COMMENTARY--What are the technologies that will be driving Australian ICT in the coming year?
For the last couple of years, vendors in a tough market have been excitedly talking up a host of new technologies like utility and grid computing, customer relationship management, instant messaging, ERP, and real-time data management.
Business, however, has stood waiting for much clearer signposts to navigate to commercial nirvana, content in the meantime to wring more from legacy systems by deploying improved applications around the edges to strive for returns to satisfy the demands of the enterprise CFO, and better ways to do business with customers.
The deployment of middleware and integration technologies to bind legacy systems will continue but there are patches of sunlight ahead as these promises achieve some definition.
The next two years or so will see exciting changes as the technologies mentioned above mature into robust business tools. Expect also a blurring of lines between software vendors, as content management, portals, business intelligence, ERP, and workflow all integrate into enterprise offerings as a result of mergers and acquisitions.
As data continue to pile up exponentially, managing the enterprise's information assets will become more pressing, with users demanding easier access and greater flexibility in storage resources.
But data heaps will continue to grow and business will have to consider its options carefully as application integration middleware emerges to link the data warehouse to other applications, or to move to layered business intelligence solutions to provide direct access, doing away with the warehouse altogether.
Wireless will continue to graft security patches to to win back enterprises. It will become increasingly pervasive, evolving beyond the novelty stage to link the enterprise more closely with its customers.
In the end, for mobility, there will only be one device encompassing a mobile phone, PC, camera, VCR and identity device for payments.
| Plotting the lie of the Australian ICT landscape is, for the first time in a few years, getting easier as the mists rise from a constrained world economy to reveal new technological promise. |
Once separate, the IT platform and telco network is converging into one ICT solution. It's a shame 10 years of telco deregulation has provided little or no network choice, constraining business.
Business process analysis, IT governance, and business process optimisation and re-engineering will continue to gain greater mind space as ICT converges with business, driven in part by a greater awareness by business of what ICT can and should do.
Security will remain dominant as viral and intrusion attacks become faster and more precisely targeted than anything seen to date. While the sort of attacks that felled Telstra a few months ago will remain a real threat, others which zero in on segments of a particular corporation's activity will test ICT's mettle. Managed security will be a growing market.
All this bodes better for Australian ICT developers, particularly at the SME level. Further global vendor consolidation, withdrawal from Australia and more focus on the large enterprise is opening more opportunities for local companies.
Yet we need an attitudinal change in our large organisations. Overseas companies start up in Australia off a strong base because their governments and corporates have adopted their products. Australian companies are forced to go overseas to survive as our governments and large companies are too risk-averse to buy. Who buys without extensive evaluations and pilots anyway? What is the real risk?
Edward Mandla is National President of the Australian Computer Society (ACS). The ACS attracts a membership (over 16,000) from all levels of the IT industry and provides a wide range of services. The Society can be contacted on 02 9299 3666, or email info@acs.org.au.
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