Category: Internal Communication

AC3 Announces Acquisition of JDS, Strengthening Position as Leading Local Cloud Service Provider

Big Picture, NewsJDS

Sydney, Australia: AC3, a leading secure cloud services provider in Australia and New Zealand is excited to announce its acquisition of JDS. 

The acquisition demonstrates AC3’s continued commitment to increasing the value they provide to their customers across Australia and New Zealand. By integrating JDS’s expertise, AC3 significantly broadens and deepens the range of services available to its customers. 

“Both companies are remarkably similar,” says Simon Xistouris. “We are both privately owned and operated, with over 25 years of experience. Our shared commitment to staying local and offering secure, sovereign capabilities with exclusively onshore resources across Australia and New Zealand is a cornerstone of our operations. Additionally, we serve a similar customer base, with strong expertise in the public sector and other highly regulated industries. This alignment was crucial for AC3 in pursuing this acquisition; our growth strategy prioritises moves that add value to our customers, and we believe JDS will do exactly that. There is also a wonderful alignment with our culture, and I’m looking forward to welcoming the JDS team to the wider AC3 team.” 

Combined, the businesses will employ almost 500 people in Australia and New Zealand with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Auckland and Wellington. 

“We are thrilled to join AC3 in this next chapter. Our combined resources and shared vision will create significant opportunities for growth and development for our people, as well as provide our customers access to leading cloud services that complement JDS’s offerings,” said John Bearsley, JDS Managing Director. 

AC3 plans to integrate JDS’s services into its existing portfolio, enhancing the overall value proposition for customers. The transition is effective immediately. 

JDS and the GO Foundation

AppDynamics, Atlassian, Big Picture, JDS People, JDSSecurity, New Relic, News, ServiceNow, SplunkKelly Cooke

The Go Foundation is an inspiring organisation empowering young Indigenous Australians by providing scholarships from primary school through to University.

Co-founded by Adam Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin in 2009, the foundation offers mentoring, leadership, networks and support to GO students on their journey to employment.

JDS is immensely proud to have committed to donating $30k to the GO Foundation over the next three years.

It is an organisation that really resonates, as we recognise the vital importance of ensuring that all Australians have equal opportunity to participate socially, culturally and economically.

Extensive research has revealed that the completion of further education by Indigenous Australians can lead to increased earning capacity, greater employment opportunities, improved health and wellbeing outcomes, and reduced interaction with the justice system. The benefits that can come from Indigenous Australians going further beyond high school with their education can stretch beyond improving and enriching the lives of Indigenous communities – they can benefit everyone.

Positive enabling factors that are likely to increase Indigenous participation in further education include enhancing the quality of school experience for Indigenous students to ensure that culture is recognised, and the aspirations of each student is developed. Additionally, providing access to career advice and guidance, and information on the various choices and pathways available for Indigenous students is linked to increasing the quality of the school experience for Indigenous Australians.

The GO Foundation’s scholarship program provides financial assistance, tools and resources for Indigenous students to ensure their journey through school is rich and rewarding, and a broad range of career options, work experience and paid internships ensures the assistance continues well after the scholarship has ended.    

We hope that by dedicating our long-term support, we are contributing to generational change and opportunities for many students for many years to come.

Performance blog round-up

Internal Communication, Technical TeamsJDS

Here’s a selection of interesting blog posts I’ve found relating to performance testing.

SLAs for page loads: Sweet spot is 2.4 seconds

Soasta have provided a 2017 guide to retail performance. By their calculations, a retail web page should load within 2.4 seconds—and a mere 1 second more will result in an 8% bounce rate. 

This is good info for those customers who want to know the “industry standard” for their NFRs.

Grab the full report from Soasta.

Performance tuning AJAX-based applications: Best practices

This post is from a few years ago, but is still relevant today (at least before HTTP/2 takes over). It covers the performance needs of a Web 2.0 website—which are different to standard sites. Multiple small requests are typical of AJAX, and that can exacerbate issues with latency. Check out this post to refresh what you know about AJAX testing.

Comparison of testing tools: DIY with Docker

If you want to be across more open-sourced tools than just JMeter, then this is a great place to start. This blog post gives you links to containerised versions of a variety of performance tools, ready for you to try out.

Load testing the New York Marathon

The New York Marathon has finished now, with an American coming first in the women’s category with a time of 2:26:53. There was even an 84-year-old who came in with a respectable 6:12:53. To get these results, you can go to their webpage (www.tcsnycmarathon.org). Imagine how many people were checking their times—or the times of their friends and family. As you would expect, the website was performance tested to make sure the website would support the supporters.

Read about the 2Million page views they reached during testing here.