I'm dreaming...

Every year, just for a laugh, and more seriously, to get a rough gauge of where the country's IT spenders are headed in the new year, ITWebasks local CIOs what they would spend money on if they had an unlimited budget.

The first year we had requests ranging from low-orbit satellite communications systems to helicopters (to circumvent the traffic). Last year, our interviewees had bandwidth (as usual), licence costs, fewer vendors to deal with, business process re-engineering and making life easier on their minds.

We finished off last year's feature with: “If we take our very small sample as representative of CIOs across the board, virtualisation, security and environmental issues will definitely be receiving a lot more attention next year, as will the mobility and productivity issues.” Needless to say, we've had about as much green IT, security and virtualisation activity this year as any human could ever need. We take a look at what's up for 2009.

It would be really amazing if I could set up an environment that's a mix of Facebook and Google.

Benjamin Marais, CIO, eBucks

Surprise, surprise - perhaps not - bandwidth is once again high on the priority list. Says Neotel CTO Angus Hay: “There's little doubt that for South African companies the first priority is bandwidth and access - the ability to access more for less and the availability of services. Being a provider puts us in the unique position that we do get [bandwidth]. We got some last Christmas and it would be nice this year if customers could get some too. We need a fundamental shift in the cost equation,” he notes.

Following very closely on from his first wish, Hay's second wish is what access and availability of bandwidth would enable a far more hosted model for IT. Third up on his list is reliability of infrastructure - like electricity. “It would be nice to have reliable and available electricity for Christmas,” he says.

On the plus side, Hay says that on 1 June 2009, we'll see the introduction of the new international cables - starting with Seacom's. “If we had it today, life would be much easier. It would be nice to get [a new international cable] for Christmas. We don't yet have proper competition in the market for international bandwidth - it's not necessarily available, even if there is a degree of competition.”

And wouldn't it be nice, he asks, if we could have open VPNs to connect anywhere, anytime? “This is the promise of true convergence - the ability to be anywhere, and be connected to and able to work on your corporate network.”

Naturally, the global economic shenanigans had to get a mention. “The rand/dollar exchange rate,” says Hay, “has exposed us, and it would be nice to get a degree of stability. We're still net purchasers of IT.”

That said, he adds that it would be good if we could get a real software development and IT supply-side industry going in South Africa. “We're not really well connected enough to run cost-effective development out of South Africa.”

High on everyone's wish list, of course, is skills. “Please,” begs Hay, “as many as we can get - IT and IP [Internet protocol, not intellectual property]. We have traditional networking or traditional telecoms skills, but not nearly enough IP skills. We just don't make enough of them - that's the reality.

“In the current climate, what would be nice to have for Christmas is at least sustained growth of the IT sector in South Africa,” he adds. “The country is a little isolated from global pressures and is rapidly becoming a service-oriented economy. There's been significant IT sector growth and we wouldn't want to lose that.”

Hay's last two wishes are not quite as serious - he's after an iPhone and a holiday. Although, technically speaking, Hay does have an iPhone (with more data on it than you'd think possible); he has a more serious motive for requesting one.

“It's a very cool device that does lots of converged things. It's quite important that we start being able to leverage converged devices in the hands of corporate users. These devices are not always toys; they're business tools. We need standards-based, open access to enable enterprises to start to work in a more virtual sense.”

As for his holiday, Hay says it's been a very exciting time for Neotel coming into the market as the challenger. “We've been working very hard. All people see is trenches. We hope they see our adverts, too. We're trying hard to get services out there and we're hoping to be able to take a break over Christmas, except for the services staff, of course, who will be on duty as usual.”

If we can do the Google thing in a large enough way, we'll attract skills. If you want people to get excited, you have to give them cool toys.

Trent Rossini, COO, PruHealth

PruHealth COO Trent Rossini and eBucks CIO Benjamin Marais are both in a Google state-of-mind this Christmas.

Says Marais: “For me, it would be really amazing if I could set up an environment that's a mix of Facebook and Google. We'd need enough resources to do the day-to-day work - the business must continue, the plane is flying and we can't switch off the engines, but I'd like to be able to change engines in-flight as well as be able to give those resources the time to be creative, a la Google's concept.”

As Marais notes, Google has given the world a skewed view of the development space. The Google model, where every developer spends a dedicated amount of their time on their own ideas, is not one most corporates can emulate.

“I'd like to create an environment where business gets done, but there's enough fat in the resources so I can encourage the guys to just play one day a week or three hours a day. It's not just time,” he adds, “but it's also hardware and capacity to play with. So, if someone develops a new application, it can be ring-fenced and people can play with it.”

