SYDNEY, April 13 Asia Pulse - Australian businesses need to begin preparing now for dynamic shifts in the way they interact with technology and customers, prompted by the growth of computing, faster networks and data capacity, Australia's largest telco says.
Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX:TLS) chief technology officer Dr Hugh Bradlow made the comments in a Sydney speech on `disruptive' technology.
This is a technology that changes so rapidly that it disrupts current planning.
"The way in which we ran information and communication technology (ICT) in the 20th Century is not the way we need to do it in the 21st Century," Dr Bradlow told an American Chamber of Commerce in Australia luncheon on Wednesday.
Dr Bradlow said the rise of cloud computing - the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet to store, manage, and process data - would lead to growth in the outsourcing of core ICT functions such as security and networks, that had been conducted in-house until now.
"Businesses need to start thinking about which aspects of their business are core in terms of their ICT capabilities and look for the opportunities to outsource those to organisations that specialise in that," he said.
Telstra already operates data centres in Sydney and Melbourne as well as media centres in various states that can deliver online content in a more cost-effective and efficient manner.
To run an operational security group with 300 to 400 employees that specialise in the area would be difficult for any organisation to replicate, Dr Bradlow said.
"But we can serve people out of our clouds with that capability at a margin that makes it much more cost effective for the organisation we are serving and more importantly much more secure."
Dr Bradlow said the second major shift was already underway as customers altered the way they interacted with businesses.
"It surprised me that last year, it suddenly dawned on all the retailers that their customers were going online," he said.
"The fact is that Gen Y is leading the way in terms of how they interact with businesses."
He said the challenge for the ICT industry was to provide the infrastructure to support the required data volumes and speeds because the rise in data capacity was not matched by a rise in revenue.
Dr Barlow said disruptive technologies could be harnessed to solve existing problems like energy efficiency, transport congestion and managing healthcare for an ageing population.
(AAP) nt 13-04 1835
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