Telling the Enex TestLab Value Story

Enex TestLab has always been prepared to walk the walk. We’re comfortable letting the value we deliver to customers, be the face of our business.

Nevertheless, Enex TestLab is a rapidly growing business – one of the fastest in Victoria and Australia. We’ve been growing year on year for some time now and reflecting this, as well as the increasing complexity and capacity of our services, Enex TestLab is refining its marketing and communications products. We’re working to ensure clear and relevant information is available to our customers, highlighting the value of Enex TestLab’s diverse portfolio of testing services and products.

In addition to a suite of engagement products, revised global websites will offer an increasing level of insight into our work, our value proposition and more detail about the innovative ways we’ve worked with customers. Enex TestLab delivers independent testing into so many different and exciting technologies and industry sectors that our website is becoming a major channel for customers to understand our business.

Our work for Q3 2010 certainly reflects a growing level of innovation and the application of testing by customers. We’ve recently completed an interesting project for an importer of car audio units. The results enabled the retailer to select the best value product to add to its range with confidence that the product had sufficient quality to add their own branding and reputation to; it would impact positively on its bottom line, and have confidence in the warranty and support they would offer.

Interestingly, during testing of the car audio devices, Enex TestLab was pleased to discover that the units achieved an impressive standard of audio quality and shock protection. You’ll hear them on streets around the country soon.

Our work for a number of government departments procurement continues, we’ve been busy evaluating desktops, notebooks, monitors, projectors and even smart tables and interactive whiteboards to ensure that product value is maximised. We’ve also completed WLAN load and performance testing for a government agency.

The AGE (Australian Gaming Expo) was held in Sydney during August. Enex TestLab hosted an exhibit, introducing a number of new clients to Enex TestLab’s range of services dedicated to the gaming and wagering sector. We’re an ATF in quite a number of global gaming jurisdictions seeing a lot of growth in our business in this sector.

As we continue to build our headcount, Enex TestLab is pleased to announce Matthew Hackling as our new Divisional Head of Security Testing in Australia. Matthew brings a wealth of security experience and will be a key part of our security market expansion.

The value story Enex TestLab has to tell has never been better, but the number of ways we need to tell it just keeps growing. With our revised website and marketing collateral, this becomes a far more integrated and well coordinated proposition. You’ll see how our activities relate right across our portfolio of services and how innovative companies across the globe are using Enex TestLab’s products and services in unique ways to reduce risk and make money.

Enex Turns 21: Crayons, Cranes and The Big Kahuna

A significant milestone was achieved in January, the TestLab turned 21! We think this is an impressive feat in such a cut-throat sector; we’ve outlasted some big names and helped some even bigger ones stay competitive. For over 21 years, Enex TestLab has independently and scientifically sifted through the hype, technicality, broken promises and complexity of the global ICT industry. Today, Enex is renowned for speaking the truth about technology – enabling our customers to make informed decisions, save money and deliver success.

Our founding member, Steve Turvey, is still with us as lab manager. For 21 years he’s been the cornerstone of the organisation (some say mascot as well). Back when Steve set up the lab it was the commercial testing arm of RMIT University, and there were just four staff. Today we have operations globally, cover 92 industry sectors with 8 separate specialist testing divisions. Enex has become one of the fastest growing businesses in Australia.

Over the years we have tested just about every conceivable technology and system, but it has been the more unconventional tests are the most memorable. For example;

· One of our Middle Eastern clients wished to purchase a number of 50 tonne cranes from a vendor in China. Enex was contracted to undertake testing to ensure they were in acceptable condition. Amazingly, Enex discovered that in most cases, the cranes were copies!

· Despite our suspicions that in the real world crayons would be eaten well before they ran out, one European manufacturer wanted to know absolutely, which of its colours would wear out first. So now it’s official, yellow is the most durable colour – but there is no accounting for taste.

· Recently, Enex tested a range of portable promotional bars. One of the criteria was to test its support for a 100kg person. Yep, a bar tested for dancing!

· In addition to testing their built-in security features, Enex batch tested passports for wear and tear. The test ran for over 12 months (exceeding 1 million page turns).

Considering all that’s happened so far, Enex is very excited about its next 21 years. And secretly, we’re all hoping we’ll get to test robots and jet packs sooner rather than later.

Back in the present, in addition to a huge birthday party, Q1 2010 was as busy as ever. Our eMetric products have been a major focus, with a number of broadband performance testing projects happening across metropolitan, regional and rural Australia. At the same time, Enex has been working closely with a group of network service providers and vendors to better develop the capabilities and functionality of the eMetric hardware device. We are also negotiating with a number of networking equipment vendors to embed eMetric code into their Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) enabling ubiquitous testing of broadband. The possibilities are looking very exciting.

Global expansion has also been a feature of the period. Enex is currently in the process of establishing Hong Kong operations in Fo Tan. This provides an ideal base to link with nearby geographies; Southern China, Macau, Singapore, and Southeast Asia. It will also support our existing operations in Shanghai.

European operations have had a great start to 2010. Increased local headcount will drive software testing for a number of large clients, as well as promoting broadband performance testing using eMetric.

Building on the last two years of gaining licences to operate as an Accredited Test Facility in key global jurisdictions. Enex has now been investing heavily in its domestic gaming, wagering, lotteries and casinos division human resources, with the core team now fully resourced. Enex is in a position to consolidate its place in the market, delivering experienced and cost effective services to this sector in a timely manner.

Enex media and communications is delighted to confirm the continuation of an 18 year relationship with CBS owned ZDNet (and its predecessors), and the consolidation of our 2009 relationship with Choice Magazine. A new publisher, IDG has also been added to our customer list. Our media business has come a long way over those 18 years. One of the most amusing anecdotes from our early years of publishing describes how Steve Turvey once announced the invention of the World Wide Worm in his monthly column. In fairness, that was many years ago – before the term Web had been coined.

Finally, and considering Enex has been celebrating, in February Enex TestLab sponsored the Internet Industry Associations (IIA) gala dinner entertainment, The Big Kahuna, whose members comprise Asia Pacific region executives from well known ICT enterprises such as Intel, Symantec, Verizon and Motorola. On this particular occasion, and perhaps for the best, Enex did not undertake any performance testing