An exclusive restaurant in London that counts Madonna and other celebrities as regular patrons recently commissioned a Durban IT company to develop a booking system for the fancy diner.
So, out of their offices in Morningside, programmers at the Web and software design company, Pilotfish, plotted a system that gives movie stars and their mates preference over your Average Joe in any booking arrangement.
It`s great for the stars of the silver screen and the commoners who idolise them: the former get to eat their designer lettuce leaves when they want to and a few of the latter get to ogle them doing it.
For Adam Shapiro it is one of a host of interesting Internet jobs that pays the bills.
Five years ago he, Hannes Bantjes and a couple of buddies started Pilotfish designing local Web sites.
Since then the business has grown and the company counts blue chip clients like Unilever. It has also designed Web sites for companies abroad.
Apart from the London restaurant, Pilotfish has also developed Microsoft specific technology for a company in the US and has designed an online recruitment tool for accounting giant Deloitte.
Deloitte is an employer sought after by accounting and financial job seekers, particularly graduates. It receives thousands of applications and CVs annually.
Pilotfish created "Swordfish" to automatically collate and assess the applications, so its staff no longer had to wade through a pile of letters, faxes and e-mails.
Deloitte said many applicants had complained about lack of response with the old system and didn`t know where they stood in the recruitment process.
Shapiro said Swordfish arranged the applicant data in a common, organised and measurable format so submissions could be defined according to recruitment requirements.
Applicants can see the progress of their application online.
"Since we installed the new system we have experienced exponential improvements in the efficiencies of our processes," said Deloitte`s Lianne Sipsma.
Pilotfish was recently chosen to participate in a programme funded by the Netherlands government to provide marketing and networking assistance to South African businesses dealing with European companies.
Shapiro said Durban was developing as a "mini-IT" hub in South Africa because of the presence of a few big, internationally renowned technology companies that created a market for others.
"The value of IT solutions are being appreciated by businesses and the bigger IT companies in Durban have helped put the city on the map as good lifestyle destination that attracts talented programmers who chose quality of life over mad money and the rat-race."
A "Pilotfish" is small fish found in warm waters like those off Durban. It swims alongside larger sea creatures in a symbiotic relationship, a fitting analogy for his company, said Shapiro.
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