The South African shortage in Web development skills can be circumvented with the Concerto Web development kit, which the Business Unusual Group has made available on the local market.
"The official emigration figures for last year are put at 10 000 skilled people," says Dion Retief, CEO of Business Unusual. "This is worrying, as people who qualify to emigrate usually have high-level skills, which are in demand overseas - and sorely needed locally.
"This is particularly so in the IT sector, where we find South African skills in major companies all over the world," says Retief.
With this issue in mind, Business Unusual sought out an e-commerce-related solution that could help local companies keep up, technologically speaking, with the best companies in the world, while still dealing with the reality of the brain drain.
"The answer was to obtain a Web development tool which did not require a high level of skills or Java programmers to operate," says Retief.
Developed by UK-based Xoology Software, Concerto has been commercially available for two years and has been rated as one of the top Web development tools by the Butler Group in London.
The Concerto kit includes Wysiwyg tools, which allow auto generation of Java and other programming languages, application servers, Web servers and reusable templates.
Concerto also allows entry-level IT specialists to gain a foothold in the industry, and to build their skills up by following the examples included in the kit. "It can be used by entry-level developers or major multi-national corporations," says Retief, adding that a fully functioning free version is available for download from Xoology`s Web site.
"Not only does the instant Web development tool create highly competitive and technically complex applications, but by studying the resultant coding, people will be able to uplift themselves, thereby increasing our local talent pool," adds Retief.
Business Unusual has run a number of pilot training projects with Concerto, and found that in less than two weeks, a person with basic IT knowledge was producing Web applications comparable to any in the world, in terms of interactivity, security and technical complexity.
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