Local technology market trends to watch in 2021
2020 was the year that taught Melbournians a thing or two about resilience and managing unexpected situations. But what does 2021 hold?
No doubt it’ll be another year of surprises, but hopefully good ones!
We looked at growing trends, market nuances, and dialogue with clients and candidates late last year and in the early part of this one.
In no particular order, this is what we deduced;
Cloud
With Amazon rolling out a new Data Centre in 2022 and Google rolling out their GCP centre later in 2021, their Sales and A/M teams will be working overtime to get new customers and partners on board.
We’ll expect to see local cloud consulting firms boost their Architect/Consultant stocks as customers choose local businesses to manage and roll out their migration projects.
From national household brands to niche locals, expect to see Architects feeling the love this year. The niche local firms will need to find ways to compete with the big boys. Equity may well play a part in that.
Cyber Security
The fear of cyber attacks and a general market acknowledgment of the importance of Security will see this market become flooded with opportunities. The advent of 5G, multi-factor authentication, and cloud security initiatives will see demand continue to outstrip supply, pushing salaries and contract rates higher.
Expect to see the launch of a Security Training business in a similar vein to the training available through A Cloud Guru.
Distributed workforces will not be the new normal
We’ve all had to get used to working remotely and in distributed teams. Some have adapted positively to this whilst others have struggled. There’ll always be edge cases, but our anecdotal dialogue shows that a desire to reinvigorate relationships away from screens is important to the majority. In mid-2020 we were being told that the commercial real estate industry was in peril because distributed work was going to be the new norm. We don’t agree, but we do think that…
Truly flexible work is here to stay
Whilst we may want to socialise again, we’ve also got used to a certain way of life. Having the flexibility to work 2 -3 days a week from home is the ideal scenario for a lot of knowledge workers. We’ve also spent most of 2020 proving that we don’t have to be in the office 5 days a week. So why would we? We’re expecting to see truly flexible work arrangements become major selling points and part of highly attractive EVPs.
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
"Companies will be focusing on becoming more efficient internally and I think a lot of them will be loath to make the large expenses they see associated with AI or ML."
We spoke to a long-term friend of Crew, Tasman Murray, Managing Partner/Co-Founder at Holistic Analytics about his predictions for AI/ML in 2021. “I think 2020 has left us with a few issues, especially in large businesses.
What this means from what I can see is a lot of businesses are pulling away from investing in new complicated things. They are still worried about the virus, are worried about what they can do to stop sales dropping even when they did well out of 2020.
I think you will see a focus on products, on customer experience, and oddly on stores where companies should be focusing on improving their digital experience and bringing that in line with everything else. Companies will be focusing on becoming more efficient internally and I think a lot of them will be loath to make the large expenses they see associated with AI or ML. You will see CTOs more likely to push AI/ML solutions and CEOs more likely to push back on it. It really depends on how the rest of the C-Suite falls”
Mid-level full-stack developers
Are feeling like gods…..the most in-demand tech role in the universe Melbourne will continue to be just that. With engineering teams under more pressure than ever because of the “digitisation” of normal services, the mid-level engineers who can work autonomously and have a commercial understanding in order to solve the right problems, will be the most sought-after.
Expect to see the definition of mid-level become very fuzzy. But the pay rates rise.
So there you have it, maybe we’ll revisit this in December and see how far off we were? What do you think will happen this year and why?
