As seen in The Rust Report, July 2 2004
By Len Rust - RustOz@bigpond.com.au
Going International
MANY AUSTRALIAN software companies are attempting to expand their
markets by "going international". But doing business abroad is
more complex, difficult, and risky than domestic business and there is a
high possibility of failure, problems in finding suitable partners,
limited resources, and operational problems.
Despite that, five of the Aussie players that are succeeding at the
international game are:
GMB, which has been providing information management solutions to
thousands of sites around the world for more than 20 years. The company
is still headquartered in Sydney but its CEO, Frank McKenna, has resided
in the US for a few years. Recently GMB released its E-mail Management
and Archiving software worldwide.
Also with headquarters in Sydney, IDS Enterprise Systems is a creator
of systems for the automotive and durable goods industries. IDS has
partnered with many of the Fortune 500 companies to implement software
solutions around the world, supported by an international network of
business partners and IDS offices.
Eurofield Information Solutions (EIS) recently signed contracts with
both the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) in New York and
the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in London. Alf
Papallo, founder and MD of EIS recently commented: Never before has data
integrity been more crucial in the company reporting arena with
Australia now participating actively in the global uniformity of the
accounting standards scheduled for 2005.
LANSA was founded in back 1987 with an original goal of producing
solutions that take the pain out of software development and
maintenance. Today it has more than 250 Employees worldwide supporting
some 6500 customers in more than 67 countries and more than 300 business
partners. Its been commented that, pound for pound, LANSA.S published
list of customer references are the best there are around the world.
Also counting Fortune 500 companies as customers and industry
stalwarts as business partners is Integrated Research (IR), which has
offices in the US, Europe, and Australia, and a distributed network
spanning 60 countries worldwide. IR was founded by Steve Killelea above
a chicken shop in Neutral Bay in 1988 to fill a niche in the high-end
systems management market where real time availability and performance
is paramount.
These are just five Aussie vendors among many willing to make the
trek. Although there will be more consolidation of technology vendors
over the next few years, the spirit of innovation from Aussie companies
like these will continue in some new technology or market niche that
will bring new local vendors into the world limelight.
