Several of our DOS clients in Victoria have already contacted us about the News Corp (HWT) automation requirements. Early we announced that we should have it completed by the end of the March, then after News Corp approves it hopefully we should be able to beta test it in some sites soon afterwards then we expect to roll it out between then and the end of June 2008. I am pleased to say we are on schedule.
The main problem we expect is with the roll out. The new system uses broadband. Nothing we can do about that as it is part of the requirements but unfortunately a lot of newsagents don't have broadband. Furthermore, some of those newsagents machines are really old. I don't know how we are going to get broadband going on a DOS machine. For those with old windows systems like 95 and 98, who can run broadband, I expect we are going to have trouble too. It is only with windows 2000 that we got a decent plug and play so I expect many of the newsagents systems are going to have to be updated or replaced. That alone will be causing problems.
Finally, over the years the DOS system has improved and changed dramatically for example in 2007 it went though 27 versions and 7 patches. Now many people will be jumping years in versions. They will need training just to do functions that they already use. For this reason now we are organizing user meetings and information sheets.
Overall we expect an eventful few months of work.
