IT event of the year

Y2K worries

Gerrie J. de Klerk, Executive Chairman, Advanced Software Technologies - Abraxas

It must be the Y2K issue - decisions on key business applications were delayed, e-commerce projects were developed but implementation timed to go live at end of first quarter 2000, etc. This phenomenon impacted commerce and industry, and skewed the IT spend.

Pierre Joubert, CEO, The Connection Group

I regard the Y2K issue as being the most important issue facing the IT industry in 1999. I believe it has affected all IT users, both private and corporate and has had a marked affect on IT spending patterns during 1999. My view is that in many areas it has created pent up demand for IT products and solutions which we should see manifesting during the first half of next year.

Paul Booth, founder, Global Research Partners

The Dimension Data rationalisations and the two major acquisitions of Comparex and RE/COM, together with the loss from the group of EDS Afrca, must be the number one event or series of events for 1999.

Derek Kreunen, CEO of Ixchange

For the local IT industry, I think this year will go down in history as the year that South African IT companies really stepped up onto the international stage out of isolation, where international requirements drove strategies and the local market was seen as one of the global territories.

Brian Neilson, director of BMI-TechKnowledge

It is probably the continued march of local companies into the global IT sector (e.g. Didata buying Comparex in Europe, listings on Nasdaq, etc.)

South Africa is now sporting global IT companies. This is fascinating. We have an IT market that is only 0.6% of the world market, but we have technology companies that are global players.

Hand in glove with this, we have individual participants e.g. Barry Hore, Nedcor`s executive director of technology and operations being nominated as one of the World Economic Forum`s 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow.

Gordon Taylor, analyst, Merrill Lynch

My vote would be the successful move of larger local (Didata, Comparex, Datatec and Softline) companies offshore and governments lack of ratification to allow their listing offshore which has seriously impaired their continued progress.

Chris Veegh, analyst, Deutsche Morgen Grenfell

The Didata/Comparex deal was undoubtedly the most significant event affecting the local IT market this year. Definitely the largest IT deal ever done in SA (in terms of the amount paid), it has also set up DDT to become a significant international player. From CPX point of view, it marks the abandonment of a three year strategy and a slide down the relevance scale. The deal also set a new local benchmark in terms of overpaying for assets.

Johan Roets, CEO of IQ Business

The most significant event in the South African IT industry this year was the post listing, post bull run blues that has impacted severely on the small to medium listed IT companies in South Africa, both insofar as sustainable growth and delivery capabilities are concerned.

I believe that very few listed and unlisted IT companies with between 100 and 500 employees have sustainable business cases. To a large extent, insofar as the listed IT companies in this category is concerned, this sentiment has been reflected by the JSE.

Furthermore, a number of IT companies are struggling to fund their growth and greenfields ventures with operational cashflow. Raising cash in the current market is extremely expensive, with material dilution of headline earnings and EPS as a result.

On the mega scale, the "unbundling" of Comparex and Didata`s transaction will set the tone for a number of take-overs, mergers and other consolidation efforts in the industry.

Patrick Toolan, CEO of Synergy Holdings

The most significant event of `99 will have to have been the rerating of IT stocks. In bull markets people buy bullshit; the correction has made the market brown puddle paranoid. Yes, both the good and the bad were affected; but the good companies will emerge as shining stars since the skyline will not be obscured by the mushroom clouds of the riffraff.

1999 signalled the end of an extended IT boom, once the fallout has settled, the quality companies will be able to get down to doing what they do best - business, and there will be less effort spent on stroking the investor ego and more on generating investor returns.

Antonie Roux, CEO of MWeb

Internationally I would say the court ruling against Microsoft will probably go down in history as the worst technology development of the century. I am not suggesting that if Microsoft did anything wrong that the world should just accept it BUT the impact on cutting Microsoft up into baby Microsoft`s may very well have a major negative impact on the next century.

Locally 1999 was the year where we saw unprecedented growth in the Internet as well as a tremendous growth in large companies embracing the Internet. At the end of 1999 we can look back and really state that the Internet is now mainstream in South Africa.

Chris Hills, CEO, MGX

The main event for me has been the market acceptance of the principle of Web-hosting. That is, the ability of ASP`s to provide applications over the Net and the principle of information being held remotely by third parties and giving clients access to that information at their workstation, whether that information is in paper, microfilm or digital format.

Carsten Knoch, MSN Business Development, Microsoft South Africa

The most significant event during 1999 was the advent of Application Service Provision (ASP), application hosting and online rental models. While it`s been clear before throughout the IT industry that the future business model is services, not products, the growing momentum behind hosted applications is beginning to make this a reality in many people`s minds. Previously, we knew that the online economy was moving towards a transaction-based model, but hosted applications are beginning to show us concrete instances of how this may be achieved.