While it would be inaccurate to say that the ICT industry in Australia talked itself into a recession, the slow down didn’t need to be as abrupt as it was. But it wasn’t entirely the doing of the local market. According to a presentation by the Commonwealth Bank’s Craig James in late July at an economic development luncheon in Brisbane, the three countries that provided the heftiest super stimulus packages for their economies were the US at 5.5%, Korea and 5%, followed by Australia at 4.5% (as a percentage of GDP). Yet each still slipped into the red.

Contained within Australia’s annual domestic business-oriented ICT spend in 2007-08 of $163 Billion, the local, state and federal public sector represented 11% or $18.45 Billion. On this basis the public sector is a considerable contributor to the Australian ICT economy. It is traditionally well serviced by the vendor community but less so by ICT research. In a 2006 study Longhaus calculated the annual investment by the top 100 vendors in procuring primary data research on the public sector at approximately $13 million, or roughly $130,000 per vendor excluding the traditional annual advisory services offered by the likes of ourselves, Gartner, Forrester, IDC and others. Unfortunately the way government ICT spending information has been reported up until now has been extremely limited in scope covering only half of total ICT activity. Therefore companies seeking ICT data on the public sector have been forced to purchase data by state, agency, and line of service (based on project, vendor, or solution) and assumed that what they were paying for was accurate. In fact in terms of statistical reporting it has only ever represented a sample of spend, but even then, in all likelihood representing less than 50% of the true story.

Having started a foray into micro-blogging in January of this year Longhaus were certainly not the earliest adopters of Twitter. However, it has proven to be a useful tool alongside our other communication channels. While only 12% of Australia’s 7,000+ medium to large enterprises have adopted corporate social computing, 14% are currently piloting or planning to use these technologies and a further 31% are considering adoption in the next 12-24 months. It is no surprise then that with services like Twitter emerging onto the main stage in the last 12 months that we’re regularly being asked by clients and vendors why we use Twitter and what the benefits are. This confusion is made even more acute when it is recognised that many of us, especially those in the ICT industry, are already surrounded by so many other social network services. The key lies in understanding the subtle differences between Twitter and other social networking tools.

Today few organisations would deny that there exists a competitive web browser market. Organisations and consumers alike can choose from multiple, viable web browser solutions for various platforms. Marketing messages based on stronger security, faster browsing and better plug-ins are just some of the areas in which differentiation occurs. But it was not that long ago that Microsoft had effectively mothballed its active investment in the web browser and sent the majority of the Internet Explorer (IE) development team off to do other things. With Netscape routed and IE embedded into every edition of Windows being shipped there was no need to invest in pushing the envelope when in 2004 IE’s market share had reached over 90%. Browser innovation had died and focus shifted to addressing bugs. That is until the emergence of Firefox which by 2005 had forced Microsoft to once again consider features over fixes and saw the introduction of tabbed browsing, plug-ins, and more. Today Microsoft’s share of this market, even on its own Windows platform has dropped by 20%

Forgetting the last 9-months of economic crisis, the last 18 months have been a challenging time for the ICT industry as it has come under increasing scrutiny to return savings to the business on the back of the promise of virtualisation, software-as-a-service and more. Pressure has mounted to deliver on technology consolidation across all sectors but especially in government. Mega-infrastructure technology investments, such as the National Broadband Network (NBN) have appropriated the mind-share and investments of technology influencers, several elections have been run and won, and Gershon-style reviews have brought renewed and razor-like focus to contractor and consultant revisions at both the State and Federal level. As we outlined in our 2009/10 technology budget overview report the net result of all this activity, and considerably more, is that new technology investments have shrunk 7% in just 12-months from 8% in 2008 to a mere 1% this year. But as is always the case, someone’s losses usually indicate someone else’s gains. In the case of global ICT Longhaus believe that one of the underlying changes taking hold of the industry is the return (though onslaught may be a better term) of Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), and KPMG to the ranks of the technology advisory Big 4 which also includes stalwarts Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (Deloitte), and Ernst and Young. And it is doubtful that timing is coincidental. Two significant milestones standout as testament to the possibility that the return of these powerhouses could in fact be the most perfectly timed strategy executions in the last 10-years.