The shortage of IT skills in South Africa is forcing many companies to outsource key areas of their business activities in order for them to realise their business objectives.
So says Mike Leeuwen, director of PM Tech, a company that provides scarce database administration skills and services to many companies throughout Africa.
A key milestone in the local outsourcing market will come with the arrival of the second fixed line telephone operator.
Mike Leeuwen, director, PM Tech
"We can confirm that outsourcing of niche skills, leading-edge technology and resources is often the only route companies can take to meet their business goals," he says.
Nevertheless, maintains Leeuwen, companies should not view outsourcing as a business process that has been forced upon them, but should consider outsourcing as a business philosophy.
"I would argue that if a company wants to save money through an outsourcing
model, it should begin by treating its internal organisational divisions as outsource groups," says Leeuwen.
"Internal divisions will then compete with outside firms for projects. The heat of competition will produce increased efficiencies in areas such as design, cost control, implementation time and technological innovation - from both camps.
"An internal group, focused on such competition would, no doubt, highly resent it at first, but the outcome of the process would be a more focused and effective organisation."
According to Leeuwen, a key milestone in the local outsourcing market will come with the arrival of the second fixed line telephone operator.
"South African businesses can expect a wider variety of options when looking to outsource their IT infrastructures as communications bandwidth, currently fixed at a price that makes off-site information processing expensive, becomes more affordable," he says.
"Then organisations will be able to take a serious look at their IT infrastructures and outsource those aspects of the business which can benefit from off-site professional management."
PM Tech already performs off-site applications and database management services for a number of organisations.
"Once South Africa has a choice of fixed line service operators the opportunities for more aggressive outsourcing models will increase," says Leeuwen.
"For example, companies will use data management services in the same way they would use telephone services. The computer would become a device within the organisation and the data centre - the equivalent of a telephone exchange - would reside elsewhere," he explains.
"The off-site data centre environment would be larger, more secure, and companies would not need to even own the software systems that run their business.
"Just as telephone users pay only for the number of calls they make, and a fixed monthly rental, a similar model can evolve for data management," he notes.
Leeuwen maintains that only the very time- and business-critical elements of IT that should stay in-house. These include applications that are custom-developed to service very specific business needs.
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