BROADBAND NETWORK

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:39): I rise today to recognise the achievements of a local business and advise members of the activities of this business, of which South Australians should be truly proud. It is a trailblazing organisation in the information technology realm. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, some time ago announced that Labor would build a $4.7 billion broadband network, up to 40 times faster than current speeds. Under the Labor plan 98 per cent of Australians would be connected to the internet at speeds of up to 40 times faster than they currently have available to them.

Family First strongly supports moves to improve Australia's broadband network. With the advent of ADSL 2+ South Australian businesses now have the ability to use the internet for far more than viewing web pages and sending email. The speed available to business users means that it is now feasible to run business software on the web—meaning that the code is run on one remote server rather than there being multiple copies of the same software on a number of computers.

One South Australian company that is now leading the world in this field is nuSoftware, a company that has been trading in Adelaide since 1992 as database specialists, headed by its CEO Steven Copley, the company's founder. Initially the company managed databases for a large variety of clients, mainly using Microsoft tools, until the 2003 release of its own product, nuBuilder, which has been developed using Open Source products such as PHP and SQL. nuBuilder works in the same way as many traditional database applications except that it runs completely online.

This innovative and world-leading software platform has now been adopted by a large number of companies, including Linfox, All Transport, National Recoveries and Leveda. This South Australian company is now competing with companies worldwide (including Microsoft), and will be highlighted in the next edition of the in-business Insight magazine.

It is a fact that, looking into the future, the PC or laptop will become less of a data storage unit (as it is currently), and more of an access point to the information superhighway, where all the data will be held, and there are many advantages to this model. First, business software that is written to run in a web browser needs nothing to be installed on the computer using it; the user simply starts up their web browser and goes to the web address at which the software resides, just as in the same way a user would go to a webpage.

In a business with a dozen or more computers needing to run the same software this can reduce IT management, as well as software licensing costs, quite substantially. Other users can now easily be given access, and even customers can receive access to their own orders, view reports, and so forth. With access by customers to these functions a lot of time-consuming tasks can be automated to the point where eventually two businesses' computer systems can communicate with each other, so that tedious stock counting and reordering can be automated. This is known in the information technology world as B2B, or the emerging 'business to business' model.

Finally, the responsibility for backing up this important data belongs to the company that hosts the software on their web server, providing security from the loss of information. In the case of fire or burglary there is no loss of sensitive information because all the data resides off-site along with the backups.

I believe in applauding companies that contribute to the so-called 'Brilliant Blend' of innovation in this state, and I encourage members to learn more about this South Australian success story in the next edition of in-business magazine. This truly is world-leading software which many members may not be aware is happening right here in South Australia, but which will have a substantial impact on information technology right around the world.