Atlassian to push ahead with 40-storey tech hub
According to Mike Cannon-Brookes ‘the easiest building to cancel is one that you haven’t built yet.’
Hello and welcome to The Download, The Australian’s technology blog for the latest tech news.
David Swan 4.05pm: Atlassian to push ahead with 40-storey tech hub
Tech company Atlassian will push ahead with its multi-billion dollar plan for a new 40-storey Sydney tech hub, with co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes declaring that it would have been easy to pull the pin, but that physical offices will still be important in a post COVID-landscape.
Speaking in conversation with Slack chief executive Stewart Butterfield, Mr Cannon-Brookes said “the easiest building to cancel is one that you haven’t built yet.”
“That’s part of what we’re saying with ‘TEAM Anywhere’; we will need to provide office spaces for some employees. Some people will work from home, right, this is about choice. And it’s about norms. There are a lot of people who still want to come into the office,” Mr Cannon-Brookes told virtual attendees.
“We are still going to have offices and physical locations, whether they end up looking a lot more like collaborative co-shared workspaces, with larger amounts of office space for collaboration activities and meeting rooms for one on ones, we have an opportunity in the building to reshape what we put inside it, if we think differently about the future of work.
“It will take 4000 people and even if half of the company in Sydney is working from home by the time it’s finished. My guess is it’s pretty full, pretty quickly.”
As The Australian reported in June Atlassian will be the key tenant of what they say will be the world’s tallest hybrid timber building.
Co-CEO Scott Farquhar told The Australian the precinct would be a home to future generations of Australians who might otherwise take their great ideas overseas.
The building will be designed by New York-based architects SHoP, who will work in conjunction with Australian outfit BVN. Atlassian said the project will be about 40 storeys high, using a timber design with a glass and steel facade.
Slack boss Stewart Butterfield said at the Wednesday event his biggest advice to other entrepreneurs was to “never waste a crisis.”
“Really, there’s never going to be a time, I hope, in our lifetimes where changes as cheap as it is now,” he said.
“Things that I regret most over the past few years... are not reorganising in a way that makes the most sense, because people don’t like reorganising. The fear of change [is] an inhibitor to the kinds of things you should be doing.
“This is the time to pull that off, and look at anything you were doing in the old world that was inefficient, or didn‘t work for employees, or customers, and changing it.
“It‘s not that the crisis is somehow a good thing but it does create opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise exist, so take advantage of that and move quickly to make the changes you always wanted to.”
Chris Griffith 1.00pm: ABC rebuilds iview app
The ABC has rebuilt and redesigned its iview app to cater to modern TVs and large screen devices.
It says the new app promises a cleaner and more accessible interface, personalised features and program previews. It features adaptive video streaming to improve the quality of streaming over slower network connections.
Audiences can link their TV and ABC account and have these features synchronised across multiple devices, including smart TVs, connected TVs, desktops, smartphones and tablet devices.
The app will be available for Samsung TVs running Samsung Tizen 2016 and later, Hisense TVs (2017 and later) and LG TVs operating webOS 1.0 and above. The ABC says the new app will come to HbbTV/FreeviewPlus devices, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
It says 2020 Hisense TVs remotes will include a dedicated ABC iview button and iview will carry content from all ABC TV live streams.
David Swan 11.30am: BuildKite raises $28m
Melbourne-based technology start-up BuildKite has landed a $28m funding round, giving it a total valuation of more than $200m.
The company, which describes its tech as the “fastest and most secure way to test and deploy software at any scale”, already has more than 30,000 engineers using its continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform.
“A good litmus test for how well a company is run is their approach to CI/CD,” BuildKite CEO and co-founder Lachlan Donald said.
“When CI/CD doesn’t work, it shows throughout the entire organisation - teams slow down, products are delayed and customers turn elsewhere. We want every company to feel confident in their ability to test, build and release software as fast as possible. BuildKite helps companies achieve breakthroughs by giving them the ability to scale and have absolute trust that they are releasing the best software.”
The funding round was led by venture capital outfit OpenView.
“The needs for scale today are completely different from the needs for scale yesterday,” said Mackey Craven, Partner, OpenView.
4“The global pandemic and the resulting economic uncertainty underlines the importance for companies to maximise efficiencies and build for growth. As the world continues to build digital-first applications, we believe BuildKite’s unique approach will be the new enterprise standard of CI/CD and we’re excited to be supporting them in realising this ambition.”
