On Thursday 6th of May 2010, Fiona Balfour, a well respected executive leader in the Australian Information Technology industry and former CIO of QANTAS and Telstra was guest speaker at a breakfast held at Michael Page. Tailored specifically for CIO’s, guests were treated to an insightful review of the IT sector, and the impact the global financial crisis has had on today’s operating environment.
Several key points were highlighted throughout the discussion with a focus on the necessary steps to be taken to move forward in this time of change.
It has become evident that many organisations were ill equipped to deal with the economic turbulence and to compensate, projects were put on hold, upgrades were deferred and demand dampened. This had a follow on effect for the rest of the sector with high skill availability due to staff and contracting cutbacks and a fall in prices for the provision of hardware and services. With the market now recovering, now is the time to evaluate projects and focus on revenue generating projects while keeping hold of highly skilled professionals.
Some of the economic consequences that have come from this turmoil include the lowering of base input costs and customer price expectations; the emergence of new technologies and solutions – such as cloud computing – are also beginning to change the competitive landscape and lower barriers to entry with a distinct first mover advantage.
Moving ahead from the service based approach of the 2000’s, cloud computing will theoretically allow new businesses to no longer face technology traditional setup costs; new commercial approaches will be required for existing service players in response. As a result, the competitive landscape will alter, and the demand model for infrastructure will potentially flip to a “build it and they will come” model.
