Two Salesforce partners are merging to create a larger development house for enterprise applications based on the Salesforce's enterprise platform-as-a-service solution, Force.com.
The entity - CloudSmiths - is a South African consultancy and development business which brings together Cape Town-based SFD Consulting, and Johannesburg-based Vistar.
Stephen Moore, director of SFD, explains both companies have extensive IT and Salesforce skills, and backgrounds in various industries. The benefit of the merger is the ability to cross-skill Salesforce and industry-specific experience.
"Our combined experience and certification levels will allow CloudSmiths to improve its partnership level with Salesforce above what we could achieve alone. We are also committed to growing and developing new skills in the market and the larger business makes this more practical," says Derek Hughes, Vistar founder.
According to Moore, a few years ago, SA was lagging behind regions such as North America and Europe, but there has been a huge uptake in cloud technologies in the past three years.
"I feel that, sadly, many South African businesses still do too many manual tasks in the IT realm. Data and business processes are still not centralised enough, resulting in wasted time and energy," says Moore.
Hughes, however, believes it's still relatively early days for SA's move to the cloud, and there will be much more investment in cloud solutions over the next five years. "Some pioneers have been leading the way for years, but the bulk of companies we talk to have made little or no headway into the cloud."
Moore notes the main challenge facing organisations is adoption. Users don't like change, no matter what the technology is; but with the right training, this can be overcome.
This is supported by Hughes, who believes there is a natural resistance to change, and the move to the cloud is a major change both in technology and attitude.
"The idea that we don't have direct control over our servers, systems and data is foreign to many South African businesses, particularly among the traditional internal IT teams."
He adds business leaders will grasp the benefits of the cloud and IT will have to adjust to stay relevant. This pressure will force a change in the role of IT.
"We are focusing on three defined market segments currently: IT and other high-tech businesses; medium sized clients with custom requirements; and existing Salesforce customers who need help to optimise their implementations and improve their ROI," Hughes explains.
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