Category: portfolio

Stories from Bill Bennett’s published portfolio. Includes New Zealand Herald, NZ Business, Computer Weekly and other publications.

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James RosenwaxJames Rosenwax says Auckland should focus on agility and the knowledge economy as it continues to emerge as a dynamic global city.

Rosenwax leads Aecom’s Australia and New Zealand cities practice. He recently authored a report on using innovation to transform Australian cities.

He says Auckland is already on the radar for many of the world’s major companies.

The Economist Intelligence Unit rates Auckland as the world’s eighth most liveable city. Yet Rosenwax says being seventh on the Jones Lang LaSalle Investment Intensity Index is more important.

“The JLL index is a measure of a city’s ability to attract investment from global corporations”, he says.

Read the full story by Bill Bennett in the New Zealand Herald.

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Sixty-nine chief executives responded to an open-ended question as to what they would like to see from the Labour Shadow Finance Minister Grant Robertson in terms of policy.

“Continue to constrain public expenditure to core and effective services,” advised Unitec CRO Rick Ede. “Reset taxation and investment incentives to favour productive investment instead of property investment.

“Continue the investment approach to welfare services begun by Bill English.”

Many, but not all, of the themes on Robertson’s own priority list resonate with the boardroom. With 67 per cent per cent of CEOs predicting technological advances will be the single factor with the biggest impact on business in the next five years and a further 7 percent singling out job losses through technology, it is clear Robertson’s Future of Work initiative falls on fertile ground.

Read the full story by Bill Bennett in the New Zealand Herald.

Robertson’s four priorities:

• Find ways for industry to add value and diversify the economy: lift productivity and add value to primary industry and invest more in R&D.

• Focus on regional development and lift wages outside the main centres. Auckland’s infrastructure and housing is under pressure. Housing costs less in the regions but there are not enough good jobs.

• Future of Work project to address the challenge of technology-led change head-on.

• Share the rewards from prosperity: many people work hard and yet they don’t earn enough to buy a house.

“When I attend a business dinner, the conversation often turns to inequality. Many business leaders are concerned about this. They realise it can mean both a loss of potential and it can become a drain on the economy. Even organisations like the OECD, which is hardly a left-wing body, recognises that inequality inhibits growth,” says Robertson.

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Overseas tech skillsOverseas readers wanted to know how New Zealand is filling its tech industry vacancies. Here is my story published earlier this year in London-based Computer Weekly. 

Wellington is as far as you can fly from Heathrow before you start coming back. New Zealand’s capital is almost 19,000km and at least 24 hours away. The city is small by European standards, with only 200,000 people calling it home.

And yet Wellington is a regional technology hub. It is the nation’s biggest technology user and the government is based there. Wellington is also home to Weta Workshop, established by director Peter Jackson to create computer graphics for The Lord of the Rings movies. It is where New Zealand technology entrepreneur Rod Drury began Xero, the small business accounting software-as-a-service market leader. Dozens of small tech startups inhabit buildings all over the small South Pacific city.

Read more in New Zealand calls for tech specialists at Computer Weekly

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Bill's Security story image (2Bill Bennett went to five IT security experts to find the five easiest, most affordable, steps you can take now to secure your business.

Online criminals can attack from anywhere in the world and at any time. New Zealand is in their sights. Like all criminals, they look for easy targets – which means the technology equivalents of unlocked doors, unprotected buildings and unguarded valuables.

The scale of the problem is enormous. Security specialist Symantec reports cyber crime cost New Zealanders $257 million in 2015. The online attacks affected 856,000 people – roughly one in five of the population. And these are just the crimes we know about, many more go undetected.

All businesses are vulnerable. PwC Research found over half of all New Zealand businesses face an online attack at least once a year. Most businesses, especially smaller companies, don’t have an IT security strategy of any description.

Read the full story by Bill Bennett at NZ Business magazine (no longer online).

Vikram Kumar

Vikram Kumar on fog computingIf you’ve only just come to terms with cloud computing, here comes the next thing: fog computing.

“Fog computing is the necessary next stage on from cloud computing,” says Vikram Kumar, the chief executive of KotahiNet. “It is where the edge of networks become intelligent and autonomous.”

Fog computing has the features of cloud computing, such as data, computing, storage and applications. But instead of concentrating resources in a data centre, it moves them closer to where they are used. At times, it can mean putting computing resources in locations well beyond the reach of traditional networks. It turns out this is an ideal way of dealing with the Internet of Things (IoT).

Read the full story by Bill Bennett in the New Zealand Herald.