Ben Henshall, Australia and New Zealand General Manager, SUSE, says Australian organisations would be better placed by moving towards open ended platform architectures.
Australia’s productivity has been stuck in a sluggish, stubborn holding pattern for decades now, with the latest data from the ABS showing a mere 0.1% rise in multifactor productivity during 2023-24. That increase is marred by the fact that it’s an improvement off a record fall of 3.5% the year prior.
Our productivity woes are perplexing in the AI-fuelled ‘do more with less’ world we now live in, where technology seen as the uncontested leader in a space where trillions of dollars are flowing can, in a matter of hours, be upended by competing technology that promises to be 50-to-100 times cheaper.
Are the trickle-down benefits of this rapidly evolving technology just delayed? Maybe to an extent, but we’ve seen other tech revolutions, such as cloud computing, pass by without any meaningful impact on productivity. There are deeper, systemic issues we need to solve to harness technology in the right way and unleash our productivity potential.
One of the well-documented issues within ICT departments but often less so in the boardroom and national psyche is the complicated relationship between old and new technology infrastructure and the data and applications caught in the crossfire.
A typical organisation has legacy applications tied to legacy infrastructure, running alongside newer, cloud-based systems powering more modern applications. Moving and managing data between these environments can be incredibly complex and costly with multiple tools needed, data transit costs, inconsistencies in data formats, structures and system architectures and other issues.
Even more modern, ‘born-in-the-cloud’ companies endure this issue as they’re typically using a range of private, public, hybrid and edge cloud systems, which come with the same translation and integration challenges. By design, these systems are closed off – the tech giants behind them want customers to be ‘all in’ on their tech and so make it difficult to choose the right system for their varying needs, even though it would be better for customers. This is the ongoing dilemma.
Many people would have experienced a version of this when switching between an iPhone and Android phone, running into bottlenecks trying to transfer applications and data over. The scale is in another league, and a person might be able to go a few hours without phone access or longer without access to certain data and apps, but enterprises and governments can’t operate without access to their core applications.
This is important in the context of solving our productivity crisis because these bottlenecks devour the time, productivity, and budget of our ICT departments, which should be the beating heart of productivity gains across the business – developing new applications that speed up or automate processes, leveraging insights from the data businesses hold, innovating.
To be more productive, we need greater agency and choice. Choice in the options available to us, and the agency and simplicity to act on those choices.
Without agency, the choice is undermined. We often take for granted the freedom to switch telco providers if we’re unhappy with the service. But if every provider locks you into convoluted contracts, slows down your data when you leave or offers worse deals to long-time customers, how much agency do you really have?
The same logic applies elsewhere, choice without true control isn’t freedom, it’s a façade.
ICT teams across the country have a similar issue – they have choices when it comes to their infrastructure, cloud and other major cornerstones of what makes up an organisation’s digital footprint.
But the costs and complexity of operating between these systems take away their agency. The barriers to exit and entry are hugely burdensome and the lead time for change dilutes the scarce resources they have to implement their choice. Every CXO has experienced this.
Australian organisations would be better placed by moving towards open ended platform architectures, underpinned by secure and enterprise open source and away from closed platforms. In doing so, we return agency and choice to CIOs, CISOs, engineers and programmers, while abstracting away the complexity and overhead of DIY.
With this flexibility, organisations are better placed to redirect resources and skills to more productive activities and by default tap into the rich vein of innovation our nation so desperately needs.
