EPiSERVER >>

I S S U E F O U R T E E N

>> HOT NEWS:

>> T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E

Standing still isn’t an option

TechEd

At Intergen, August is all about the ever-popular TechEd - Microsoft’s annual forumfor developers. Intergen brings a splash ofyellow to the event each year, as a supportingsponsor, sponsor of the Hands on Labs andas an exhibitor, with staff members not soincognito in their yellow attire. To find outmore or to register for 2008, watchwww.microsoft.co.nz/teched07for updates.

EPiServer founder visitsNew Zealand

Michael Runhem, Swedish founder ofEPiServer, Europe’s leading contentmanagement product, is coming toNew Zealand in late August. Intergen willbe hosting events for existing customersand those who would like to know moreabout EPiServer. To register your interest,email waynef@intergen.co.nz

INTERGENITE NEWS >>

DEVELOPMENT& INTEGRATION >>

LOCAL GOVERNMENT >>

NEW TECHNOLOGY >>

INTERACTIVE DESIGN >>

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Intergen is very proud to have experienced continuedgrowth. We now have 160 staff between our fouroffices in New Zealand and one in Australia, butwhat’s behind the growth is more important.This planned growth is necessary in order for us to proactively keep up with demand

and continue to offer our clients the depth of expertise and skill that they have come

to expect of us.

Clients are increasingly demanding our core services but, as expectations of technology

increase, the breadth of services we offer has expanded to reflect and meet these demands.

With the broadening of Microsoft’s solution set, we are expanding the solutions we offer.

We have recently added capability in the business-oriented Microsoft solutions such as

Dynamics CRM and Dynamics NAV. We are also adding

more consulting capability to meet the demands that

Microsoft SharePoint is generating in areas such as

Document Management, Content Management,

Workflow, Business Intelligence and Enterprise Search.

The skills required to implement Microsoft Solutions

are becoming increasingly specialised, while the

demand for them is becoming increasingly

widespread. Having achieved the scale we have is

a very important factor in our ability to continue

to rapidly add new capability and services around the expanding solution set. We are

also investing heavily in future technologies such as Silverlight.

We have been very busy with Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementations this year,

including a very large project for an organisation with more than 400 users. We have

recently achieved Microsoft Gold Certification in the CRM competency and have more

than 15 staff with Microsoft CRM implementation experience.

In the last issue of SMARTS we introduced a significant product development we are

investing in. ActionThis has now been established as a separate company with two

members of the Intergen leadership team leading the business. Ed Robinson is Chief

Executive Officer and Derek Watson is Chief Technology Officer. They are joined by

Tim Howell, Chief Marketing Officer, formerly of Quest Software.

ActionThis is an exciting new productivity tool that leverages the Software plus Services

model (S+S), combining the familiarity of Outlook with a hosted service that helps people

and organisations to work more effectively together to ‘get stuff done and go home early’.

Learn more at www.actionthis.com.

Intergen will be both a reseller of the ActionThis product and

also a significant supplier of development and other services.

Our involvement with the development of ActionThis has

allowed many of the team to develop real experience with

Web 2.0 techniques that will flow through and benefit

our clients. We are very much looking forward to

continuing to assist an international software company

in taking New Zealand innovation to the world.

Intergen directors Paddy Payne, Wayne Forgesson,Tony Stewart and Chris Auld.

DEVELOPMENT& INTEGRATION >>

tony.stewart@intergen.co.nz

< Copyright 2007 Intergen Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission of Intergen Limited >

It has been a little over two years since Intergen introduced EPiServer to the

Australasian marketplaces, yet it seems just like yesterday. Any risks associated

with a foray into the Southern Hemisphere by a Swedish based organisation

were soon put to the sword. As we predicted, EPiServer is an ideal solution for

Australasian organisations and we have proved that with a number of successful

EPiServer implementations, including: Turners & Growers, Rembrandt Suits, IAG,

AMP, Tertiary Education Commission, AMI, Ngai Tahu, Department of

Conservation, Northland Regional Council, Whakatane District

Council, Hutt City Council, Association of Surfing Professionals

and Ministry of Research Science and Technology.

In addition to these local successes, the EPiServer product

continues to go from strength to strength, having recently

exceeded 2000 installed solutions around the world. The soon

to be released EPiServer CMS version will include a number

of key improvements including an upgrade to .NET 3.

