IT industry partnership reaping benefits

OPAIC’s partnership with an Information Technology professional with more than 30 years of experience in the industry is reaping benefits for everyone involved.

Teong Boon Tan, known as Boon to students, began his career as a software developer. He later started his own software company, where his roles included project manager, product manager, tester, salesperson, chief technology officer and chief executive.

He’s sold and installed his software in more than 15 countries in the Asia Pacific including Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and China.

Boon is of Chinese descent, grew up in Malaysia, and has been in New Zealand for eight years.

He’s set up companies in China, India and Malaysia, and currently runs his own software company, Mochi Digital, in Auckland.

In his spare time, he loves playing competitive badminton. He even won a silver medal in the sport at the World Masters Games in New Zealand back in 2017.

Boon was doing work for a start-up company in 2016, when he was asked to supervise some students from OPAIC.

He’s been supervising our students ever since and he’s overseen the projects of 67 OPAIC students over the past four years.

Those projects have covered software development, automated software testing, business analysis, business intelligence, and website design and development.

“I love to interact with your students to pass my knowledge to them and also to learn from them,” says Boon.

He says the partnership has benefits for both parties. He helps OPAIC deliver industry experience for its students, and he gets useful jobs done for his clients.

Additionally, some of the students have a lot of knowledge and teach him new things and allow him to explore new technologies.

A few students under his supervision have named him as a referee and gained full-time employment in New Zealand.

Read about two students who completed a project under Boon’s supervision here.

Learn more about our Information Technology programmes here.