Sparx Systems Award 2022 - Announcement and Presentation

Sparx Systems has enjoyed a long association with Federation University, with many staff having once worked and studied at Federation University. Federation University Australia was formed when the former University of Ballarat and the Gippsland Campus of Monash University were amalgamated.

For more information, please refer to the University website: https://federation.edu.au/

Award Winner

The Student Awards Ceremony was held on Thursday the 8th of September 2022 on behalf of the Institute of Innovation, Science and Sustainability.
The 2022 Sparx Systems award winner is Zac (Zhi Zao) ONG - pictured below. Zac is a Bachelor of IT (Professional Practice) Student.

The award was presented by Sparx Systems Communications Manager, Mr Scott Hebbard.

Award Recipient Information

Zac (Zhi Zao) ONG was top of the class in ITECH3109 Data Structures and Algorithms, and ITECH3108 Dynamic Web Development. He was a very good scrum master in his capstone project team and was a leader in development and processes, for example he set up very good workflow for the project team using Github and Vercel with continuous integration. His team delivered an excellent outcome to their client. He interned at IBM where he worked an on internal project developing an ‘Executive Dashboard’ for senior management. This involved both the front end and back-end development of the dashboard which is a web-based tool. The dashboard is used by their senior management today to report on quite a large range metrics within the organisation. Zac was highly praised for his work on this dashboard, the data that can be retrieved as well as the user interface that is very clear, clean and professional. 

2021 Sparx Systems Award

The Sparx Systems 2021 award was presented to Michelle Holly.

Sparx Systems likes to encourage Federation University students to achieve world class results. Sparx Systems has a strong association with Federation University with many staff having once worked and studied at Federation University. Michelle completed her first year of the Bachelor of Information Technology (Professional Practice) program in 2020, with outstanding results. The Bachelor of IT (Professional Practice) is a four-year degree, accredited by the Australian Computer Society (ACS). The innovative degree includes 1600 hours of work integrated learning with IBM in Ballarat, Victoria. Michelle is completing her internship with IBM at Salesforce Consulting Services.

Michelle has already learned about networking, cloud computing, object-oriented programming, SQL, C#, and Java scripting, agile coding, web design, big data and information security. Michelle is from Surabaya, Indonesia, and is studying at the Federation University Mt Helen campus.

The criteria for the award is for a student who has demonstrated significant ability in a particular area of ICT. Michelle has excelled in every aspect of the course Game Development Fundamentals, despite the challenging year of 2020. Her game prototype will be an example of innovation and ambition for future students for years to come. Michelle stated “I found Game Development Fundamentals is the most interesting course in my second semester. This course incorporates both design and high-order thinking to build a 3D game by using Blender, Unity and the C# programming language. My last project was developing a 3D game with a combination of a maze runner and trivia questions. Even though this course seemed hard at first, I found the programming knowledge in lectures, practical learning in lab sessions, and lecturers' support were really helpful. I managed to build my game prototype by designing the 3D objects in Blender and using Unity to collaborate the object's behaviour with C# scripting language.”

Sparx Systems would like to congratulate Michelle for all her hard work and wish her all the best in her future studies.  She was also provided a copy of Enterprise Architect to help her untertake the many software development tasks within her degreee.

In this month's SD Times 100 Winner's Supplement, Sparx Systems CEO, Geoffrey Sparks discusses Enterprise Architect's new collaborative tools supported by the Pro Cloud Server. The Pro Cloud Server released in June, offers secure access for enterprise-wide discussion and review of the model via web-enabled devices, as well as new ways to exchange model repository information with other systems.

“Our new Pro Cloud Server, WebEA and OSLC-based RESTful API are integrated so Enterprise Architect repositories can be hosted in the cloud or on a corporate intranet to provide optimized web-based access from browsers, mobile devices, Enterprise Architect and other network-based devices,” said Sparks.

The SD Times 100 honors companies, consortia and projects that have put their stamps on the industry through innovation and leadership. 

A copy of the entire article is attached to this article.

Enterprise Architect has recently been given the Bronze award in the Visual Studio Magazine 2015 Reader's Choice Awards.

The Sparx Systems design and build platform was recognised as an outstanding solution in the 'Software Design, Frameworks, and Modeling Tools' category.

In a recent Press Release (attached), Editor in Chief of Visual Studio Magazine stated that "The Visual Studio Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards offers a chance for readers to participate in giving public praise to those companies deserving of the recognition.”

More than 400 products across 31 categories were included in an online ballot run by Visual Studio Magazine, with hundreds of magazine subscribers responding over a 3 week period in late September.