This significant release will enable organisations to gain benefits

from several key features, including the Windows Workflow

Foundation. This will make it possible for developers to add

custom workflows in Visual Studio. EPiServer CMS will ship

with four custom workflows: Sequential Workflow, Parallel

Workflow, Translation Workflow and Request Feedback.

These will be able to be used as is or be modified.

Intergen is planning a local release of EPiServer CMS, so keep

an eye out for this event.

We have also launched an online local user community for EPiServer customers

in New Zealand and Australia to enable knowledge and information sharing.

For more information on the latest EPiServer news and offerings, email Wayne

Forgesson at waynef@intergen.co.nz

EDGY EPiSERVER SITE WORKS FOR MODERN APPRENTICESHIPS

The Modern Apprenticeships programme enables young New Zealanders to gain

nationally recognised industry qualifications while they work. It’s about putting

the talent of a new generation to work, and over 9400 modern apprentices are

currently in training in over 32 industries, ranging from building to engineering.

For many, the first step has been through information spotted on

www.modernapprenticeships.co.nz, created under the umbrella of the Tertiary

Education Commission.

The existing Modern Apprenticeships website was out of date

and it was difficult to update content. There was no multi-lingual

capacity to suit its audience, 16 to 24 year olds and potential

employers, and it lacked imagery that would give it a motivational

edge. It needed a voice that would create action and it needed

to be user friendly and engaging.

TEC engaged Intergen to implement EPiServer as a consistent

platform that would not only meet this challenge but also provide

a platform to improve the timeliness and format of their own

TEC website in due course.

TEC’s Web Team Leader, Kate Clode, highlights the reasons for

deciding on EPiServer:

“EPiServer was able to give us more freedom to manage content

when and where we liked on the site. The ability to forward

publish content has become a major time saving tool and, likewise,

expired content is now taken care of efficiently. Our publishers

are more hands on, with all the control they need, compared to the technical

challenges that faced them before when they wanted to manipulate content. To

sum up how far we’ve come, I feel we’ve gained 100% control.”

The end result is funky, youthful and appealing, and the site was turned around

in a matter of weeks – on time and on budget.

>> INTERGENITE:

< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E F O U R T E E N >>> E P i S E R V E R>>2

Andrew Watson

What do you do?I’m the new guy in Business Developmentin Wellington. I joined in May after eightyears at Microsoft, where I was also anAccount Manager.

How do you make a difference?I help to ensure that my clients’ satisfactionwith Intergen remains high and that wecontinue to be more and more valuedby them.

What do you love about your job?Everything about my job is client-focused,so it is always very ‘real’. It is great workingwith all the different people withinIntergen as we work to satisfy our clients.

A bit about yourselfI am a proud Wellingtonian and live inKhandallah. I am very active with juniorfootball and cricket as an administratorand coach. I am also a keen player…tennis, squash, football and skiing. Thefootball team I play for is the FabulousTurtles (www.soccer.net.nz). We have beengoing strong for 26 years, and counting!I am married to Fiona and our twoteenaged sons are James and Michael.

EPiServer update EPiServer in action

Phillip Newport, the 300th Modern Apprentice

As those of you who are familiar with the Intergenway might know, we’re not ones for sitting backand watching the days go by.

It’s been another action-packed year so far, and hard to believe that we’re two

thirds of the way through it already. Before the year has gone completely, we

thought we should share with you some of the Intergen activities that have been

keeping us busy over the last couple of months. It goes without saying that there’s

always plenty happening on the work front, but we thought we’d let you in on

some of the extra-curricular fun and games that have been taking place – along

with some interesting developments on the work front, too. Never a dull moment…

Back in May we took the GOVIS conference by storm. There was no mistaking

the Intergen mob in their bright yellow cammo pants and bandannas. In fact,

the cammo pants have taken off here at Intergen and have become the official

costume for our excursions out into the world. In May our HR team also hit

universities around the country (dressed in cammos, of course) to attract upcoming

graduates to apply for the 2008 Intergen graduate programme. The yellow

crusaders made such a splash that they even made it to the pages of the

Dominion Post and the New Zealand Herald. All the signs are looking positive

for a strong graduate intake next year. And August is the month for TechEd,

where every year Intergen is out in force in all its yellow glory.

The word on everyone’s lips at Intergen at the moment is Silverlight. See page

7 for more details.

