Leading Agricultural site awards gen-i contract

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Leading Agricultural site awards gen-i preferred
systems management and support contract

AUCKLAND – June 26, 2001 – Internet Integrator, gen-i limited, today announced it has signed a contract for systems management and support for leading New Zealand agricultural site, Fencepost.com.

The agreement, which commences this month, includes the service management of Fencepost’s production system of 14 servers which is telehoused by JADE's system management service, JADE Direct, in Christchurch. gen-i’s monitoring equipment will be based in Auckland.

gen-i, working alongside JADE Direct, will provide on-going support of Fencepost’s IT infrastructure. This includes the co-ordinated management of all service providers, increasing systems uptime, continual monitoring of all servers and a project objective of reducing internal costs.

“Fencepost is a rapidly growing site in an industry that is increasingly using new technology,” said Fencepost Chief Operating Officer, Alison Andrew. “We face the double challenge of serving our farmer customers today, and future-proofing ourselves.”

“gen-i is able to give us increased functionality now and provide a platform for managing our growth. This gives us the ability to co-ordinate multiple suppliers and have greater flexibility in terms of day-to-day capabilities,” she said.

gen-i has provided Web Development for Fencepost since November 2000 and the latest contract complements the work already done.

“We are pleased that Fencepost has awarded us this systems management and support contract,” says gen-i Project Spokesman, Blake Kingston. “Fencepost uses JADE Direct to telehouse its production systems (plus monitor the application servers), thus a long-standing relationship with JADE made it efficient for the two companies to partner in this project. The fit is ideal as a means of catering for future enhancements and business changes.”

“gen-i will work closely with Fencepost to continually enhance the IT infrastructure, as it expands in the high growth agricultural sector,” adds Blake Kingston.

“With their JADE expertise and systems integration capabilities, gen-i will bring a lot to the management of the sophisticated infrastructure behind Fencepost.com,” said JADE Direct’s General Manager, Alistair Peat.

It is expected that the project will be completed by August 1.

The Fencepost site, targeted at New Zealand farmers, contains daily weather forecasts, market prices information and reports, industry news, expert farming advice and online discussion groups.

gen-i recently completed a project to give the New Zealand Dairy Board (NZDB) global staff access to detailed business and scientific information. The systems solution was designed to resolve the diverse requirements of NZDB’s business units, research information for scientists and industry, and market and economic information for the strategy-setting marketing staff.

gen-i is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cullen Investments Limited. gen-i's blue chip clients include Air New Zealand Ansett, Department of Corrections, Department of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, National Australia Bank, New Zealand Dairy Board, Simpson Grierson and WestpacTrust.

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About gen-i

gen-i limited is the first and largest New Zealand-based e-business Internet integrator, focussing on designing, building, implementing and supporting e-business solutions and systems for large corporate customers. With over 400 people at offices in major centres in New Zealand, gen-i extends customer support worldwide – both online and through a network of service partners.

gen-i has four major areas of focus and expertise: Infrastructure, Ventures, fieldForce and Procurement. gen-i Infrastructure is geared to providing and supporting all the hardware, software and networks required for today’s e-business – and to achieve that in a number of new ways. gen-i Ventures is an Internet innovation operation geared to providing knowledge and experience in building e-commerce sites, Intranets, extranets and implementing and supporting a wide range of e-business & traditional applications. gen-i Field Force is New Zealand’s leading technology engineering onsite capability, expertly trained and ready to deploy or maintain the country’s leading technology networks. gen-i Procurement provides a fast, easy and cost-effective way to select, purchase, install and maintain office technologies.

Prior to its name change in 2000, gen-i traded successfully for more than 20 years as Wang New Zealand.

About Fencepost
Fencepost is NZ’s number one agricultural portal, and part of New Zealand's continuing tradition of agricultural innovation. It uses the Internet to give New Zealand farmers and growers the tools and information they need to manage their farms and crops, solve their problems and continue to lead the rest of the world in agricultural quality and efficiency.
These tools and information include such things as highly accurate weather forecasting, Market Prices information and reports, Industry News, Expert Farming advice and online discussion groups and expert, unbiased farm management programmes and farming tools (Pasture Planner, Fertiliser Wizard, the Live.ex livestock exchange and the Cull Cow and Bull Price Calculators).

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