In a departure from prevailing Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) practices, leading black IT company, Motswedi has acquired controlling shareholding in JMR Software.
The deal, which was concluded for an undisclosed amount, gives Motswedi 50.01% shareholding. This positions Motswedi to provide end-to-end solutions, especially for large Government and corporate IT projects in excess of R500-m.
The subsidiary company will be known as Motswedi JMR and will conduct business as a separate entity with JMR founder Mike Richards as CEO. Four Motswedi directors will join the new company`s board.
The strategic buy-in will drastically increase Motswedi`s resource and skills capacity by an additional 3000 skilled IT professionals. It brings Motswedi closer to realizing its objective of achieving a R1-billion turnover in the next few years. This is based on the premise that it exceeds the required BEE status as prescribed by the new BEE Act.
The deal is a win-win for both parties, both Motswedi chairman Joe Tsotetsi and Richards agree.
"Our vision," said Richards, " has always been to be the preferred supplier of solutions, especially in the financial services area. This arrangement allows us to be that and far more as it opens up opportunities in the public sector as well."
Tsotetsi enthused, " JMR Software has a 17 year track record of delivery in major IT projects both locally and internationally. It has a formidable skill set ranging from mainframe, client server to Internet, which has been successfully implemented in major client projects. This increased capacity will allow us to take on major Government and corporate tenders."
JMR Software has been responsible for the development of some very large IT projects in corporate South Africa. These include major data conversion projects for Transnet Pension Funds and Fedsure/Norwich Union/Capital Alliance as well as a recent 1 million pounds contract for data migration project for Liverpool Victoria, a leading insurance company in the UK.
Complementing JMR Software`s system`s development and project skills is a bouquet of international product agencies and alliances. These include the legacy extension and web enablement products from GT Software, performance management software from William Data Systems and the Sapiens architectural framework and ancilliary products for the financial services and insurance industries. The latest addition is the Nastel range of MQ series management and NetSupport remote management products.
JMR Software prides itself with its locally produced Plato software solution, a development framework for the Microsoft.Net and Java environments. It enables the delivery of predictable, accurate solutions that fully embrace object technology. Added to this, Plato provides significant development efficiency with delivery time by up to four times the conventional.
Motswedi, on the other hand, is an information technology (IT) company that specializes in the design, development and implementation of information systems. Since its inception in 1994, it has participated in a number of important and high profile projects. These include the South African Integrated Justice System, Telkom and the National Lottery.
Richards & Tsotetsi point out that uncannily, both Motswedi & JMR have a similar ethos and commitment with regard to client satisfaction and delivery as well as a common vision to provide end-to-end solutions for clients.
Richards believes that market conditions in South Africa are ideal for products and services, which can assist corporate companies to extend their investments in mainframe and legacy systems.
"There is a large installed base of legacy systems in South Africa. The crucial crossroads facing many of these companies and institutions is how to maintain their huge investment in lines of code and the people with both the programming skills and business knowledge to support them, while meeting market demands for e-commerce platforms on the Internet."
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