The list
- Anonymous Australian CIO
- Anonymous Australian IT worker
- Carlton Taya, Avaya South Pacific MD
- Craig Scroggie, Symantec A/NZ MD
- Chris Disspain, auDA CEO
- David Jackman, Pronto Software MD
- Deena Shiff, Telstra Business group MD
- Dereck Daymond, Sybase A/NZ MD
- Doug Farber, salesforce.com APAC VP, operations
- Geoffrey Dirago Attain IT general manager
- Gerard Florian, Dimension Data Australia CTO
- Greg Spears, Vodafone spokesperson
- James Turner, IBRS analyst
- Joe Kremer, Dell Australia MD
- Kevin McIsaac, IBRS analyst
- Laurel Papworth, social networks strategist
- Mark Phibbs, Adobe APAC marketing director
- Melbourne IT spokesperson
- Neerav Bhatt, blogger, librarian, internet marketer
- Sarah Carter, FaceTime Communications
- Paul Harapin, VMware A/NZ MD
- Peter McAlpine Adobe Australia MD
- Rob Mackinnon, IBRS analyst
- Paul Fitzgerald, GHS consulting director
- Steve Hitchman, MIP MD
- Warren Chaisatien, Telsyte research director
- Tracey Fellows, Microsoft Australia MD
- Wendy Reid, EMC A/NZ marketing director
(Credit: 2009 is coming by Billy Alexander, royalty free)
2008 was a momentous year for Australia's ICT industry; issues such as the National Broadband Network, internet censorship, Hewlett-Packard's merger with EDS, the Gershon report, and ongoing huge IT roll-outs such as core banking systems kept everyone very occupied.
And that's not even considering the turmoil that the global economic crisis caused in Australia, with thousands of technology jobs heading down the tube; at least temporarily.
So what will 2009 hold for Australia's ICT industry? In an unscientific poll, we asked dozens of local leaders as well as IT workers and analysts for their predictions; and this is what they came up with. We'll check back on this article in December and see how our crystal ball gazers went. Feel free to post your own predictions below this article.
Anonymous Australian CIO
Uncertainty in the financial markets and political unrest in
India will cause major businesses to review their outsourcing
strategies. Collapse of a major international outsourcing company
or major system failure through a terrorist act will lead to
organisations consolidating their IT functions and bringing them
closer to their base of operations.
In contrast to the US, where the national chief information officer will influence government policy, the Australian Government infrastructure stimulation packages will overlook the IT sector in favour of construction and distribution networks. The exception: e-health (hopefully).
Anonymous Australian IT worker
I believe the industry will settle down from the negativity that
has been filling the press from last year and we will see good
growth in terms of development projects in Australia.
Banks have merged and that is already sparking off large IT projects. The necessity for efficiency and greener services will trigger analysis projects and systems to measure improvements. We also realise that Australia is not in a recession like the US and other countries.
As long as people continue to reject the fear and negativity which the media keeps shoving down our throats for ratings and profit, and instead focus on creation, ingenuity and innovation, Australia and IT development in general could capitalise on a rare opportunity to shine above much of the rest of the world's cloudiness and create a lot of great software and services to help others, stimulating growth and producing creative projects for thousands of people.
I hope Australian leaders have the guts and vision to focus on the positive side and build upon the strength, human creativity and systems infrastructure which is already in place and take it to a higher level and start putting creative and positive messages into the media to add fuel to the creative fire, rather than throwing sopping wet blankets on top of it just because America is.
The Australian IT industry has the freedom to create itself in whatever direction it imagines, so long as the Australian spirit of 'having a go' prevails and we continue to see leaders and entrepreneurs stimulating activity and trusting their teams.
Carlton Taya, Avaya South Pacific MD
This year will herald an even heightened focus on extracting
business benefits from investments in communications technologies.
Companies that are committed to improving operational efficiency
will look to enhance or refresh their enterprise communications
systems with a focus on making it easier for their staff to
interact and collaborate with their customers as well as each
other.
