Reaching New Frontiers through Smart Technology and Managed Services

It is estimated that reducing the cycle time taken for a mining truck to complete a load-haul-dump process by one minute could help to deliver more than $50 million Australian dollars in annual profit.

Enabling Scale and Flexibility through Services

The flexibility of ‘as-a-service’ models enables any organisation to keepup with the rapid pace of technology change and extend the capabilities and capacity of their operations and people. Importantly, investing in service-based technologies also helps organisations to remain agile and flexible and to scale up or down their investments as circumstances change.

Similar trends are occurring in Australia’s emergency services sector where new challenges are driving the need for a broader mix of technologies. One clear example of this is seen with Victoria Police, an organisation that consumes a variety of services via a comprehensive technology platform. This includes a combination of mission-critical voice communications, data services and smart mobile apps.

Last October, Victoria Police announced another major managed service capability to provide advanced, real-time number plate scanning and in-car video technology to help reduce the state’s roadtoll. The cloud-based number plate recognition solution will enable police to rapidly scan through thousands of vehicle number plates to identify dangerous and unauthorised drivers in real-time, saving officers many hours in their daily work.

Guaranteeing Performance for Peace of Mind

For safety-exposed sectors including mining and public safety, reliable business performance isn’t just important— it’s non-negotiable.

Having delayed or failed communication for a paramedic en-route to an incident or when blasting is about to occur on a mine site can have disastrous and potentially fatal consequences.

Putting the operation and management of technology systems into the hands of experienced service providers enables emergency services and mining organisations to focus on their core mission—working productively while protecting communities and people. The same can be said for any sector sets stringent KPIs for operational productivity and employee safety; including transportation, manufacturing and utilities. Any service provider serving these industries should be prepared to make significant investments to meet and exceed its customers’ KPIs.

Achieving these service levels influenced our decision to provide a Network Operations Control Centre (NOCC) for our managed service customers. The 24/7 centre provides a communications backbone for the voice and data networks we operate and manage throughout Australia and the Asia Pacific region.

While constant availability and support via control centres is important, it is not the only factor needed to meet the performance levels expected of “mission-critical” customers.

To succeed in delivering managed services to these industries, technology vendors also require highly skilled and trained teams, best-in-class standards, frameworks, and industry-leading tools to monitor and maintain performance.

Any organisation looking to outsource its technology needs to a service provider must satisfy itself that the contract will achieve its desired outcome while transferring risk to the service provider in clear and measurable ways.

Embarking on a new era of cloud-based innovation

As we look to the future, Australian organisations will be able to take advantage of a variety of new tools and digital services to remain competitive, increase operational efficiency, and protect people and communities.

Service-based consumption models will enable companies to take advantage of a variety of new and emerging data sources—from harnessing the power of the Industrial Internet of things to applying sophisticated analytics tools and beyond.For organisations wanting overcome the challenge of limited field resources and more complex, the advantages of managed services has never been clearer.