The Canberra IT industry is gearing up for a boom in demand for services from government agencies, with two large firms - one multinational and one local - expanding and consolidating their Canberra offices within weeks of each other.
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Chief Minister Katy Gallagher officially opened the new Canberra offices of the nation's largest Australian-owned IT company, UXC Limited, on Wednesday, after the company outgrew its series of smaller premises and consolidated a number of service branches into one.
UXC managing director Cris Nicolli said the $370 million company, with 2600 employees across the country, had already increased its Canberra staff by about 10 per cent in the past few months and intended to expand further in coming years.
''We expect to be here for a long time,'' Mr Nicolli said. He predicted more government services would move online. ''There's a real obligation for the government to become a lot more efficient and effective in the way it deals with their consumer, their customer.''
Ms Gallagher said the IT industry represented a significant growth area for the ACT economy, and more government work would likely play a role in that. ''I think this is probably our best opportunity in the next few years, and I think these companies are always good at reading the market, and they're not expanding here without the belief that there are going to be great opportunities going forward,'' Ms Gallagher said.
''From a government point of view, the pressure to streamline and provide more capacity for our customers to engage via IT systems, and to engage quickly and in different platforms, is huge.
''It's an area of natural fit for the ACT … I think there are opportunities going forward. There's no doubt Canberra is going to face a couple of pretty difficult years the next few years, but with challenges come opportunities … businesses don't make decisions like this unless they've read the tea leaves and think there are opportunities for growth.''
UXC's consolidation comes just weeks after US multinational Verizon doubled its floor space in Canberra, and cited anticipated demand for more government work for the expansion. Verizon Australia vice-president John Karabin said the Fyshwick facility could accommodate government requirements, and was connected to the federal government's own dedicated fibre network beneath Canberra.
''We have a distinguished legacy of working with federal government agencies around the world, and this expansion is a further commitment to providing Australian enterprises and government agencies with the most secure hosting environment for their mission-critical applications,'' he said. ''The Fyshwick expansion will meet both current and future demand for data centre space in Canberra.''
IT expert Nigel Phair, a director of the Centre for Internet Safety at the University of Canberra, predicted more government data and services would be moved into ''the cloud'' - that is, stored in hardware that could be located anywhere in the world, and then made accessible via a network connection.
''There are logical savings with cloud computing … if you're an organisation of whatever size, you don't have to buy your own [equipment] … you just pay for what you use,'' Mr Phair said.
He said government agencies that wanted to move data into the hands of offshore cloud providers should carefully assess the nature of their data, and the potential risks involved with storing it in other jurisdictions.
UXC's Mr Niccoli said more significant savings could also be generated by restructuring departments and agencies and consolidating IT services locally.
''There are going to be some offshore economies that have much cheaper cost of doing business than we have here, and if governments are trying to save money they should probably evaluate those,'' Mr Nicolli said.
