This year we completed our migration to Amazon Web Services, a massive technical feat that saw us transfer more than 59 billion records totalling 1.4 petabytes of data (the equivalent of about 60,000 Blu-Ray movies!).
It's a huge investment, but one I believe will set up Xero to capitalise on new technology to accelerate innovation. For example: within a month of our completed migration, we launched a chatbot called Hey Xero that connects more than 50 million small businesses who use Facebook Messenger every month with a financial expert in their area.
Expect more from us in 2017, as we use the on-demand computing power of AWS to release new software more rapidly, and experiment with these features in ways that were not possible for us before.
What are the issues affecting your industry and what impact are these likely to have over the next 12 months?
Securing people with the right type of experience for roles needed in the tech industry is still a tough thing to do. It's grown as a sector to become the second-highest export earner for our country, but the jobs needed to support that growth are still listed on the government's skills shortage list.
Tech industry leaders need to work together to attract the world's best and brightest to move here from places like Silicon Valley and London. Or, better yet, hone in on our own workforce, and support and upskill them to help fill those gaps instead.
Going into an election year, what are the three biggest issues the Government needs to solve?
I really want to see the Government focus on ways to boost regional economic development to relieve the pressure on our major cities. The demand for jobs in regional New Zealand is clearly there - since we announced Xero is opening an office in Hawke's Bay, we've had more than 300 people register their interest for a role in less than three months! Focusing on the regions like these helps the Government address another issue it needs to resolve: relieving the housing and economic pressures on our major cities.
The change to the New Zealand Curriculum in 2016 was a move in the right direction, but I'd like to see the Government build on that in an election year to put a solid plan in place with a sense of urgency around prepping our next generation workforce for jobs in tech. We're doing our bit at Xero with a world-class graduate programme, but what's the Government doing to encourage people to choose career paths in IT and technology in the first place?
What role does the business community have in tackling these problems?
If businesses talk about having strong, core values, than they need to put their money where their mouth is and prove themselves leaders in creating social and economic change. Whether that's creating jobs, focusing on diversity and inclusion, or bolstering their own industry, the business community will always have an important role to play - and there's always more we can be doing.
