Australia Day seems like a good time to think about how Australian technology decisions are overwhelmingly influenced by what’s happening in Silicon Valley. We deploy American cloud platforms, use American SaaS tools, follow American technology trends, and generally treat US technology choices as defaults.

This makes some sense. The US technology market is larger, more mature, and more innovative in many areas. American companies benefit from scale advantages that Australian vendors can’t match. Integration ecosystems form around dominant US platforms.

But we’ve become so reflexively oriented toward US technology that we’re not even evaluating whether local alternatives might be better for our specific needs. And we’re missing opportunities to support a domestic technology sector that could serve Australian requirements more effectively.

The Default to US Platforms

I can’t remember the last time we evaluated an Australian SaaS product against an American competitor. The evaluation is usually American Product A versus American Product B. Local vendors don’t even make the shortlist.

Part of this is perception. American vendors feel safer because everyone else is using them. Nobody got fired for buying Salesforce, even if it’s overpriced and overcomplicated for your needs. Australian vendors feel riskier because they’re less established.

Investors reinforce this. When we present technology decisions to our board, using recognizable US brand names is reassuring. Proposing an Australian alternative requires justification. Why would we use a local vendor when the global leader is available? The burden of proof is backwards.

This creates a self-fulfilling cycle. Australian vendors can’t get enterprise customers because they’re not proven at scale. They can’t prove scale without enterprise customers. So they either stay small, get acquired by foreign companies, or relocate to the US.

What We’re Missing

There are Australian technology companies solving local problems well. MYOB has been doing accounting software for Australian small businesses for decades. Atlassian built developer tools that now dominate globally, though they had to move headquarters to the US to scale.

In areas where Australian requirements are distinctive, local vendors often serve us better. Our privacy laws are different. Our banking regulations are unique. Our tax system is complex in ways that don’t map to US assumptions. Software built for the Australian context handles these nuances better.

Data sovereignty is becoming more important. Storing data in Australian data centers with Australian legal jurisdictions matters for regulated industries and government agencies. Many US cloud providers offer Australian regions now, but control still ultimately rests with American parent companies subject to US legal requirements.

Local support and time zones matter more than we admit. Trying to get support from a US vendor when their business hours are midnight-8am Sydney time is frustrating. Australian vendors respond during Australian business hours. That’s worth something.

The Innovation Question

The harder question is innovation. Are Australian technology companies genuinely innovative, or are we mostly building local versions of ideas that succeeded in the US first?

Honestly, it’s mixed. Some Australian companies are doing genuinely novel things. Others are clear copies of US models adapted for the local market. Both have value, but they’re different propositions.

Where Australian innovation tends to be strong is in applying technology to local problems. We’ve done interesting work in agricultural technology, mining automation, and financial services innovation. These are domains where Australia has unique requirements and strong existing industries.

Where we’re weaker is in creating entirely new technology categories. The “build a global platform company” model generally requires relocating to the US to access capital, talent, and markets at scale. That’s not necessarily wrong, but it means the benefits accrue elsewhere.

The Enterprise Comfort Zone

Part of our bias toward US technology is that enterprise IT is conservative. We prefer boring, proven solutions over innovative but risky alternatives. American megavendors feel boring and proven. Australian startups feel risky.

This conservatism has costs. We pay more for features we don’t need because we’re buying enterprise software packages designed for global corporations. We tolerate poor local support because the global vendor is too big to provide personalized service. We accept that our data flows through systems we don’t control.

And we miss opportunities to shape products around our needs. When you’re a strategic customer of an Australian vendor, they’ll customize for you. When you’re customer number 47,853 of a US megavendor, you get what everyone gets.

Government and Procurement

Australian government procurement could support local technology if it wanted to. Instead, government IT projects often explicitly prefer “established vendors with proven track records at scale,” which effectively means foreign megavendors.

Some procurement frameworks are trying to change this. The Digital Marketplace creates pathways for smaller vendors. Various state and federal programs provide preferences for Australian companies. But the default is still toward large foreign vendors.

This matters because government contracts can be foundational for technology companies. The US government’s early support for companies like Oracle and Microsoft helped create those industries. Australian government procurement could do the same, but mostly doesn’t.

What Enterprises Should Do

I’m not suggesting we should prefer Australian vendors purely out of nationalism. That would be bad for our own organizations. But we should at least evaluate local alternatives where they exist.

Include Australian vendors in RFP processes. Don’t automatically assume the US option is better. Evaluate on actual criteria: does it meet our requirements, what’s the total cost of ownership, how good is support, what’s the roadmap?

Consider data sovereignty explicitly. If you’re in a regulated industry or handling sensitive data, where the data is stored and who has legal access matters. This might make local hosting or local vendors more valuable.

Support Australian technology where it makes sense. When a local vendor genuinely meets your needs as well as or better than foreign alternatives, choosing them helps build Australian capability. That has long-term value for the whole ecosystem.

The Realist View

We’re not going to stop using AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. They’re excellent platforms, and the integration ecosystems around them are too valuable to abandon. Australian enterprises will continue to run primarily on US technology infrastructure.

But we could be more thoughtful about where we’re defaulting to US options out of habit versus genuine superiority. We could create more space for Australian vendors to compete. We could think more about data sovereignty and local value creation.

On Australia Day, while everyone’s arguing about the date and what the holiday means, maybe we could also think about building Australian technology capability. Not through protectionism or mandates, but through actually evaluating local options when they exist and supporting them when they’re genuinely competitive.

That requires overcoming our own risk-aversion and status-quo bias. It means being willing to be an early customer for Australian vendors doing good work. It means thinking about where our technology dollars flow and whether that serves our long-term interests.

Not every technology decision needs to consider national origin. But more of them should at least ask the question.