Holway's whizz through the decades of ICT

On 5^th Oct 16, I organised the Prince’s Trust ICT Leaders of the Last 40 Years Dinner. It was attended by over 100 of the ICT Leaders from the 1960s to the present day. Indeed representative CEOs from each decade gave short presentations.

The evening started with my own gallop through the decades which I thought TechMarketView's HotView's readers might be interested in reading. It went as follows:

I’m an ANALYST. I used to be the LEADING UK ICT analyst. In 2000, the FT christened me the @WISEGREYOWL (now my Twitter 'handle') as my many warnings of the dot.com crash came to pass. Now I guess my only claim to fame is to be OLDEST UK ICT Analyst!

1969

So let me start by looking at the UK ICT Industry in the 1960s – 1969 to be precise. Valued at not much more than £2b, it was dominated – over 70% - by Communications which itself was dominated by FIXED LINE VOICE, where the POST OFFICE – the forerunner to BT – had a monopoly. Hardware was dominated by IBM, the newly formed amalgam called ICT and the rest of the BUNCH (which none of today’s generation can name let alone remember)

For most of the 60s, there were essentially no software packages. There were consultancies and bureau. But SITS- Software & IT Services - companies were being born. Eg Freelance Programmers in 1962 (big welcome to Dame Stephanie Shirley tonight), Hoskyns in 1964 – which took six years to before it celebrated £1m turnover 1970. All the way through to Logica and Systems Designers in 1969.

1985

Fast forward 25 years to 1985. BT was starting to face competition in Telecomms – which was to become even more  intense with the advent of  mobile. Hardware really did rule the day as minis from DEC and HP found favour with ever smaller businesses and the PC revolution took hold which was eventually to put a computer on every desk. But the biggest change was in SITS as cheaper hardware demanded cheaper solutions and the software package came of age. But bespoke systems, third party hardware maintenance and, the incredible growth in outsourcing, boosted that sector greatly.

Top Ten SITS Providers in 1985

I published my first Holway Report in 1988 using 1985 as my base point. The table shows  the Top Ten SITS suppliers to the UK market as in the first Holway Report. With the exception of IBM, they were ALL UK HQed. Turn the clock forward 30 years to today and they have all been acquired by global players! This tale of our biggest and best tech players being acquired by global players continues to this day. It could all have been so different!

Today

Fast forward again to today. At £110b, the UK ICT market in 2015 was 50x bigger than in 1969. Rampant competition has meant that Telecomms has actually not only reduced its share of the ICT pie but of GDP. We are getting more and more comms for less and less as anyone who digs out their mobile, broadband and voice bills from 2000 and compares them to today’s will find. Maybe it really is the bargain of the Century!

But the same applies to hardware. In particular consumer hardware is cheap, easy to use and reliable. Another amazing revolution.

Today, SITS is the biggest sub sector at over 40%. It’s ironic that the shared data centre/bureaux concept of the 1960s disappeared in favour of on premise hardware and has now gone full circle to the Cloud and SaaS! Thomas Watson Jr of IBM in 1943 said ‘I think there is a world market for about five computers’. Oh how we all laughed! Well maybe he wasn’t wrong afterall. Let’s just hope that all five aren’t owned by Amazon!

But tech is not just ICT. The digital economy, where perhaps the UK really does lead, would add at least another £60b to the total if you add digital and social media, gaming and e-commerce provisioning etc. That’s c10% of the UK’s GDP!

Indeed, you could argue that every business is now a tech business – from the banks and airlines to every online store. We are indeed a Digital Nation – in a Digital World in the Digital Age

And we/YOU all made it happen!

Look out for Part Two of my presentation on Tuesday - The Shape of Things to Come.

Posted by Richard Holway at '10:42'