IBM bullish on sub-Saharan Africa

By Alex Kayle for IBM
Johannesburg, 13 Mar 2009

IBM is investing $300 million in sub-Saharan Africa over the next few years. This was announced at the IBM Smart Software Symposium, held at The Campus, in Bryanston.

Ravi Bhat, business unit executive, software group at IBM SA, gave an overview of the sub-Saharan Africa software market.

“From a software strategy point of view, the software market has changed from the middle of last year. The business world has become smaller and flatter,” says Bhat, who notes that the world is seeing mass IT integration. “Organisations need to become more insightful, more efficient and smarter in a complex world.”

Last year's unveiling of the Africa Innovation Centre is one of the larger investments made on the continent by IBM. IBM's high performance Blue Gene Supercomputer was recently announced, in which IBM coughed up $1.6 million to benefit local academic and social research projects, which include IT skills development, climate change and bio information.

Cost cutting

Bhat predicts the economic downturn is set to continue in the next two years. “In the downturn, organisations are looking to reduce costs and to make their assets more efficient.”

IBM has acquired dozens of companies in the middleware space as part of its 'on-demand strategy' in business integration and application management. According to Bhat, IBM's acquisitions are aimed at addressing the issues of improving business efficiency and saving money.

IBM Software is expected to grow by 7% this year in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, notes Bhat. “Sub-Saharan Africa has 782 million people now and this is expected to grow to 1.2 billion by 2025, and 1.7 billion by 2050. The market is asking for information, systems, infrastructure and it's focusing on transactions, and that's where the growth is expected to be.”

According to Bhat, IBM holds the number one position in the middleware space, holding 17% market share, shared with Oracle, Microsoft and EMC. Globally, IBM has 50 000 software developers, 100 000 business partners and 1 500 major products.