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Photos: The 2015 iTnews Benchmark Awards

The best of the best are crowned at the CIO Strategy Summit.

on Feb 12 2015 1:34PM

The iTnews Benchmark Awards celebrate the creative and clever solutions of Australia's finest IT leaders. iTnews last night held its third annual awards at a Gala Dinner adjoining the CIO Strategy Summit at Melbourne's Grand Hyatt.

iTnews interviews the finalists for the Benchmark Awards to learn more about the projects they were nominated for and the challenges that came along with them. Paul Keen of Dick Smith, Tennis Australia's Samir Mahir and Carsales CIO Ajay Bhatia were named finalists in the retail category for their impressive efforts to transform their respective organisations.

Sendur Kathir from Melbourne University and Mitra Bhar from the NSW Board of Studies were nominated for the NeCTAR research cloud and MarkManager respectively.

Deakin University chief digital officer William Confalonieri managed to score a nomination for a second year in a row (following his CIO of the Year win in 2014). This year he was recognised for his Deakin Anywhere collaboration and mobility project.

The Utilities/Media finalists (LtoR): Paul McManus, Domain; Vincent Dempsey, Vodafone; and Kelly Ferguson, Mi9.

The banking and finance finalists.

Trevor Barrenger from WorkCover Queensland scored a nod for his Worker Assist app; Simon Andrews was rewarded for his efforts in the Zero Touch program for ING Direct; and Dave Chapman's work to implement a single customer view repository got him and Teachers Mutual Bank a spot in the finalist list.

Pedro Harris' efforts to provide the NSW government cloud-like agility without lock-in, and Maria Milosavljevic's work to help the Crime Commission extract value from data more efficiently, assured them a spot as finalists in the government category.

Fellow government finalist Gary Sterrenberg discusses myGov, the Department of Human Service's authentication service that gives citizens a single entry point into their dealings with government.

Healthcare finalists Dmitri Mirvis of Mercy Health and Peter O'Halloran from the National Blood Authority discuss the challenges of ehealth adoption.

SITA CIO Michael Salas was named a finalist in the industrial category for his work on NextGen- a massive core systems overhaul that will set SITA up for years to come.

Rio Tinto is the data analytics and technology leader in its field. The miner's head of automation Ben Rogers was nominated for his work on RTVis, a 3D real-time visualisation tool which has allowed the company to unearth previously undiscoverable high-quality iron ore.

And then there were the winners.

Carsales' efforts to build its own search engine when it was unable to find one suitable third party product earned CIO Ajay Bhatia the title of Retail CIO of the Year.

Simon Andrews' ambitious virtualisation project, Zero Touch, saw him rise to the top of the finance category.

Researchers all over Australia have Melbourne University's Sendur Kathir to thank for NeCTAR, a research cloud that pools together 25,000 cores of power for researchers to crunch models and calculations. His efforts scored him Education CIO of the Year.

Any opportunity to gain a leg up in the struggling mining and resources industry is seized upon, and Ben Rogers gave his company Rio Tinto an innovative and highly effective tool to make better use of its resources, reaping it significant dividends as a result. He won Industrial CIO of the Year for his work.

Interacting with government is rarely a smooth or easy experience, but Human Services CIO Gary Sterrenberg has worked to turn the tables around by building myGov, a single entry point for citizen interactions with government. While it may have experienced initial hiccups, the project is hard to rival in terms of scope, ambition and clear value for its users and operators. Sterrenberg is pictured accepting his award with ACS president Brenda Aynsley and iTnews editor Penny Wolf.

In the highly competitive and cut-throat media industry, Domain's Paul McManus stood out for his efforts to bring the business into a much faster delivery model through the use of DevOps and continuous delivery. Solid ROI has been delivered as a result, and he was awarded Utilities/Media CIO of the Year for his work.

The National Blood Authority's Peter O’Halloran spotted an opportunity to provide Australians suffering from bleeding disorders with greater visibility over their bleeds and treatments as well as improved interactions with their doctors. The tool is already being eyed off just several months after launch by other nations keen to buy the tech off the organisation. O'Halloran accepted his award last night for Healthcare CIO of the Year. He is pictured with iTnews journalist Paris Cowan.

The 2015 Benchmarks CIO of the Year award went to Simon Andrews for Zero Touch. The judges commended Andrews for his guts, determination and vision in propelling ING Direct to the front of the pack and setting the bank up for many years to come.

Pictured: Domain's Paul McManus and WorkCover Qld's Trevor Barrenger.

Pictured: Mi9's Kelly Ferguson.

Pictured: The Crime Commission's Maria Milosavljevic and Tijo John.

Pictured: Melbourne Health's Andrew Oldaker and Shane Lyell from Envisian.

Pictured: Chris Johnson from 20th Century Fox and Foxtel's David Marks.

Pictured: Deutsche Bank's Todd Nevin and Mercy Health's Dmitri Mirvis.

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