Most “IT Pro’s” in Australia actually have little to none creative or developmental capacity.

Looking over assets listings for a client I see countless line items for software, where tens of thousands of dollars have been spent on software that have better Open Source or SaaS alternatives available.

Discussions on LinkedIn boards talk about “What is best software for this?  Which vendor?”  Hardly a conversation about how “This is great” or “Or I used this library with this project and solved this problem while not spending $$ and adding to our own IP collection”.

It seems IT workers in this country are glorified order (procurement) takers and givers?  And those that actually can to the work and be creative are stuck at the bottom of the food chain and never listened too.

Is this how Silicon Alley or Valley works?  Or how Eastern Europe has surged forward? Or China, India and the Philippines?

Australia – you need to embrace INNOVATION and self driven productivity and not being glorified LEGO builders (NBN!!).  Otherwise I can’t see how Australia will have any IT industry left over?

And the next person that states that Australia or the way we do it has something to do with better “Quality” I am going to brain them for being so naive and self delusional.

And where is all the Open Source fun?  The JAVA and Python and Perl and what not?  Everything seems to be .Net and Microsoft.   I’m not silly enough to enquire about Ruby or Rails though.  :-s

The McDonalds of IDC’s?

I mean that in a good way.  I can see why they offer such a compelling IDC choice for many companies.  From being carrier neutral, easy cross connects, standardised security and operational procedures – heck even the free wifi is based on the same docket printing and login system.

While I give kudos to EQUINIX Sydney for providing a couch area with TV, ping pong, food and coffee.  I must say that charging people for a cup of machine coffee is a little on the tight side.  The showers are a nice touch – but LG DATACOM in Seoul still takes the cake as the best IDC that “Gets it” when it comes to poor nocturnal IT staff.  They provide a mini hotel/dormitory area where you can also catch some sleep in private while that massive rsync finishes or your team works in shifts to complete work within the downtime window.

- Grid Computing

- China wide redundant “Storage Fabric”

- China Optimised International and Local Routing

- Geographic IP and IDC Failover

- More thin client goodness

BTW – never use Windows Server 2008. It sucks. It has “VISTA” written all over it….literally in all the help files and what not. It is a true dog of an OS…but the Terminal Services support is WAAAAAY better. Not that W2K3 was bad – this is just even more fluid – especially under virtualisation.

Will update soon.

Difference is, they are still paying too much $$$$ to over paid western IT staff that really don’t do any serious Computer Science or R+D. That’s where China comes in! Global economy people, get with it, or get left behind. Times they are a changing, as is technology. Put these two together and one had better not get too comfortable in their own job in this industry and this day and age.

I can’t believe that in Australia some IT workers still claim 100+ K salaries. While that is fine for a capable and experienced business analyst, but a web developer or any kind of programmer in general?? Desktop support staff? DBA’s? That is the real danger to this industry, over paid, self important IT geeks who believe that IT can only be done well in the west and that everything that comes out of India, Korea, Brazil or China must be dodgy or below quality.

FUD.

Some people are in for a rude shock in the coming years. Especially those without a diversified skill set that reaches beyond tech or who can’t fluently speak at least one foreign language (Chinese or Spanish being ideal candidates).