TRULY UNMISSABLE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
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TRANSFORMING BILLBOARD DIGITISATION ACROSS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND WRITTEN BY
JOHN O’HANLON PRODUCED BY
MIKE SADR
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oOh!Media’s journey from on-premise legacy to cloud native has been achieved in a relatively short time thanks to committed leadership, agile implementation and skilful teamwork
O
ut of Home, or public space media as its practitioners are coming to call it, is attractive to advertisers because it gives
them access to a stable, growing cross section of the population. Only a recluse can fail to be aware 04
of the messages that sit on roadside billboards, retail centres, airports and bus shelters. Sit is the wrong word though – modern technology allows these messages to be dynamic, varied, attractive and immersive. Not surprisingly public space media advertising is growing faster than any other kind, and media dollars are steadily moving towards it and away from print, TV and even online. In a word, UNMISSABLE – oOh!media’s strapline says it all. The business was founded by Brendon Cook nearly 30 years ago in Sydney, where it still has its headquarters. He is still very actively at the helm as CEO of the leading public space media company in Australia and New Zealand, which employs over 800 people and has a market cap of more than A$1bn and revenues of $483mn in 2018. Cook has grown his company through a combination
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“ We decided that we would embark on the journey to build a next generation public space media platform and run it on AWS” 06
— Andy McQuarrie, CTO, oOh! Media
of acquisition (most recently the $570mn purchase of Commute by oOh!) and organic growth; however, he has increasingly placed his faith, and investment dollars, in the rapid digitisation of the industry. oOh!media is the biggest player in the ANZ Out of Home market, with 45,000 screens, around 20% of them digital, at 30,000 locations across Australia and New Zealand. The future of the sector lies firmly with digital assets, so from as early as 2012 the company set out to exploit this trend, however
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘OOH!’S MELBOURNE CBD DIGITAL COVERAGE’ 07 you can’t manage digital assets with traditional infrastructure says Andy McQuarrie, who joined the company as Chief Technical Officer in 2017. McQuarrie has 20 years’ experience in IT including 12 years leading infrastructure and software engineering teams at Sky – his mission at oOh! was to map out and execute not only the company’s IT journey but a root and branch business transformation.
MOVING TO CLOUD The journey has basically seen oOh! migrate from its traditional on-premise w w w.o o hme di a . com . a u
“ We opted for the Strangler approach because it is very safe and it allows us to move methodically from old to new in a way that doesn’t disrupt the business” 08
— Andy McQuarrie, CTO, oOh! Media
back office systems to a cloud native
Rather than a big bang migration,
platform built in house. It was an
though, McQuarrie opted for the
ambitious step. “Late in 2016 we decided
Strangler pattern documented by
that we would embark on the journey to
Martin Fowler, whereby the new systems
build next generation of public space
are introduced around the edges of the
media AdTech platform and run it on
old, progressively replacing them until
AWS.” Two years later, after a huge effort
the legacy systems are decommissioned.
on the part of Andy McQuarrie and his
Doing it this way, he says, made for
team, the network had been re-architect-
a smoother introduction and allowed
ed, the most sophisticated Palo Alto
his team to develop an intuitive user
firewalls put in place, and legacy back
interface. “We opted for the Strangler
office systems migrated to a cloud
approach because it is very safe and it
native platform hosted in AWS.
allows us to move methodically from 09 E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Andy McQuarrie Andy McQuarrie’s background is in Software Engineering, Operations and Technology consultancy. McQuarrie is responsible for Software Engineering, Data Science & Engineering and Technology Operations across the oOh!media group. Primarily based in the UK for the majority of his career working with organisations like The Royal Bank of Scotland and Sky, McQuarrie has been involved in a number of industry leading disruptive digital products like SkyQ and NowTV, as well as web scale platforms that include Europe’s largest linear Over The Top (OTT) platform SkyGo. Before joining oOh!media in 2017 as the Chief Technology Officer, McQuarrie was the Technical Principal at ThoughtWorks.
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AT HARBOUR IT, WE GIVE OUR CUSTOMERS THE FREEDOM TO FOCUS ON WHAT MATTERS MOST Learn more
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Harbour IT is proud to partner with Ooh! Media on their IT Transformation Journey. Our unique difference is being large enough to provide customers with extensive expertise, established processes and advanced enterprise level solutions, yet small enough to be hands-on and deliver the high-touch customer service that you demand.
11 old to new in a way that doesn’t disrupt
without a public cloud like AWS.”
the business at all.”
