At the most basic level, New Zealanders bought 12 per cent more personal computers last year, 826,000 in total, as more people got kitted up to work from home, according to researcher IDC. Spark chief financial officer Stefan Knight says its revenues from providing IT and managed services grew 10 per cent last year to $1.1b and now make up 31 per cent of its overall sales, thanks to businesses investing more in “digital transformation” and cloud computing. Finding skilled staff, rather than finding customers, appears to be the main constraint on how large the industry can become. But it has been a wild ride for many of the mid-sized, export-oriented software firms that give the industry its special character and buzz.