Johannesburg, 25 Jan 2008
Benjamin Mophatlane, CEO of Business Connexion, foresees more consolidation in the ICT sector, as software and hardware vendors merge to grow their offerings. He says this is definitely a global trend, as evidenced by Oracle making 10 acquisitions over the past couple of years, and IBM buying Cognos.
"I can't say how quickly it is going to happen in the South African market, but the increasing competition ICT companies are facing is definitely driving them towards this," he says.
Mophatlane believes that Tata Consultancy Services' entry into the South African market will be felt. "The skills they are bringing into the country will make a significant impact." He believes the general shortage of ICT skills across the globe is also a key driving force in encouraging consolidation.
"From a telecommunications perspective, I believe Telkom is facing increased pressure, with MTN and Vodacom moving towards implementing their own fibre optic networks, and the entry of Neotel," says Mophatlane. Technological advances such as WiMax also mean that there are alternatives to diginet lines. "One market force to keep an eye on is definitely Google," he says. Google has changed the landscape of the market significantly through its latest offerings.
"Organisations such as Business Connexion, which are running state-of-the-art data centres, are well poised in terms of new services they can offer their clients," he says.
According to Mophatlane, there is a significant increase in investment in setting up reliable and robust data centres. "The way in which we will package services for our clients will definitely change going forward and these services will be contracted differently," he says. Services on-demand is the catch-phrase in the industry.
"Through on-demand, we can deliver scalable, reliable services that provide our clients with true economies of scale. The change is very exciting and will be of tremendous benefit to our clients," he adds.
But what keeps the industry exciting? "I believe the ICT sector provides young people with an exciting opportunity to be innovative and to drive change."
Mophatlane sees ICT as the glue that holds everything together - the backbone to the global economy. "Innovation keeps it going and provides the opportunity to continually learn new things," he says. He believes that the industry is maturing, but that it still provides a lot of new opportunities. "The constant change in the industry means it never becomes stale - new revenue models are emerging, new technologies are being developed and to be honest, if it is excitement you want, this industry is the answer," he concludes.
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