What the channel wants from the budget

Syd Borg, chief of PCS Australia, doesn’t care about government IT spending in the upcoming budget. There are thousands of unused computers sitting in darkened government offices, Borg said, the digital detritus of government department downsizing and staff retrenching.

And even if the government decided its departments would get a tech refresh in the budget, who’s going to benefit? Not the channel, said Borg. “It will be HP and Acer,” he said. “They’ll do a negative revenue bid just to get the business,” the outspoken Borg said.

With the Budget looming, CRN spoke to leaders in the channel about what they would like to see out of the federal budget. The picture wasn’t always rosy.

Ronnie Altit, managing director of Insentra (#7, Fast50 2012) wants to see research and development policies stay the same. “Small and medium sized business is where innovation happens,” Altit told CRN. “I don’t want to see any changes in the incentives offered to SMEs in terms of R&D.”

Cloud computing is also top of mind, with UberGlobal (#21) chief Denis Jorgensen wanting a “cloud first” policy such as is being implemented in the US and the United Kingdom.

“They have a policy to encourage government agencies look to the cloud for first option for services,” he said, “and that would be useful for our industry.”

Then again, Syd Borg doesn’t care for cloud computing either. “I don’t give a shit about the cloud,” he told CRN. “I’ll tell you what this country needs? That’s investment in manufacturing. If we had a strong manufacturing sector, you’ve got companies buying IT equipment, and the channel would prosper.

A better way for government agencies to deal with the channel, and the many SMEs making up the channel, was also top of mind for Uber’s Jorgensen. “Government can seem like a monolithic thing but it really is lots of agencies of different sizes, he said “Procurement independence, and making it easy for SMEs to deal with smaller agencies would be good.”

All the channel representatives CRN spoke to were bullish about the NBN, regardless of which political party comes to power in September. eNerds (#37) chief Jamie Warner said, “in regards to the NBN, we are hoping that whatever government is successful that the speed and quality of the NBN is not impacted negatively. 

“There are obvious disadvantages for businesses and the future adoption of cloud technologies if we do not have access to the fastest internet infrastructure long term,” he continued.

And the NBN is just the beginning, said Distribution Central’s Nick Verykios. “We missed the industrial revolution in this country,” he said. “And we missed the commercial revolution. Unless we invest in technology we’re going to miss the technology revolution. The NBN is just the start of where we need to be.”

With investment in tech, said Verykios, Australia could become a leader in datacentres and hosting. “We’re stable, we’ve got the space and the resources, but I am really worried we’re going to be left behind by a lack of vision.”

Insentra’s Ronnie Altit also had some thoughts on tax, observing that while no-one wants to pay more tax, a stepped company tax system resembling the personal tax system would be a good thing. “Basically the more the company earns, the more it pays,” he said. “Put that in place instead of industry specific taxes like the mining tax. Smaller business would pay less, and that would enable them to invest more.

“Basically anything that empowers small and medium size enterprise is a positive thing,” he added.