Significant time savings have already
With the number of digital assets
resulted. Sales personnel can gener-
increasing rapidly, Sales and Operations
ate proposals far quicker than before,
had to be streamlined, allowing new
allowing them to concentrate on
and existing customers to make best
adding value for the customer – some-
use of public space media with minimum
thing McQuarrie remains convinced
fuss. Automating much of the sales
will always be better done by humans
process allows oOh!media’s salespeople
however much the machines learn!
to spend more time engaging with the market and less on admin. “One of the
PEOPLE AND PASSION
things we are really trying to drive into
To rebuild the company’s software and
the business is the idea of a machine
create this new cloud native platform in
learning co-worker that can do the heavy
house was a large undertaking, but
lifting. For a company of our size none
McQuarrie does not believe in placing
of this would ever have been possible
business critical software development w w w.o o hme di a . com . a u
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“ I am truly fortunate to have a team that is both highly skilled and very passionate about what we do” — Andy McQuarrie, CTO, oOh! Media
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We’ve helped Australian companies such as oOh! Media to build high quality technical teams. Data & Analytics | Engineering | Information Security Infrastructure & DevOps | Product & Design
THEONSET.COM.AU | RECRUITMENT@THEONSET.COM.AU
$483mn Approximate revenue
1989
Year founded
The original 10-strong IT team has now grown to 50, a process completed in just 18 months. “I am truly fortunate to have a team that is both highly skilled and very passionate about what we do. I firmly believe that a good team comes first and that the good software is an outcome of that.” Forging this team had its challenges, especially early on,
800+
Approximate number of employees
he admits. With the core team effectively doubling in size, as much effort had to go into team building as into building software, so a lot of attention was paid to internal and external training. Agile practices such as daily stand-up
in third party hands. “I firmly believe that
meetings, retrospectives and fortnightly
the best software outcomes come from
iteration planning (IPM) meetings were
internal teams of permanent and commit-
followed, not only to drive the project
ted people.” The organisation he came
forward but to bond the team.
into had plenty of capable people in it,
The esprit de corps of oOh! is a great
but he could see that the team needed
mixture of informality, friendship and
strengthening. “We partnered with The
family feeling with strong structures to
Onset, a leading IT recruitment agency,
support people. “Brendon Cook and
explained the journey we were on, and
our head of Chief People and Culture
asked them to sell our vision to the
Officer Steve Read have put a huge
Sydney market in our search for high
amount of effort into creating and
quality developers. It was important that
maintaining this culture,” emphasises
the people we chose not only had high
McQuarrie, “so I’ve tried to create
technical skills but were a good cultural fit
a technology version of that. It’s very
and understood where oOh! was going.”
important, he adds, for the tech team w w w.o o hme di a . com . a u
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How AWS is helping create a future-ready Australia We are at a fascinating point in the history and evolution of Australian organisations, where they are using technology to transform and enhance the experiences they bring to their customers.Transformation touches everyone, from government agencies including the ATO, Australia Post, and ABC, digital natives like Atlassian and Xero, start-ups like Baraja and Whooshkaa, to established players like Qantas, Woodside Energy, NAB, Linfox, and Fonterra. Having the right skills in place to drive digital transformation is critically important, as is a willingness to embrace change and shift to a more agile, collaborative culture.AWS help organisations of all shapes and sizes with their most critical issues and opportunities. Together, we create enduring change and results. Let AWS help create enduring change and strategies for you.
NAB’s Cloud Guild drives new tech skills NAB is watching a new approach to learning develop inside of the bank as it approaches the first anniversary of an ambitious program to train its workforce in the ways of cloud. The program, called the NAB Cloud Guild, was intended to enable “more than 2000” NAB employees to acquire or build cloud skills in support of the bank’s $1.5 billion “digital-first” transformation.Inside of the first year, the Cloud Guild is already tracking well ahead of that goal.“The results of the NAB Cloud Guild have been outstanding,” NAB’s Manager Engineer and Cloud Guild Founder Paul Silver said. “Within the first 10 months, we’ve had about 4000 people who’ve gone through the program so far in a one or three day course. “When we started, we had seven people in the whole organisation who were certified in AWS cloud. There are now over 400 people who are certified”.Silver can already see change as a result of the program. “What we’ve found after people have done the three-day associate courses is they’re becoming self-learners, which is fantastic,” he said. “AWS has great digital content we can consume and use inside our organisation. After people get their first certification, they’re actually going off and selflearning this content with the outcome of getting more certifications, in-turn leading to better outcomes for NAB.” The learning culture is expected to have a strong impact on NAB’s project, which includes a target of moving 35 percent of its 2500 IT applications into the cloud within the next three-tofive years. “With AWS’ help we’ve been able to drive outcomes incredibly fast. This is helping us meet our customer expectations a lot faster than we have been able to in the past,”
Silver said. NAB’s Chief Technology & Operations Officer Patrick Wright said the battle for technology talent in Australia is “fierce”. Wright sees the NAB Cloud Guild not only as a way to create opportunities for employees to learn new skills and grow their career in technology, but also as a means “to attract top talent in the industry.” “We’re embarking on a transformation that we think is fundamentally changing our ompany, fundamentally changing the way we work, and launching us into a new era,” Wright said. “If you want to build a company of builders, you have to have technology career pathways.” NAB is also taking some cues on best practices from AWS as it continues on its digital transformation journey. The bank recently tackled the AWS 50 in 50 program, which involves getting 50 applications into the cloud in just 50 days. It was a clear signal of the speed and agility that NAB now wants to operate. “AWS’s passion for customers aligns well with what we are doing at NAB and we’re also learning from them along the way as well,” Silver said. “It’s been a really good partnership to work with them.”
