During the peak of the technology infrastructure renewal cycle in 2007 interest in server virtualisation reached feverish proportions. A jump in adoption of virtualisation technologies across Australia’s medium to large enterprises from 18% to 35% in 2009 confirms that at least some of this hype has become reality. Unfortunately the level of active adoption remains well below a majority indicating that the demand for virtualisation is far from over.  Yet only 12% of firms view virtualisation as a high priority cost management strategy.It is in this climate, and citing customer demand drivers that Red Hat and Microsoft have signed respective virtualisation certification programs. In Australia’s heterogeneous, but Windows-dominated, data centres it is more than just Red Hat that stands to benefit. Local CIOs should begin to assess the current proliferation of virtualisation solutions to identify the opportunities for rationalisation. This specific agreement firmly validates access to technical support and viability of open source-based solutions for the enterprise.

The health of the Australian tech sector fell 8.2 points in Q4 2008 and continued to recede from its record high in Q4 2007 which peaked at 154.5.  Losses were focused most heavily in the vendor strength indices which capture measures of vendor financials and employment capacity. Although Australian ICT trade maintained a steady growth, a 39 point drop in vendor strength contributed to drive the primary Tech Index down. For the coming quarter, the Australian tech sector faces an even grimmer outlook. The first longitudinal quarterly review of CIO confidence indicates a 25 percent drop from those executives who consider the Australian tech sector will attain positive growth. The normalised CIO confidence data forecasts a further collapse between 9.5 points (pessimistically) to 4.7 points (optimistically) in Q1 2009. Negative sentiment in the technology sector will continue to bleed into the index next quarter as trade statistics signal the heaviest falls since the dotcom bubble burst in 2001.

Longhaus research highlights that 45% of Australia’s large to medium enterprises see cloud computing as a priority in 2008. And while only 13% of these firms have adopted some form of as-a-service offering from the network, 35% of Australia’s medium to large organisations have indicated that they would be moving in this direction in the next 12 – 24 months. In the last 12 months IBM have opened 13 cloud computing centres that they are using to work with their clients in understanding what it means to take advantage of cloud computing. In other market movements, in April Microsoft announced that their online services, the Microsoft Live services, would operate from a cloud computing centre in Singapore. This was followed in November with the launch of the Azure Services platform. Yet a notable absence from this new world of utility computing is the public sector; until now…. The Brisbane ICT Hypothetical Series is a joint initiative between Longhaus, and Invest Brisbane. The series provides a platform to explore those issues facing industries that are both current and generating a mixture of both excitement and confusion. The series brings together some of the best and brightest leaders in ICT to examine the implications of cutting-edge topics in a hypothetical setting. Particular to government some of the key issues and concepts uncovered through the panel included an Australian Patriot Act for international data protection and access, a private government cloud, or cloud.gov.au, and licencingandregistrationforce.com. Panellists: Alan Chapman, Queensland Government Chief Information Officer; Greg Stone, Chief Technology Officer Microsoft Australia; Paul Summergreene, Former CIO Queensland Transport and Queensland Health; Id Cuda, ICT Partnerships Manager Brisbane City Council; Dr Renato Iannella, Principal Scientist National ICT Australia; and Vincent Kennedy, Chief Technology Officer, Nextep Broadband and Assistant General Manager, Network Applications, NEC Australia.

Indian ICT service companies including Infosys, Satyam, TCS, HCL, and Wipro have operated in Australia for many years. Yet all have experienced their greatest success in the bigger economies of North America and Europe. However, as the dynamics of the global offshore market changes, so too are the buying behaviours of end-user organisations in Australia, and the engagement strategies of these sub-continent vendors. In response, Longhaus profiled the supply and demand sides of the AUD$12-16 billion Australian services market through end-user spending patterns, associated ICT initiatives, future trends and implications, and the new descriptive language of what offshoring actually means to large end-user organisations. As many traditional service companies move offshore, and many Indian companies move onshore it is clearly a time for Australian organisations to re-assess the individual and brand strengths of all companies within the ICT services market. This should include the plethora of choice now available from established companies from the Indian sub-continent.

In December 2007 Longhaus outlined the emergence of the information server platform. In the same way that J2EE application servers emerged from a convergence of web servers, object-resource brokers, and transaction monitors, information servers will be the result of existing information-oriented application domains forming an integrated environment which manages content and information processes to improve business insight and simplify collaboration. In late October 2008 IBM held its annual Asia Pacific Industry Analyst Summit (Insights) in Shanghai, in the People’s Republic of China. Insights is recognised as a major ICT industry analyst event in the Asia Pacific region for IBM Public and Analyst Relations and involves attendance by senior regional IBM executives. During the event Longhaus attempted to gauge the progress of IBM’s Software Group towards realisation of the emerging information server platform. This briefing note contains observations and recommendations for end-users drawn from the presentation The Next Generation Software Group and a subsequent briefing with Bart Fehmers, Vice President Software Group IBM Asia Pacific.