A step further down the line, Marais says it would be beneficial if we could get to a point where technical resources work for multiple environments and “create stuff”, as he puts it.

Developing skills also features on Marais' list: “I believe if we can give individuals a little space, and if the company paid for enough servers and stuff, the guys could play with Windows or Linux or open source. The benefit would be that we'd grow the skills base a lot more. For example, Java experts who want to try new possibilities, but don't have the time, would be able to do so. Corporates in South Africa are very supportive of open source, but we're not sure where to find the skills. And when times are tough, we can't have a lot of proof-of-concept projects on the go.”

PruHealth's Rossini would also like to create a South African version of the Google environment. “Obviously, we couldn't do it in Johannesburg. We'd need an exotic location like Knysna, create an amazing hi-tech environment and put everyone in it. Twenty-inch screens, unlimited bandwidth, any technology the developers want... Wii, PlayStation, the lot.”

Skills, Rossini says, remain an issue. “Attracting and retaining people is vital. If we can do the Google thing in a large enough way, we'll attract skills. If you want people to get excited, you have to give them cool toys. We'll give them a fun environment, great lifestyle, take the negative factors of working in Johannesburg away and give them the beauty of Africa, the positivity of working with South Africans and the ability to work in offshore mode. We live that mode (PruHealth is a joint venture between Discovery and Prudential Health in the UK. Rossini's team supports the UK operation from Johannesburg). You can absolutely do it. If you have enough bandwidth, it becomes real.”

If we had [Seacom] today, life would be much easier.

Angus Hay, CTO, Neotel

Rossini says his team is playing with virtual presence technology. “It's like having a one-on-one conversation,” he says. “It absolutely works, but bandwidth costs are killer.”

This leads neatly into Rossini's next wish: “I want cheap bandwidth from operators all over the place that would give us the flexibility to do this. We interact with colleagues in the UK via e-mail, teleconference, and so on. A 20-inch screen and high-definition camera in every office could take this to a new level. We'd be able to chat one-on-one and exchange documents in real-time. If bandwidth was cheaper, this would be a realistic option and save us a fortune in travel costs.”

For his clients this Christmas, Rossini says he'd like to be able to go ballistic on the Web site (UK clientele are far more Web-savvy than their South African counterparts; they liaise heavily with PruHealth via its Web site). “We've done lots with Vitality to make it real through Vitality Interactive, but if I could, I'd have an entire team playing with Web 2.0 and integrating the technologies into our call centre. We'd have a totally different level of customer service - graphical presentations on how our products work, the status of claims, new business applications, and so on; all in a Web environment with simultaneous live interaction with a call centre agent.”

This, Rossini says, would also let agents and PruHealth know exactly what was going on - who'd been to the site, when they went, what they did. “It would all be available. The technology would also be able to pre-empt what happens next. For example, a 30-something professional member. Are they getting enough exercise? If so, fine. If not, we could encourage them to do so. It all comes back to the richness of the data and being able to troll through it in real time and display it graphically - and that needs processing power.”

Rossini, who is not alone in this, is wishing for unlimited processing power. “We have a lot in our environment. If we could have a rich data warehousing environment where we could ask for information dynamically, we could look at our entire member base, ask questions and get answers in real-time, then we could understand exactly what's happening in terms of revenue, risk, employees, productivity, technology, what's working, what isn't and what our costs are; we'd be on top of failures proactively.”

Rossini's last wish relates to customer service. “I'd like a far richer mechanism with which to manage communications and messages to members,” he says. “It would be great if we had a far more flexible campaign management environment. We could use the data I mentioned before, with zero coding, and have complete flexibility to send messages to anyone at any time. How the member responds would trigger the site accordingly. At each point, we could know where a member is and send information that's relevant to them and, based on their feedback, adjust to their needs in a way that lets us customise service on a one-to-one basis.”

The result is that each person will be an individual in the way they are treated. If there's an oncology case in the family, for example, Rossini and his team can be sensitive to that when communicating with the client.

My wish for the industry in the next year is that vendors are forced to read their own marketing and sales material, and endure their own presentations at least once a week in the hope that they will stop talking jargon and buzzwords, and start communicating like real people do. I'd like to see them all having to implement each and every new product they sell with the assistance of their own technical support and reseller teams.

Finally, I'd like to see business across the board start to understand the value of honest communications with all stakeholders. The world is moving to a state of connectedness that hasn't been seen before. Consumers of products and services now have a means to find out more than any supplier could want them to at the click of a mouse. As consumer behaviour changes, so too should the supplier, or the risk and loss of reputation alone will be massive.