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Graduate And Technology In New Zealand

How IT can best be used to improve New Zealand's economy and society in the next twenty years, and how IT graduates make their contribution to this opportunity personally

Kevin Nguyen – 25 July 2005

The Information Technology (IT) industry continues to show high growth potential. Based on updated information from the Ministry of Economic Development, the total value of the New Zealand IT industry, excluding communications services, in the 2002 financial year was estimated at $7,055 million, up 1% from the previous year, and almost twice what it was in 1994. The above figure includes single and multi users systems, hardware and software, computer services, training and education in IT (1).

The growing in IT industry also contributes to New Zealand's economy and society in terms of increasing business values, enhancing its performance and improving productivity. More and more businesses start to embrace IT to revitalize business processes, improve decision making and gain competitive advantage, especially when the competition is getting tougher every day. For instance, the impact of IT to the New Zealand forest industry is unarguable, global firm Cater Holt Harvey (CHH) has invested in wireless routers to manage its remote communications. The system manages some 6000 daily truck movements around 150 CHH logging operations. Without it, CHH would not be able to run its wood delivery management (2).
During a recent visit to New Zealand, Microsoft global vice-president Bob McDowell also emphasized " I have seen many examples of organizations using IT to support them in meeting their business challenges and I am confident to say that IT does matter"(3).

The developing of New Zealand IT industry at the present is encouraging and promising; New Zealand software is widely recognized in the global market; for instance Weatherscape XT is among New Zealand developed software recently sold to the BBC against big competitors including the US and Europe(4). According...