Business software short on fun factor, says developer

James Wallis Martin says his philosophy is to build software to enhance people, not replace them.

The 1990s were good to software developer James Wallis Martin as he rode the technology wave with some of the biggest names in US business, including Sun Microsystems and Lockheed Martin.

Now he is passing his knowledge and experience on as founder of Christchurch-based Nqb8r, a charitable trust incubator company aimed at getting new graduates into the local software industry.

At Sun, Wallis Martin was principal manager on a project to build a product data management system. He says his customers were the company's 48,000 employees, and they all had his phone number.

It's a people-focused philosophy he maintains today.

"Some people build software to replace people," he says. "I build software to enhance people."

In that respect, Wallis Martin says business software developers are at least 10 years behind the games industry. If developers used games industry techniques for engaging people, there would be fewer mistakes and greater productivity.

"They'd almost feel like they're playing a game when working on business," he says.

Wallis Martin moved to New Zealand from Australia last year where he helped people to recover losses from a share fraud that targeted his previous company, Berten USA, in 2000.

In 2001, he set up the Securities Investigation Research Society, dedicated to exposing firms involved in securities fraud.

After arriving in New Zealand, he founded Nqb8r and began teaching his skills and philosophies to new graduates in an intensive two-year programme.

Wallis Martin says that while general computer science education is good at teaching fundamentals, it is failing students - and thereby the technology sector - when it comes to practical ability. Under his programme, students receive free training for the first six months before joining real-life projects as paid developers.

Technology itself is also a problem, he says. In the US, colleges are given the latest hardware and software by manufacturers, but New Zealand students often work with five-year-old technology, "which in computer science especially is out of date".

The situation is made worse by the number of small- and medium-sized companies unable to invest in or take the risk of training graduates who may be eyeing overseas experience.

The result, Wallis Martin says, is a brain drain as graduates travel abroad in search of a career.

Nqb8r started with 14 graduates but is down to 10 after four of the high-tech apprentices were pinched by other companies.

Wallis Martin jokes that his must be the only company actively trying to be poached from, "which is what we encourage".

The company recently sold its online resource planning software to a local component manufacturer. The software is installed on a central server and enables control of systems via a web browser. Wallis Martin says workers can use the system to access information from anywhere, even from an internet cafe.

With other research and development projects under way, he is hoping more of his young charges will soon be snapped up.

Although Nqb8r is a charitable trust, it does generates profits, which are used to develop the company and, Wallis Martin hopes, open other branches round the country.

"It's a gap that needs to be filled," he says. "If New Zealand is going to become a software development area we need that basic building block."

James Wallis Martin

Favorite gadget: Cellphone.
Next big thing: Wireless computing.
Alternative career: Teacher.
Spare time: Setting up businesses.
Favorite sci-fi movie: Blade Runner.