The Aspect name - maintained by the company since its acquisition of the company in March 2002 - is gone, replaced by the KAZ Technology Services moniker. The Ausdata brand is also a casualty of the restructure, integrated into the newly created KAZ Business Services arm.
Peter Kazacos, managing director of Kaz, said the move would help the company market the vertically integrated services it offers, an important aspect in a market that is increasingly heading towards selective, rather than big-bang outsourcing'.
"We see more opportunities in IT and business process outsourcing that we've ever done," Kazacos told ZDNet Australia . He said most companies were keen to outsource help desk and support functions, although they often wanted to separate the various levels of support and keep the first level in house.
Kazacos said with the first round of large contracts coming to a close, government agencies and companies were beginning to see the danger of outsourcing their entire IT operations. The outsourcing company usually owns infrastructure such as servers, software licenses, and employees all the staff involved, which makes it difficult to bring it back in house or award the contract to another company.
Many government departments are opting to roll-over their contracts with the incumbent outsourcers, which were tendered in a way that effectively excluded local companies from the process. Local companies competing with the incumbent outsourcers are at a disadvantage because they have to pay one-off converting costs the incumbents don't.
"Some government departments will put a stake in the ground, and be seen as a leader," said Kazacos, adding the decision would cost the department in the short term. "There will need to be some sort of precedent [to convince government departments to restructure their outsourcing arrangements], everyone's waiting to see who will be first."
The group's Australian Administration Services business, which administers around 3.5 million Australian superannuation accounts, will not be re-branded.
"KAZ is an Australian multi-national with operations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and the USA," said Kazacos. "The new KAZ provides a single point of contact for a broad range of services".
In 1988, Kazacos took the Kaz Computer Services name out of mothballs after leaving the business idle for years. He re-launched it with an initial investment of AU$5000. After a brief stint in a friend's garage, Kaz opened up a claustrophobic office in Burwood and began creating superannuation software for AMP.
Less than 100 people out of around 2,500 nationwide were made redundant in the merger.
