Converging Technology with Queensland Business Leaders

I was a guest today at the official launch of the 2008/09 Queensland Leaders Program. This program is now in its second year and by all accounts has been a huge success for the participants.

In short the program supports 15 individual companies based in Qld to assist them access mentoring, capital and training to enable them to become best of breed international corporations, enhancing the business future of Queensland.

From their site- Vision:

Build the head office infrastructure and networks in Queensland

Generate economic and employment opportunities at senior management level

Further develop industry sectors around key organisations

Further develop and diversify the Queensland State economy

Increase local management skills and connectivity

Increase business investment into the State

Harness the strength & resources of our business leaders

The luncheon was addressed by the State Treasurer Andrew Fraser, and industry speakers. Notably Richard Suhr, Enterprise Lead at Google Australia & New Zealand, discussed the modern technology that matters (from a Google perspective anyway).

The main thrust is their perspective on Cloud Computing (aka. Server based application delivery or Software as a Service), which is quite central to their application world. Cloud computing isn’t new, although some of the current terminology around it is, but as Richard highlighted to the audience the accessibility and capability are now hugely greater, and the incremental cost for additional users can be tens if not hundreds of times less than for the traditional IT business models (eg. Microsoft Office or internal ERP tools) where application development is internal or delivered using more traditional IT infrastructure.

This of course can sound extremely interesting to leaders of traditional businesses who have to manage the plethora of IT costs and ongoing renewals, licenses and ongoing hardware upgrades to maintain basic computing functions across staff resources of hundreds / thousands.

What Richard was saying politely (IMHO) is that the technological world is moving faster than a traditional business model can handle, and that partnering with the large SaaS providers is a good way to advance the ability of a modern organisation to harness the changes. Of course that is good for Google, and they aren’t evil (as we know from their press), but overall Richard is right. Software as a Service (SaaS) has matured due to time, capabilities, second generation tools, Google and others building large suites of tools and people just being more accepting of the web.

Small business has had to use more SaaS products to minimize expenses and not get stuck into upgrade problems due to older Windows versions, but mainly to keep up with their competitors or to create new opportunities. Salesforce.com and Netsuite have been delivering SaaS tools for quite some time now, RP Data (Qld based) has been providing hosted applications to Real Estate Agents in Australia since before Google was even a conceptual thought.

What is occurring now is that Google et alia. have enabled mainstream business to accept the possibilities and to assist them in enabling movement to this style of technological infrastructure. Business can rely less on their own internal teams (which can be a good thing) to build and develop tools, and retain specialist staff in IT who can administrate, innovate around the frameworks, to keep an eye out for what technology they should be using. Freeing up CIO’s to provide creative input rather than development process would be one way to drive more growth and innovation that is not just ‘maps’ but total business solutions with flexibility to work for individual businesses.

Most of us that build software (web based or not) still have the issue of making it flexible enough to allow the software to adapt to the user’s needs. Few have created anything smart enough, or alternatively easy enough, that is as simple as plug and play (or more correctly login and work), however I believe that the more mainstream large business move to this environment the more it will continue to evolve.

To me this is really what the term Converging Technology should mean – converging useful smart technology with smart useful business people. The challenge to interest or excite the minds that are steering large companies in any country, but in this context in Queensland, to smarten up their businesses, and make them more useful to their customers.

Meanwhile while I was ruminating about this, and watching many looking intently at the presentation and realising that at least Mr Suhr wasn’t dot com hyping fiction, but talking reality, I realized that if in 2008 the message is only just getting through to leaders of influence (I am generalizing of course) how would they deal with apps like twitter or skype and be able to drive Queensland in a knowledge economy which is totally reliant on technology not Draglines and Hotels?

Here I was twittering messages from the table that were instantly appearing from my phone via SMS to the www, and listening to how business needs to understand hosted applications. I felt strangely young at a time I definitely don’t feel it. Afterwards I was thinking that at future presentations how useful a sms to twitter app could be for sending the highlights to my staff or colleagues in real time and retain the key salient points for future reference. This to me is the type of thinking that can create innovative ways to empower and educate quicker and to enable a business to move faster.

Tonight when checking my messages before writing this post and reflecting on the session, I heard a voice-mail from a colleague, who said that he had heard on ABC radio driving to work this morning a story about Twitter, so now he would have to find something new to play with as if the ABC was twittering then it was definitely too ‘uncool’ now. Perhaps true but then I thought if he listens to ABC radio cool isn’t really something he should have any judgement on. *deleting his entry from my address book as we speak*.

Here we were moving on from such technology at a time when many businesses don’t even understand what it is.

Queensland Leaders is a great concept, as it ensures that business knowledge and skills needed to assist growing companies is available. Time is running out though where the Leaders and Mentors don’t fully understand technology. In a knowledge economy using technology and IP are all that matter, as there are no geography or physical items to protect. More minds with youth and comprehension about the knowledge side of the economy need to learn the business skills of the older leaders so that we can be prepared for the next 20-50 years

Message to note: Technology is business now, in a knowledge economy the 2 must converge and not be considered separate elements!