Jason Oakley : The life of an Aussie geek!

From SMH:

EDS jobs go as Optus switches
OPTUS has cut its outsourcing arrangement with EDS, which ditched contract staff working on the account last week. The move comes as the telco prepares a new billing and customer care platform.

The US services giant last week laid off 16 contract workers it had working full time on the Optus account.

A number of full-time EDS staff are believed to have been let go as well.

The cuts were the first of several that would result in a 35 per cent trim of EDS staff on the Optus account, sources said.

The staff are believed to have been developing billing capabilities for the Optus third-generation network, which offers a wide range of data and video applications.

EDS is contracted to run GSMIS, Optus’s ageing mobile billing system.

However, the telco is planning to move its mobile customers to Arbor, its revamped fixed-line billing system.

The technology services arm of SingTel, Optus’s parent company, has been running Arbor since taking charge of the Optus data centres from Hewlett-Packard last year.

"It was a finite piece of work," Optus spokeswoman Luisa Ford said yesterday.

"We have a good working relationship with EDS, and have no immediate plans to disengage their services."

EDS spokeswoman Julie Hines said: "We provide IT services to Optus for the support and management of parts of its billing systems.

"It includes systems integration activities such as project and program management services, business analysis, and testing. We have 100-plus people engaged to deliver these services. This number fluctuates as we continually align our resources to suit business needs.

"In providing services to Optus, we review the need for contractors regularly.

"For this reason, the number of contractors varies on an ongoing basis – upwards and downwards."

The news casts more uncertainty over EDS’s Australian operations.

The group is believed to have lost a $250 million a year deal to manage and operate Telstra data centres to IBM.

EDS is in talks with the Commonwealth Bank over the future of a 10-year relationship.

In the past year, EDS’s local staff numbers have shrunk from 6309 to 6175, Ms Hines said.

The Optus mobile billing system, GSMIS, is something of a dinosaur.

It was developed for the now-defunct analogue AMPS network operated by Telstra.

Last year Optus made a major upgrade to its fixed-line billing platform, Arbor, which is provided by Comverse.

The company plans to move its mobile billing to the new software as part of a $500 million billing and customer overhaul.

Well, it looks like Symbian has gone off on a tour of Australia or something. I guess life stuck inside the house by yourself is too boring.

I’ve had him locked in the house daily as I read in the paper that the council gets aggro if your cat gets off your property. He always met me at the door when I got home, whether he was in the house all day or if he was outside. I didn’t let him outside but all I can guess is he may have snuck out when I put the garbage out yesterday morning. I walked around the house calling him and looked in every room and cupboard in the house.

That’s the last of them. Now everyone has left and it’s just me. A pity. I just bought a big bag of kitty litter and some new tins of catfood. I actually bought some more expensive catfood for a treat, but looks like he might not get to try it out. Hope you found somewhere better to live, Symbian.