You may be aware that the Wellington office moved premises at the beginning

of this year– literally right across the road from our old offices. We’ve settled in

nicely and had a ‘crossing the road’ house warming party to celebrate the

successful transition. Lots of yellow, but no chickens…

Intergen’s Twilight series for 2007 has been an extremely busy and popular one,

with several venue changes required due to numbers. Topics this year have

included Usability, Mobile Business Solutions, Web 2.0, Search Engine Marketing,

Agile Methodology, Business Intelligence, CRM and ECM. To find out more about

upcoming Twilights, visit www.intergen.co.nz/twilights

If you want to know more about what is topical in the Intergen

realms, or on the technology front in general, we’ve started up

an Intergen blog in order to share our thoughts and create

dialogue and debate around some salient subjects that are

particularly relevant to us here at Intergen, and to the ICT

sector at large. Visit www.intergen.co.nz/blog to see what

we’ve been talking about lately.

< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E F O U R T E E N > >>3>> I N T E R G E N I T E N E W S

Intergen out and about

Intergen graduaterecruitment in action

A Twilight seminar

Wellington’s office warming party

< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E F O U R T E E N >>> D E V E L O P M E N T A N D I N T E G R A T I O N>>4

More householders than ever are eligible for a rates rebate as a result of theGovernment increasing the rates rebate threshold from $7,400 to $20,000on 1 July 2006.

Rates Rebates applications gothrough the roof

The Rates Rebates system (RRS) consists of anumber of application and system interfaces thatcommunicate with a central transactional databaseto enable the completion of the business processesgoverning rates rebates claims.

The core business logic of the system is exposed by a web services layer to provide

a business level abstraction of these processes and to enable Councils themselves

to integrate directly from their existing rebates systems.

All user interfaces are web-based applications built upon ASP.NET 2.0, and adhere

to the Government Web Guidelines for accessibility. The user experience is highly

customised around the completion of the Council rebate claim and DIA claims

management process, making the interface simple and intuitive to use for a

diverse user audience completing a complex workflow. An implementation of the

model view presenter (MVP) design pattern provides a separation of concerns

between the user interface and the business domain.

The connection with the web services layer is through an ASMX web service

facade that uses the Web Service Contract First (WSCF) code generation tool.

WSCF provides a robust approach for defining and sharing schema between client

and service, and accelerates the development of web services where contract has

been defined ahead of a concrete implementation, as was done in the case of

the RRS. Controlling access to these web services is a Security Token Service (STS)

that signs, issues and verifies tokens that the systems integrating with the services

present when calling a particular business operation.

All code is written in C# 2.0, with the greatest volume of code existing within a

class library that encapsulates a model of the business domain. The web services

layer in turn orchestrates these business objects to perform the major functions

Under the hood: DIA Rates R

Treasury forecasted a 40% increase in

applications for the $500 rates rebate

from local Councils. The realisation hit

home that the existing paper-based

application system using Microsoft

Access would not be equal to the task.

The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA)

began looking for a partner to

implement a Council-facing electronic

management system that could deliver

on many fronts – efficiency in data capture and processing, data integrity,

detailed reporting and analysis, and also prove to be simple and intuitive for

over 73 councils with varying degrees of exposure to IT systems.

Building a workflow system that would draw approval from many different

councils with varying levels of IT readiness (many with their own rates rebate

systems, others still paper-based) meant that it needed to be highly usable. This

proved to be the case, being robust, reliable and flexible. Councils and territorial

authorities are fully informed and have a process that can cope with extreme

peak volumes with no increase in staffing requirements.

The feedback from council staff around the country

has been positive. After six weeks in operation

60,000 applications totalling $17 million were

processed. The system is continuing to keep pace,

with councils receiving reimbursement within a

week, compared to several weeks in the past.

There is now complete visibility throughout,

validation is easier, and this new information

process ensures better forecasting, clearer analysis

and means less potential for fraudulent claims.

>> INTERGENITE:

>> D E V E L O P M E N T A N D I N T E G R A T I O N < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E F O U R T E E N > >>5

Lee Herd

What do you do?I am a senior developer, team lead andcounsellor in the Intergen Developmentand Integration Team.

How do you make a difference?I bring an outrageous sense of humourto work. To me having fun is the mostimportant aspect of the work place, havingfun while taking pride in your work andgetting the job done.

What do you love about your job?The people. We have a good bunch ofpeople at Intergen and they put up withmy theatrics. Of course I enjoy the problemsolving and the team leadership aspectsas well, but at the end of the day it is thefun I have with my peers that keeps mecoming back.

