Background

1. There are 9 areas for peers to appraise the performance of the Compucon team.  The range of score is from 1 for the worst supplier to 5 for the best supplier in New Zealand.
2. We obtained 12 repeater appraisals and 4 first timer appraisals.  First timers would have dealt with Compucon for a long time but they attended this event and did this appraisal for the first time.  Several regular peers did not do the appraisals this time presumably because their actions of total support have made this written exercise redundant.              
3. Repeaters gave us 4.83 whereas 1st Timers gave us 4.80.  This means 1st timers have similar perception of us as repeaters.

Results

           
1. We scored A (distinction) on 6 performance areas out of 9.  This is the best appraisal result ever.  The best Compucon performance areas are Product Quality, Customer Service, Technical Service, Communication, Brand Equity, and Technology Direction.              
2. We scored B (credit) on 2 performance areas.  They are Range of Systems (4.83) and Pricing (4.72)              
3. Our lowest score is on Marketing Effort (4.54) although this score is not low at all relative to other players in the field.
4. In terms of trend, our best improvements are on Brand Equity (from 3.21 in 2007 to 4.93 this time) and Marketing Effort (from 3.71 to 4.54).  In reality, Compucon did put in extra efforts on these 2 areas over the year.
5. Pricing is a contentious area. We have improved slightly over the years but not linearly (from 4.30 in 2007 to 4.72 this time).  We are conscious of the needs to be price competitive. 

Specific Individual Remarks for Our Improvements:

Marcus: I prefer a bigger system build fee to incorporating engineering & testing charge in RAM and SSD prices etc.  Complete server packages pricing inclusive of drives and OS for a range of number of seats would be good.  (Response: Yes we will work on both issues in the New Year when our minds are clearer!)

Ratan: Keep on doing what you are doing.  What you are doing is very good compared to other players in the field. (Response: This is the sort of feedback we would like to get so that we know we are on the right track.  Thank you Sir.)

Kevin: There is a big shift towards notebooks and tablet computing which would be nice to have Compucon playing in this market space. (Response: Compucon is in business and infrastructure spaces and we do not wish to enter the consumer device space for reasons given in the Tech Briefing session.)

Several Peers provided very complimentary and supportive remarks on the appraisal form. Thank you Sirs

Nikola Tesla invented Alternating Current and his invention allowed electricity to be transmitted over a long distance with reduced loss.  The reach of more users encouraged electricity to be generated on a bigger scale to achieve better economies.  We have ended up with power stations, transmission and distribution networks, and electricity consumers.   Proponents for cloud computing suggested that information heads in the same direction and the Internet is the transmission and distribution network of the information age.

Similar to electrical appliances, we will just have information devices like smart phones and tablets.  Instead of having our own servers and desktops, we will let our team members bring their own device and communicate with the clouds (data centres in dynamic locations). 

This view is too good to be true.  Is information like electricity which is a single well defined entity?  An organisation uses electricity for air conditioning and various machines without discerning where the electricity was generated or how it was transmitted.   Can we use data generated from anywhere for our own operation?  Yes and no and it depends on who we are.  Yes for consumers and no for producers.

The SKA Telescope (see a separate article under Outside the Square) will generate 10 times the amount of global Internet traffic in 2019 and 100 times in 2024.  It is going to make the Internet a dwarf as far as traffic is concerned.

In the meantime, we are hearing developments in smart metering and smart cities not to mention smart dust in warzones.  These developments will give us many more information systems that have their own network. 

More and more vehicles on the road are fitted with GPS navigation device.  Do we believe that GPS satellites are capable of collecting data from vehicles quietly in the background?  The vast amount of information they collect can be used for many purposes such as determining if a highway has got traffic jam or the distribution of traffic in a city at any one time.  These satellites are clearly another network different to the Internet.

To relate SKA, Smart Cities, and GPS satellites to the Internet, we are seeing the road transportation system as a better analogy than electricity utility model for the information age.  Let us call SKA and Smart Cities to be production or infrastructure communities.  We will then have consumers on one hand and production or infrastructure communities on the other hand and the Internet is a highway network joining them together.

Cloud computing and BYOD are therefore part of the story even if they go further ahead.

END

SKA stands for Square Kilometre Array.  SKA Telescope is an international project to build and operate the largest telescope in the history of mankind by the first half of the 21st century.  The scheduled commissioning date is 2019 for the first phase and 2024 for full scale operation.  The telescope will improve our present discovery capability by as many as 10 thousand times.

There are at least 5 objectives defined for this telescope.   The most interesting to the broad public is the search for planets in the galaxy similar to Earth and to find out if life exists elsewhere in the universe.  The next one of immense interest to the science community is the origin of cosmic magnetism.  The other 3 objectives are about black and darkness- black holes, dark matters, and dark ages. 

This telescope is not optical based but is radio.  The optical range is at the middle of the electromagnetic spectrum whereas the radio range is at the bottom end.  The telescope will have 3 types of antennae and they will pick up radio signals from the sky in 3 ranges: 70MHz to 300MHz, 300MHz to 3GHz, and 650MHz to 1.7GHz (edited 2013-05-17).  Radio actually sees more than optical such as the forces interacting between galaxies. 

These receivers are not single receivers but are groups of small receivers.  They will be built in locations arranged in a log-spiral pattern (see slide 1).  Collectively they will have an equivalent mirror size of one square kilometre.  The separation distance between the receivers is called baseline.  The baseline arrangement which is better known as Interferometry allows the telescope to peek deeper into the universe.  This telescope can see as narrow as a few micro arc-seconds.  Optical has achieved milli-arc-seconds only.

The SKA Organisation decided in May 2012 to build 50% of the receivers in South Africa and 50% in West Australia based on design studies and pilot runs among many other factors.  New Zealand is a founding member of the Organisation.  On the science side as against funding and administration, Professor Sergei Gulyaev has been a prominent radio astronomer in New Zealand and the chairperson of New Zealand SKA Organisation since 2004.  Professor is the director of AUT Institute of Radio Astronomy and Science Research which owns a radio telescope in Warkworth (see slide 2).

December 2012 is the month for the SKA Organisation to review international bids to participate in the design process.  Selected bids will be announced through Ministry of Business Innovation & Employment as far as New Zealand is concerned at the end of January 2013.

There are 12 design packages.  Our leading New Zealand bid has proposed participation in 3 of them being Central Signal Processing, Science Data Processing, and Telescope Management.  The bidding team consists largely of scientists from New Zealand universities.  It also consists of a few industry members including Compucon New Zealand.   The proposed role for Compucon in this international design project is high performance computing and heterogeneous computing.

Some fun info on SKA (see slide 3) can be found in http://www.skatelescope.org/media-outreach/fun-stuff/facts-figures/