Today's enterprises are more likely to adopt technology systems that have a lasting positive impact on the way they do business. CIOs will be challenged to create business value with smaller budgets; subsequently they will be turning to technology that can deliver measurable value, is compatible with existing business processes, and can be expanded and developed in stages as financial budgets allow.
Challenging economic times can provide the trigger for vendors, CIOs and IT staff to be more innovative with new technology systems and focus organisations on ensuring that new communications applications are actually adopted by the workforce.
Craig Scroggie, Symantec A/NZ MD
Some of the key security trends which Symantec expects to see in
2009 include an increase in the number of new web-based threats and
an explosion of new malware variants. As there are now more
malicious programs created than legitimate programs, emerging
threats such as malware variants have given rise to the need for
new, complementary detection methods such as reputation-based
security approaches.
The global economic crisis will continue to be the basis of new attacks and attackers may also exploit other types of fraudulent activity around economic issues such as emails that promise the ability to easily get a mortgage or refinance. There will also continue to be an uptake in activity in threats related to social networking sites.
Another trend we expect to see is virtualisation technology being incorporated into security solutions to provide an environment isolated and protected from the chaos of a general purpose operating system environment.
Symantec A/NZ MD Craig Scroggie
Symantec expects data breaches to continue to increase in 2009. A survey commissioned by Symantec in 2008 revealed that more than 79 per cent of Australian organisations who responded have experienced some form of data breach. The significance of this data is truly spotlighted after realising that it only took nine months in 2008 to reach the 2007 total. In many cases, inadvertent employee mishandling of sensitive information and insecure business processes are the most common ways that data is exposed.
From a storage perspective, organisations are turning to technologies like thin provisioning to make better use of existing storage.
As organisations increasingly need to save money, they are looking for potential areas of optimisation. By working with an SaaS provider for backup, they can eliminate the burden of maintaining, operating and supporting backup software and hardware. In addition, organisations will continue to adopt 'open' hypervisors like Hyper-V as they will discover that traditional approaches will limit the ability to maximise assets and reap the benefits of server virtualisation.
Many organisations are also shifting their focus to finding more efficient technologies that manage complexity while reducing resources. At Symantec, we see that 2009 will bring with it many opportunities for our customers to streamline IT processes and better leverage IT investments by rationalising products and reducing the amount of vendors they buy from.
Chris Disspain, auDA CEO
Later this year it will be possible for countries around the
world to register their ccTLD in non-Latin script. So, China will
be able to have the equivalent of .cn in Chinese and India the
equivalent of .in in a number of the 12 different scripts in use
there. This is going to dramatically increase the number of people
who have access to the internet that is currently limited by the
requirement for an, at least, basic understanding of the Latin
alphabet and the ability to switch languages or scripts on the
computers keyboard.
The introduction of these 'internationalised' domain names taken together with applications opening for new gTLDs (perhaps .shop or .law and even .ebay and .google) will see a significant increase in the domain name space and a massive increase in internet usage (this is likely to double from 1 to 2 billion by the end of 2010). This in turn is going to lead to an increased demand for relevant content.
David Jackman, Pronto Software MD
2009 is likely to see strong and mature Australian ICT vendors
buck the trend of an otherwise challenging year — Pronto Software
is a good example of this. We ended 2008 with a solid performance
in terms of revenue and cash, and we are expecting the same momentum
to flow through into 2009.
We are optimistic because we are seeing a shift in customer and prospect focus to real value-added business benefits. For many, it involves careful ROI assessment and true cost/benefits analysis — pragmatic suppliers like us tend to perform well in this environment as reality takes over from marketing hype.
Pronto Software MD David Jackman
Just a short time ago the biggest limitation facing most companies was the lack of quality staff and in retaining and motivating these staff. Now many have turned to attacking their staff as a cost to be reduced. The smart companies today are building for the future recovery in that they recognise now is the time to do the things they didn't have time to do previously. They aim to upgrade their business systems so that they have an improved ability to scale up in the future when things get better and they therefore avoid many of the staff limitations they had previously.