A bit about yourselfI graduated from Victoria University in1994 and have worked in IT ever since,including stints in Sydney, Texas andLondon. I married my lovely wife Kirstenin Rome two years ago and we had Tessalast October. I enjoy travelling, sport, theodd game of poker and putting hammerto nail. Plans for the future includereducing my golf handicap, continuing tobe a valuable member of the Intergenteam and trying to add more than justHush Little Baby to my guitar repertoire.

of the system. Since the administration application is internally accessible only

to a small group of users and there is no desire to expose these functions in any

other way, it is built directly over the business domain rather than operating

through a web services interface.

All data is stored in a SQL Server 2005 relational database that is highly normalised

to cope with the volume of transactions that occur in the system. Interaction with

this database is through a data gateway pattern that leverages the Microsoft

Enterprise Library Data Access block, and audits the key business actions that

take place. Status summary information is derived from this database in real-time

for users managing the rebate claims process, but a completely separate data

mart provides the source of most reporting information. This data mart is built

using an ETL process in SQL Integration Services that de-normalises the data and

presents it in a structure that users may more readily understand for reporting

purposes. SQL Reporting Services is used to build canned operational reports that

users may view at any time, and power users may build ad-hoc reports over the

data mart using the SQL Report Builder tool.

The Rates Rebates System also communicates with the Finance system through

an integration agent that ships data via an internal FTP drop location. The EDI

files exported from the Finance system are reconciled with the financial model

that sits at the heart of the rebates system, and in turn new rebate claims that

are to be paid are pushed to the Finance system.

The Enterprise Library application blocks were leveraged throughout the solution

to provide robust exception handling, logging and data caching.

The project was delivered by the team using an agile development methodology

over three iterations, and, despite a reasonable amount of technical and logistical

complexity, was delivered on time and on budget in the very tight timeframe that

was required.

derek.watson@intergen.co.nz

ebate system

COUNCILWEBSITE

STAFFWEBSITE

ADMINAPP

REPORTINGPORTAL

WEB SERVICES INTERFACE

BUSINESS LOGICFINANCE

INTEGRATION AGENTSQL REPORTING

SERVICES

DATA GATEWAY ENTE

RPRI

SELI

BRA

RY

DIA USERSCOUNCIL USERS

OLTPDATABASE

DATAMART

ETL

FTP DROPLOCATION

COUNCIL RATINGSYSTEMS

INTEGRATION

LOGICAL SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE

< S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E F O U R T E E N >>> L O C A L G O V E R N M E N T>>6

There is now a blueprint for the promotion of good managementpractices in Local Government through an online resource.

LGMA New South Wales launchesthe Good Practice Toolkit …

At its many levels, Government touches the

lives of us all in a variety of ways on a daily

basis. To most of us, the most visible and

active face of Government is our Local Council.

They provide a wide variety of services that

we have come to take for granted - from the

provision and upkeep of our local parks

through to the regular collection of rubbish,

and, in some areas, the provision of essential

services such as water and sewerage. For

many of us, these things happen

without us even thinking about them.

Your local Council, on the other

hand, faces the daily challenge

of planning and managing that

wide variety of services. Delivery is

people-driven and involves highly

visible community-based services.

Services which are on a daily basis

subject to regular, ongoing scrutiny. It

should therefore be no surprise that Councils

rate quality and customer-centric service

delivery highly and are constantly striving

to improve. However, Council services need

to be delivered within the context of tight

budgets and a complex web of legislation

and regulation.

The business of Council is a complex management challenge.

As an organisation established for the benefit of local government managers with

a goal of improving management practices, the Local Government Managers

Association (LGMA) NSW has undertaken and sponsored many initiatives to support

its members in their daily activities. With some 700 members in over 138 Councils

throughout NSW, LGMA faces the significant and ongoing challenge of reaching its

members and delivering relevant support to a varied and widely distributed community.

For some time, Local Government organisations have

recognised that the similarities in their business are far greater

than their differences. Sure, each has its local community and

culture which influences how it operates and sets its priorities.

But at the end of the day, in most respects, their

core business is very similar. It should be no surprise,

then, that Councils have a history of collaboration and

LGMA has played its part in facilitating that cooperation.

Not content with meeting the challenge through traditional

forums such as conferences and working groups alone, LGMA

was attracted to an online solution originally conceived and deployed

in New Zealand by the Society of Local Government Managers.

