Over the last year, Incu managed to land a coveted deal: the rights to distribute UK brand Topshop in Australia. Considering how many Australian women buy from Topshop UK online, this is very big. The guys from Incu also told me exclusively about their plans to (finally) open an online store next year, and once again I think they have exactly the right approach.

I’ve also been doing some exciting news stories for ZDNet on stuff like telecommunications tenders, state government IT policies, how bad state governments are at looking after our personal data and ERP consolidation projects.

Aside from this, it’s all been about making clients happy by meeting their insane deadlines, finding somewhere to live and even showing up at the odd IT industry Christmas party. Phew!

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First channel story: Data #3 and NBN Co

It seems there’s always a story if you scratch the surface. Yesterday systems integrator Data #3 had its Annual General Meeting and MD John Grant announced – among other client wins – that the company had won four contracts with NBN Co, the company set up by the Federal Government to manage the rollout of the National Broadband Network. Nothing exciting, just some office PCs, networks and software.

Client win stories are usually very, very dull. People in the industry care because they want to know what their competitors are up to, nobody else is bothered. But in this case, the good people at NBN Co were quite surprised to find that Data #3 had announced this win. And there are some interesting questions about it being a closed bid, when the government is committed to open tenders for all its IT procurement.