How AWS is helping create a future-ready Australia
Woodside Energy leveraging data to seize growth opportunities Woodside Energy is the pioneer of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry in Australia, and the largest Australian natural gas producer. Woodside’s producing LNG assets in Australia’s north-west Pilbara region are among the world’s best facilities, renowned for their safety, reliability and efficiency. Now, Woodside is seeking to create an integrated LNG production centre – the Burrup Hub - that would see new Scarborough and Browse gas resources processed through the Woodsideoperated Pluto LNG and Karratha Gas Plant. To help realise this vision, Woodside is leveraging gains from its data science and intelligent asset work programs over weeks and days, instead of months and years, allowing the company to make decisions sooner, using richer data. Innovation has always been part of Woodside’s DNA. Applying cloud technology is helping Woodside accelerate the traditional oil and gas project innovation cycle from years, down to months. Woodside uses AWS cloud as the foundation for optimising production in real time, by running high -speed algorithms to uncover new insights and opportunities to deliver extra value. Woodside can run 10,000 algorithms per hour, taking data from over 200,000 sensors attached to its Pluto LNG plant. The company remains focused on reaching all Woodside employees with this work. Digital at Woodside is not just about ‘gear’; it’s honing and changing the way people work, with collaborative partnerships playing a key role.
Learn more
Visit awsinsight.com.au to find out more how AWS is able to help you thrive in today’s digital economy.
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to understand and buy into the ethos of
increasingly enhanced by machine-
the business. “Sometimes when you
learning, the in-house team has been
are building infrastructure it can be hard
developing a data platform to prepare
to show that it relates directly to business
the business for further expansion.
outcomes so we make a point of
With data being the lifeblood of informa-
making sure that as far as possible
tion based industries, how it’s lever-
we align every single thing we do to
aged for business growth is crucial.
a business outcome.”
“Our new data platform is again cloud-native and it has been built from
FUTURE BECKONS
the ground up specifically to serve this
In parallel with the creation of the cloud-
business.” As well as hosting oOh!’s
native public space media operating
business intelligence (BI), based around
platform that supports all of oOh!’s
traditional relational databases, our
sales activities and back office,
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“ Our new data platform is again cloud-native and it has been built from the ground up specifically to serve this business” — Andy McQuarrie, CTO, oOh! Media 18
data in real time using event streaming and machine learning,” he explains. “ML and data science are embedded in our software development lifecycle (SDLC) in a way that not many other people have done it. The new platforms will make it easier to integrate new businesses into the oOh! family. The Commute by oOh! business acquired last year took oOh!media to a very dominating position, but public space media remains a competitive business. The Commute by oOh! business will be
brought onto the new platform over the course of 2019, prioritising the systems that add the greatest value. Andy McQuarrie moved to Australia less than five years ago. The Scot had already spent many years as an expatriate in London, and though the two organisations are very different in scale, there was something about oOh! that resonated with his experience at Sky. “Sky is a world leader and we are just embarking on the journey to becoming a tech-centric business, but the passion the leadership at oOh! have for the business and the feeling of team togetherness really attracted me. Brendon is a charismatic individual with a vision for the business underpinned by technology. When he shared that vision with me, I realised I really wanted to be part of this journey and contribute not only to the technology vision but of the wider business too.�
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oOh! Media Level 2 76 Berry St North Sydney NSW 2060 T +61 2 9927 5555 www.oohmedia.com.au