The internet offered a means to beat the tyranny of distance and to deliver a

solution that provided relevant and accessible real-time advice and guidance to

members. With the assistance of Business Analytics and Intergen, LGMA embarked

on a project to design, build and deploy an online toolkit to promote and support

good practices for its members. Positive results from Councils confirmed early on that

the uptake from Councils would be high and defined which business processes would

benefit most from such a tool.

An extensive collaborative design process was the next step in the exercise. Regular

feedback to the participating Councils and the broader community of Councils served

to both inform and refine the design and in November 2006 the site went live with

the first module, ‘Procurement’.

The solution is offered to Councils on a subscriber basis and is accessed directly by

Council staff from within their local intranets. A phased development and roll-out

was planned for the content of modules and by the end of June a further two modules,

‘Development Assessment’ and ‘Asset Management’, were deployed, with two further

modules, ‘Work Force Planning’ and ‘Information Management’, scheduled for the

second half of 2007. More modules will follow. There are now 80 subscribing councils.

Modules are designed for use by staff at the coal face. They provide an overview of

the major activities involved and support the drill down as required into progressively

lower levels of detail, covering work steps, interdependencies, legislative requirements,

anticipated timeframes, and providing sample outputs and hot tips from practitioners.

The future for the toolkit is one of ongoing evolution and refinement for the benefit

of subscribing members but also in the ongoing uptake from within New South Wales

and LGMA sister organisations in other states. The bar for what is good practice will

be continually lifted and, with that in mind, the toolkit has been designed with

flexibility and adaptability.

We’re off to a good start but the hard work doesn’t stop here.

If you’d like to know more about LG Good Practice Toolkit, visit the public area of

the site at www.lgtoolkit.com.au, or contact Martin Johnston in Intergen’s Sydney

office at +61 414 489000, email martinj@intergen.com.au

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,but I thought I’d bring just a little bit of Vegas backto share with my team and clients. I attended theMIX07 conference in Las Vegas, NV, in early May.

The key announcement for Microsoft for this event was their new

Silverlight platform. Silverlight is a cross-platform browser plug-in for

delivering rich interactive applications. It allows aspects of the new

Microsoft graphic presentation platform, Windows Presentation

Foundation, to be exposed to web users on both Windows and

Macintosh systems.

At Intergen we see this as an exciting opportunity to deliver

rich end user experiences through web applications.

Silverlight will allow us to deliver rich graphics, audio and even

video enhancing, not only for consumers but also business

focused applications. It is fast, easy to use and install and allows

seamless integration of graphics and effects into any existing

web application.

Intergen Hosting has over two years’ experience in streaming rich media

content and we are excited about leveraging our hosting capability to deliver

Silverlight content.

Over the months of May and June, Intergen ran a competition for our team to

build cool things with Silverlight. We’re speaking about some of the exciting

things we built and challenges we faced at sessions in Auckland and Queenstown

soon. If you’d like to know more about Silverlight, please email me at

chris.auld@intergen.co.nz

Leading the way for developers working on flexible business solutions, Intergen

recently completed two technical samples and a covering white paper for Microsoft’s

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), one of the four new technologies in .NET

3.0. These samples are published by Microsoft on their global site as training

materials for organisations around the world.

This technology allows IT systems that define their core business-logic

using workflow to be changed and migrated seamlessly using real-

world terms and clear process visualisations.

The first of our samples offers an integrated website solution

for a work approval process. Workflow drives this process

by structuring tasks for employees such as the worker seeking

approval and the manager that can provide the approval.

It allows these to be processed in sequence and as options

based on the results of previous workflow activity.

The second sample delves into a more complex business

environment with multiple workflow systems. A business rule-

oriented insurance policy and claim workflow system drives tasks

out to a people-oriented call centre management workflow system.

With Workflow included in SharePoint 2007 and the upcoming version of Biztalk,

it will integrate seamlessly with a large portion of the Microsoft business platform.

Having worked with Windows Workflow Foundation since well before it was

publicly announced, and as a key Microsoft partner in providing Workflow training,

Intergen is ideally suited to assisting our clients with their first ventures into this

exciting technology.

For more information please contact Intergen’s Workflow expert, Seth Veale.

seth.veale@intergen.co.nz

>> INTERGENITE:

>> N E W T E C H N O L O G Y < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E F O U R T E E N > >>7

Seth Veale

What do you do?I am a developer in the Dunedin office.I work on most of the technologies we usefrom .Net 1.1 through to 3.0 and providerudimentary requirements and plans forprojects that are refined and realised withthe rest of the team.

