Well, I’m not an economist and even less interested in politics. But UK exiting the EU is huge. I have several friends and acquaintances who have migrated to the UK in the last few years – more job opportunities, meritocracy and higher wages. This could all change very soon. But this is one aspect, the other one I’m thinking of is about the IT industry from both the UK and EU standpoints.
Cloud computing
The first problem I can see with Brexit is data locality. We already have this problem in Europe but now it’s even more present. The EU is smaller and the UK has become more distant.
How many European enterprises will put their data in the UK now? I’m sure less than today. Eventually, the UK will no longer be regulated by the EU and privacy laws could change and become more US friendly.
Many EU countries still have a lot of restrictions about data sovereignty and locality and this will not help the UK cloud business at all.
Wages and skills
One of the consequences of Brexit will regard immigration. Currently in the EU, people can move without limitations across countries and do business wherever they please. In the future it will be much harder and many Europeans will be forced to leave the UK.
Some Brits think that this will be a great opportunity for them… and yes, it will probably be in the short term.
The problem is that, in time, demand will not meet supply and prices will go up but quality won’t. Yes, you can retrain people and they can improve but, again, no one will want to do less interesting jobs like working in the datacenter when they can be “cloud Architect” or “Full Stack Developer” (LOL).
In any case, no matter how you look at it, this will increase costs, and nowadays this is the most valuable, as well as most critical, resource in a datacenter…
European HQs in Britain… really?
What will happen to all EU vendor HQs? I suppose the larger organizations will find a way to manage. But I’m not sure if it will come at the expense of UK employees… would you manage EU operations from a non European country? I don’t think so…
At the same time, startups consider the UK to be the first EU country to start operations in for many reasons: language, market size, the nearest country to the US but already in the EU. Will it be the same in the future? Or will the UK become the 51st US state, just an extension of the US, from the sales/tech operations point of view? At this point, Northern Europe will probably be the favored… And that goes for investments too: if you want to open an R&D site in the EU, maybe to take advantage of some EU incentives, well then… UK is no longer in the EU.
Closing the circle
Once again, I’m not an economist, I’m just trying to use common sense here. This looks like a possible IT outcome for the UK after Brexit (I also have to add that, probably, European IT will see a lot o negative consequences from Brexit too). I could be wrong and the contrary could happen: no one cares about locality in the EU, spending more to have less from human resources will become more common and vendors will start to manage their operations differently. Or, maybe I’m right and I’ve just put forth three examples from a long list.
I’m an Europeanist, I like Europe and I know it has a great number of flaws… I know it urgently needs major reforms but I prefer being in the EU rather than in a smaller country. If nothing else, for the opportunities.
In any case, feel free to leave a comment, this is just my opinion and I’d like to know what others think!
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Excellent points IMHO (way better than the clueless analisys by Gartner). One thing comes to mind re: european HQs: need an english-speaking, european, eu country? Ireland has a huge potential here to (re)gain attractivity as the country of choice.
I think that the “winners” of globalization are minority, and Brexit is the response of those excluded, that saw EU workers come to UK to take “their” job for a lower wage , or force them to take that job for that lower amount.
When you talk about IT industry also consider that it’s a mix of employers, workers, stakeholders, States , everyone with it’s different [class] interest and desires.. as Warren Buffet said,
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Perhaps with Brexit his class lose, this time.
Good points in this article. The only thing that’s certain at this point is uncertainty. Enterprises will will all be faced with making organizational and investment decisions long before the governments have a chance to enact new regulatory and trade frameworks. With this in mind, *agility* should be the mantra for all IT managers…the ability to move data and applications easily around the globe to insulate against regulatory shocks. That in-turn should drive more investment in dev-ops type development to accelerate the move to cloud-enabled workloads. Could there be industry opportunity in all this mess?
Agility AND vision!!! Like it or hate it, this has happened. Sit around doing the big bellied buddha figure contemplating our belly-buttons, OR, and I advocate this, look at the realities, apply a little thought, a little strategic thinking, and vision, then march forth with a renewed vigour and adaptive approach. [exit stage right, muttering to self…wonder where an old platform/ship would be and what regulations – the Radio Caroline of Data hosting???