The covid-19 pandemic has prompted an unprecedented global reliance on technology. Virtually overnight the workforces of entire companies have been forced to work from home and collaborate remotely while students were moved from the classroom to online learning. When orders were issued to stay at home for everything but essential tasks, people’s health, fitness and social needs also started to be met remotely. Online entertainment has boomed—in the US, TV streaming increased by 85% in the first three weeks of March 20201 while Netflix reported 15.8m new subscribers2 in the first quarter of the year, more than double its forecast for the period.
Cloud providers and large collaboration tool companies have seen significant growth, with Atlassian, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Amazon and Google all thriving. The pandemic has also sparked some remarkable innovations from both large and small tech companies. Australian owned Calumino, for example, postponed a planned rollout of thermal imaging sensors for aged care facilities and instead created a small device that sits on a tripod and measures a person’s temperature in less than a second.
When lockdown measures are eased completely and the economy begins to improve, tech companies are also poised to gain from some profound shifts in consumer behaviour. Just as SARS led to exponential growth of online marketplace platforms in China, in Australia more shoppers are now accustomed to ordering groceries and other goods online.
In this interview, Scott Farquhar, co-founder and co-CEO of software company Atlassian, discusses how a crisis such as covid-19 inspires a generation of new ideas and why Australia needs to do more to create truly global technology businesses.