How do you make a difference?I identify problems, potential solutionsand alternative approaches in a formthat can be assessed and utilised byour development process. Inside thisprocess, I aim to create well designedimplementations and provide a touchof technical leadership.

What do you love about your job?The people, the location, the challenges.

A bit about meI came to Intergen having started myfull-time career with Kognition aftergraduating from Otago's computerscience course.

I might call myself an independent,irreverent idealist with an often conflictingaffinity for systems and form.

My personal interests are sports, gamesand entertaining media.

Intergen contributesto Windows WorkflowFoundation

The latest from Microsoft’sbag of tricks – Silverlight

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT INTERGEN:

Auckland: 09 966 3070Wellington: 04 472 2021Christchurch: 03 964 0017Dunedin 03 479 4099Sydney: 02 9904 0443

info@intergen.co.nzwww.intergen.co.nz

www.intergen.com.au

Hutt Valley takes the high groundEamon and Olmec have seen the birth of their latest creation with

www.huttvalleynz.com finally superseding its Hutt City predecessor and taking

in the tourist needs of the entire Hutt Valley. The new website is architected

around persona-based needs and presents a plethora of sites and activities for

tourists and locals alike as a direct complement and extension of the Positively

Wellington Tourism website. Based on our EPiServer CMS platform, the website

is a huge leap forward for Hutt City Council as well as their customers!

Usability-centred redesign for jobs.govtWe are proud to reveal that the State Services Commission jobs.govt redesign

launched in July. Not only has Sue revitalised the look and feel, but also solved

some recurring usability issues for job seekers visiting the website. Key elements

of the new design are the vivid photographs of real government employees that

are featured on the home page and in career profiles. Their genuine faces and

career stories humanise the website and add warmth and appeal to the job

search experience. By the time you read this, Prime Minister Helen Clark will

have launched the new site in person in late July! Check it out at www.jobs.govt.nz.

Taking it to the people - it’sa user-centred world!

>> I N T E R A C T I V E D E S I G N < S M A R T S - T H E I N T E L L I G E N T B U S I N E S S M A G A Z I N E . I S S U E F O U R T E E N >

It’s all go in the Interactive team with new faces bringing the head count up to

eight, spread from Auckland to Christchurch. Our national series of Web 2.0 and

User Experience Twilight seminars have finally drawn to a close with Eamon and

Trent Mankelow from Optimal Usability delivering the last one in Wellington.

Thank you to all who have attended this series of seminars; it’s been a fabulous

opportunity to meet you all in a non-project driven space and discuss the bigger

picture challenges and opportunities facing your businesses going forward. This

has been extremely encouraging and has probably given us as much food for

thought as we gave you!

Ramping it up for RoostWe’ve been working with Dunedin-based Roost to completely re-architect, re-

design and re-engineer their website at www.roost.co.nz. Roost wanted to position

themselves above a myriad of other competitors in the mortgage broking market

and cut through the clutter with a bold online statement and brand. The new

brand has effortlessly secured their position as one of New Zealand’s top two

providers. Now based on the MoST CMS product, the new site is a dramatic leap

forward too, blending their gutsy and fresh communication style with the online

demands of a rapidly growing customer base. We’re confident the Roost site sets

a new benchmark in the mortgage and insurance brokerage space in New Zealand,

reflecting the passionate essence of their brand and giving them real advantage

in meeting the increasing expectations of demanding customers like you ...or us!

Microsoft pushes into the design space

Microsoft has at long last realised its foray into the design tools space with the

release of their Expressions Studio suite, which enables creatives to effectively

operate in the space created by the development of the new presentation

technologies, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and its subset, Silverlight.

We welcome this competition in the Adobe dominated market (since the acquisition

of Macromedia) and hope these new tools gain acceptance. Whilst it’s still early

days, Dave and Sjef are already integrating the technologies into several projects

with encouraging results. More on that in the next issue!

New additions to the WellingtonInteractive line-up are Aaron Sinclair,

Dave Keyes and Sjef van Gaalen

To find out how Intergen’s User-CentredDesign approach can benefit your web

or application project, contact ourCreative Director Eamon O’Rourke at

eamono@intergen.co.nz

huttvalleynz.comjobs.govt.nzroost.co.nz