COMMENTARY--Australia has managed remarkable economic growth despite a global recession--can it manage the same miracle in the IT sector?
As we close on the end of 2003, it has turned out to be a good year in general: Australia has fended off the threat of recession that has afflicted some of our trading partners and indeed shown remarkable economic growth, our domestic consumer confidence is at a nine-year high, and there's more sunlight over the horizon.
Business has done well if executive salaries and performance bonuses are any indication, and if Huey would only send a bit more rain, our rural sector will catch up.
Australia's technology sector on the other hand has not fared as well. Some suggest that business is learning how to apply the legacy systems and applications they have more effectively, reducing the need to buy more, others say that there is not the same cascade of new technologies hitting the market to force open corporate coffers.
Either way, Australian ICT vendors have had good reason to sympathise with their counterparts in the bush--they know how it feels to have the flow turned off.
We've seen exponential growth in information, requiring new and faster ways to store and access it and that has brought more commoditised, and subsequently cheaper, storage and data management solutions in 2003.
The ability to analyse data in real time to meet business challenges on the march will go hand in hand with new ways to manage huge data resources in the next year or so, cementing ICT even more firmly into the business process.
With the data surge has come a swarm of bugs and other malevolencies to foul the flow of information, and in response, a rash of commoditised fixes, foisted on those who still prefer aspirin to inoculation and won't accept that security is a governance issue demanding proactive investment in time and resources.
These kinds of attacks will soon grow in vehemence, speed and sophistication. They will become more finely targeted to bring down specific activities of specific companies and in the very near term, executives worth their survival rations will have to join the long-distance swim towards securing their enterprise across all its levels as a defence, not a repair.
An increasing number of local companies have learned that treating security like the weather can bring nearly catastrophic disruption, some testing times in court for executives and directors held personally responsible for breaches and other unpleasantness which did not get stakeholder gaze after confidential in-house settlements.
The security problems which have made Wi-Fi implementation stumble over the last year or so will get focused attention in the year ahead with new protocols, standards and technology to kick it into gear.
Alongside network security improvements, other emerging functionality like grid and utility computing will gain traction on more robust platforms as the trend by vendors towards enhancing ROI for current ICT investment continues.
It's a win for both sides of the developer/user fence as ICT and business continues to converge as each learns more about the other. But much of it will come to far less than it might if peripheral issues are not addressed, particularly in education and reskilling.
For as long as enterprises feel that the only way to appease shareholder demand is by sending their day-to-day ICT management and development offshore, Australian skills in software development and the innovation and successful marketing of the few products that do find success here, will grow increasingly fallow.
Whether at school, university undergrad level at or in mature-age professional development, we as an industry--and the organisations that ICT professionals serve--must commit to invest in the growth of our skills base.
Richard Hogg is National president of the Australian Computer Society (ACS). The ACS is the recognised association for Information Technology (IT) professionals, attracting a membership (over 16,000) from all levels of the IT industry and providing a wide range of services. A member of the Australian Council of Professions, the ACS is the guardian of professional ethics and standards in the IT industry, with a commitment to the wider community to ensure the beneficial use of IT.
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