The one complexity that holds some back from following this course is the restriction of financing options and therefore cash is king in allowing those with cash to invest in building their future. This means that the basic rules of the jungle will apply — the fit and fast (in terms of cash and vision) will get bigger and stronger whilst the less fit will struggle.
A further prediction will be a repeat of behaviour that has been evident in previous recessions — overseas parents will cut deeper in far away places like Australia as they struggle to maintain momentum in their home market. When prospects observe this they will become increasingly nervous about working with overseas-based suppliers. As we are Australian-based and have no borrowings, we are positioned well to assist these businesses as they look for local trusted suppliers.
Deena Shiff, Telstra Business group MD
For 2009, the focus for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) will
be less about new 'breakthrough' technology and more about
generating productivity savings by better using the range of
technology available. SMEs will become more network-centric as
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) becomes more prevalent.
In times of economic uncertainty, SaaS allows business to avoid capital outlay, minimise investment risks and have more certainty in their IT costs. Other big trends in 2009 will be a continued shift towards SMEs becoming more net-savvy/dependent, continued growth in wireless broadband and through that the workforce becoming even more mobile. In summary, SMEs are looking to reduce costs and risks, to improve flexibility and to get more value from their IT investment.
Dereck Daymond, Sybase A/NZ MD
I see a slow start to the year as businesses evaluate the
effects of the global economic crisis. IT companies will look to
curtail expenses as much as possible in the early part of the year
and there will most likely be some staff laid off. I believe we
will see an improvement in IT spending and rolling out of IT
projects as we approach the end of calendar Q2 or end of financial
year for many businesses around the June time frame.
Although it is very difficult to predict what will happen with any certainty, I do believe we will see the economy pick up in the second half of the year and more spending on IT as companies look to improve their competitive advantage through the effective use of IT. Throughout the year there will be more mergers and acquisitions as those companies with healthy balance sheets look for bargains.
Doug Farber, salesforce.com APAC VP, operations
2009 will see more companies make cloud computing services —
such as those from salesforce.com, Amazon and Google — a critical
part of their business strategy.
Principally, companies will look to cut costs — or capital expenditure — in 2009. It should go unsaid that in times like these, IT departments need to prove their efficiencies more than ever. But many companies think more about minimising costs and risks than they do about maximising opportunities and efficiencies. That's perhaps why the Federal Government has introduced tax breaks for companies who purchase new assets in the next six months.
It's important though for Australian companies to keep the future in their sights because they will need to resource adequately for when the market does eventually improve. Technically speaking, cloud computing presents the immediate and essentially infinite ability to grow capacity in response to demand. It can also enable companies to experiment with the knowledge that unsuccessful initiatives can be switched off without any significant effect on the bottom line.
In Australia, we're really seeing some great examples of cloud computing playing an integral part in the enterprise. Companies like St George Bank and Altium have adopted our model based on the successes we've seen in the SMB market over the last few years. For the first time, we're seeing cloud computing being implemented not for cloud computing's sake, but because companies have realised that it competes strongly on scalability, price, ROI and overall business process improvement.
But it goes beyond the technology. This year, we'll see resellers get a better handle on how to market, sell and service their customers in the cloud. Companies such as NEC and Telstra launched their own cloud computing offerings this year and we've just seen Google launch a reseller program in Australia. 2009 will mark a real maturity and acceptance of the cloud model.
The shortage of good IT professionals with in demand technical AND good English communication skills will still prevail in 2009.
Defence clearance issues are also still a major obstacle for the sector. Overall I don't think we will see any great change in IT employment/unemployment stats in 2009, although we are seeing some shifts between contracting and permanent employment modes. We are helping our clients invest more in retention strategies as well as in attracting graduates as smart companies will definitely be investing in IT staff even if (or maybe even because) they need to shed other staff in the year ahead.