Chris Griffith 11.15am: Cognizant appoints ANZ chief
Global IT services provider and consultant Cognizant has appointed Jane Livesey as CEO for Australia and New Zealand.
The company has offices in Sydney and Melbourne and specialises in the artificial intelligence, cloud, digital engineering, and the internet of things fields. It says it offers its services to some of the world’s leading organisations.
In a statement today, Cognizant says the 46-year-old Ms Livesey previously worked for PwC, where she led the technology consulting practice in Australia, consisting of more than 800 technology, digital and cyber professionals. She also served on the CEO Strategy, Consulting and Global Technology leadership teams.
Before PwC, she was the ANZ technology group managing director at Accenture for 12 years. In this role, she developed and led large technology practices in Australia and Asia-Pacific and oversaw 2,700 employees and more than $1 billion of annual revenue, says Cognizant.
Ms Livesey is a recognised advocate for women in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics).
“We are delighted to welcome Jane to Cognizant,” says Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries.
Chris Griffith 11.00am: Belkin releases high capacity power banks
Belkin has announced new power bank products, and they include a 20,000mAh charger that it says will recharge a laptop through a USB-C cable.
Belkin says the Power Bank 20K ($129.95) can provide an additional 9 hours operation to a MacBook, up to 28 hours to an iPad, and up to 77 hours to a smartphone.
The Boost Charge Power Bank 10K ($84.95) offers up to 36 hours of extra battery life to a smartphone, and has a retractable stand for your phone so that you can game, stream or scroll as it charges. It can power two devices simultaneously.
Belkin says it is discounting its power bank range by 30 per cent until September 9 in the lead up to Father’s Day (online code DAD30).
Chris Griffith 9.15am: Apple to terminate Fortnite accounts
Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, says Apple has informed it that this Friday it will terminate all Epic developer accounts on the Apple platform. This follows Apple’s decision to remove Fortnite from the Apple app store.
Epic, in a tweet, says it is seeking a court injunction to stop the move. Removing developers from the Apple platform will cripple Epic’s ability to further develop and maintain the Fortnite platform on Apple devices.
The injunction application asks the court to restrain Apple from removing, delisting, refusing to list or otherwise making unavailable Fortnite, including any updates. It also asks the court to restrain Apple from restricting, suspending, or terminating any Epic entity from Apple’s developer program.
8.45am: Zoom expands into Asia
Zoom Video Communications has opened a new data centre in Singapore, its first in southeast Asia.
Use of Zoom’s video conferencing services has surged as huge numbers of people across the world work from home because of coronavirus curbs, but the company has also come under fire over privacy and security issues.
The Singapore data centre, through which the company’s users in southeast Asia can connect, brings its total to 18 sites globally.
Reuters
8.00am: Trump backs an Oracle TikTok bid
US President Donald Trump says Oracle Corporation is a good company and could take over popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok in the United States, after he issued an order mandating its sale in 90 days.
The remarks came after Oracle joined some of the investors of TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, in pursuing a bid for the short-video app’s operations in North America, Australia and New Zealand.
Reuters
Chris Griffith 7.45am: Review: Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G
Samsung’s new Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G smartphone comes with enticing new software, delivers superb battery life, has one of the best displays in the business, and has a powerful and fully featured back facing camera system.
This year’s Note20 models are the first premium handsets that Samsung has released since the pandemic. It released its other premium handset, the S20 series, just as COVID-19 was taking hold, and suffered a sales decline for what was bad timing.
Some of the most interesting changes to the Note this time involve software.
If you are a handwriting fiend, you can scribble in Samsung Notes with the S Pen and in one press, the phone will convert your writing into typed text that you can save and copy into other applications. I found this worked, provided your writing is readable.
This phone has tighter integration with Microsoft products, which is useful if you have a Windows PC. Apart from using Office 360 apps, you can scan a QR code with your phone that lets you manage your phone on your Windows PC.
Why that Valentine’s Day gift might head back to the shop
Australians returned more than $11m in gifts, or 88,600 items, in the fortnight after Christmas and it could be down to people cashing in what they can to make ends meet, a data collector says.
CEO still MIA as Richard White is back with a vengeance
WiseTech says it is progressing with its search for a new chief, as Richard White wastes no time settling into his new $1m a year consulting role at the company he took some brief leave from.