BUSINESS REPORT (National)
Wednesday, 11 July 2007,p.17
Indian software skills on way to SA

The IQ Business Group which helps organisations to maximise their operational and technology efficiencies, has formed a joint venture company with India-based software provider Prodapt, to bring skilled Indian software developers into the local industry.

ProdaptIQ will source and manage skilled software developers required by local organisations on a medium-to long-term basis. Prodapt will hold 51 percent and IQ Business the rest.

According to Craig Rodger of IQ Business, economic growth is outstripping the availability of sills. - Thabiso Mochiko, Johannesburg

BY LEON ENGELBRECHT , ITWEB SENIOR WRITER

Skills guessing game must end
[ Johannesburg, 11 July 2007 ] - Indian IT executives are surprised SA cannot quantify its ICT skills shortage or determine a way to measure it.

Prodapt president Vedant Jhaver and COO Raghuraman were speaking yesterday at the launch of a skills shortage-busting joint venture (JV) with The IQ Business Group.

The deal will see the import of about 150 Indian IT specialists – mostly Java and .Net – over the next 12 to 18 months – if the Department of Home Affairs issues the necessary visas.

“The extent of the skills shortage is a most important question,” Raghuraman says. Determining its extent is not difficult, he adds, saying it has been done in India. He explains that what appears lacking in SA is an industry body representing chief information officers.

Such a body exists in India in the form of the National Association of Software and Service Companies. One of its functions is to determine skills requirements, which inform both government policy and the allocation of seats at institutions of higher learning.

Raghuraman says another way to quantify the skills shortage is to determine the loss in national gross domestic product and company profits due to delays in ICT roll-out. “A national association of industries can easily quantify that,” he says, as “delays cause losses.”

JV head Craig Rodger says he has yet to see a skills shortage figure that can bear scrutiny. But by the same token, nearly every company he and the IQ Business Group deal with that does ICT implementation reports staff shortages.

“They generally have teams of between 10 and 15 people and are between five and six people short [per team],” he says.

Rodger's experience ties in with comments made by deputy communications minister Roy Padayachie last month that there are no quotable figures. “We need to look at what the universities are offering and what business wants and, at same time, have some strategic sense and a development plan for the ICT sector,” he said.

Padayachie says Harold Wesso, the department's deputy director-general for policy development, has been tasked with preparing a report on the skills shortage by September to take the debate beyond “thumb-suck” figures.

Anecdotal evidence
Jhaver says the companies are still drafting the final 2007/8 business plan for the JV, to be called ProdaptIQ. He says this will include some quantification of the skills shortage. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests there are “several hundred [vacancies] in Johannesburg alone”.

“And that is just a quick snapshot. It could be in the thousands,” Jhaver adds.

This view is in line with that of local industry players. Magix Integration director Amir Lubashevsky believes there is not only a shortage of ICT, but also that there is an absence of skills to determine the shortage. In particular, there is a shortage of risk management and security experts, as well as internal IT auditors and forensic investigators familiar with ICT.

“You have a situation where companies buy risk management technology, but the staff they hire to deploy the equipment lack the skills to do so,” he says. “It is a situation where you let someone drive a truck when he has a licence for a bicycle.”

Decent education needed

ContinuitySA MD Allen Smith adds there is an acute shortage of business continuity (BC) specialists. With BC and disaster recovery becoming ever-more important in the IT governance space, he thinks the country's 50 experts are too few in number.

Smith says: “You will always have a skills shortage if you don't have a decent education system. That should be the first priority.”

Orion Telecom MD Jacques du Toit says it can take up to a year to train a staff member and turn him or her into a productive employee.

iLayo Software Solutions MD Inana Nkanza says companies are reluctant to invest in such staff training as these employees often get poached by rivals shortly after becoming productive. “In a market where we are all chasing skills, we will rather pay for ready-made skills than invest in people who defect.”

Johannesburg - A Johannesburg-based business solutions provider IQ Business Group has teamed up with a leading India- based software and BPO solutions company, Prodapt, to address South Africa's critical shortage of software development skills.

Prodapt provides software solutions and services around application integration, software development and QA/Testing Services

According to IQ Business Group's Craig Rodger, South Africa's economic growth is outstripping the availability of skills. This shortage is amplified by South Africa's focus on becoming an ICT economy. To achieve this objective, the country requires significant supporting skills.

"As a company IQ provides practical business solutions and leveraging off India's track record in building significant capability in ICT and related industries is one such solution," he said.

IQ and Prodapt have created a new joint venture company, ProdaptIQ, which will source and manage highly skilled Indian software developers required on-site by local organisations on a medium-to-long-term basis.

In addition, ProdaptIQ will facilitate the offshore outsourcing of software development to Prodapt's own development laboratory in Chennai, India.

Rodger, who has been seconded by IQ to head the new joint venture, says IQ has been experiencing increasing demand from clients for the types of services that will be offered by ProdaptIQ.

"We are seeing a shortage of up to six developers in virtually every one of our engagements with clients. Critical IT projects are missing key deadlines and going over-budget because companies are having to stretch their scarce developmental resources beyond optimal efficiency levels.

"Through Prodapt, we are not only able to tap into the vast lake of highly skilled Indian resources - particularly those with much needed .Net, Java and IBM WebSphere skills - we are also able to draw on Prodapt's experience in providing these resources at a cost-effective rate to organisations of all sizes around the world," he added.

Prodapt will hold 51 percent of the equity in ProdaptIQ, with IQ holding the rest. ProdaptIQ is registered in South Africa.

Indian companies are increasingly coming into the equation as South Africa seeks to address the critical shortage of skills in the local IT industry. In the latest news, the IQ Business Group has teamed up with a leading India-based software and BPO (business process outsourcing) solutions company, Prodapt.

According to IQ Business Group’s Craig Rodger, South Africa’s economic growth is outstripping the availability of skills. This shortage is amplified by South Africa’s focus on becoming an ICT economy. To achieve this objective, the country requires significant supporting skills.
“As a company IQ provides practical business solutions and leveraging off India’s track record in building significant capability in ICT and related industries is one such solution,” he says.
IQ and Prodapt have created a new joint venture company, ProdaptIQ, that will source and manage highly skilled Indian software developers required on-site by local organisations on a medium- to long-term basis.
In addition, ProdaptIQ will facilitate the offshore outsourcing of software development to Prodapt’s own development laboratory in Chennai, India. Prodapt has been awarded Maturity level 5 of Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) for Software and Systems Engineering disciplines and is also ISO 9001:2000 compliant.
Rodger, who has been seconded by IQ to head the new joint venture, says IQ has been experiencing increasing demand from clients for the types of services that will be offered by ProdaptIQ.
“We are seeing a shortage of up to six developers in virtually every one of our engagements with clients. Critical IT projects are missing key deadlines and going over-budget because companies are having to stretch their scarce developmental resources beyond optimal efficiency levels.
“Through Prodapt, we are not only able to tap into the vast lake of highly skilled Indian resources – particularly those with much needed .Net, Java and IBM WebSphere skills - we are also able to draw on Prodapt’s experience in providing these resources at a cost-effective rate to organisations of all sizes around the world,” he says.
Prodapt is no stranger to South Africa. According to Prodapt COO, C Raghuraman, the company has been working with large South African telecom majors in partnership with Sun Microsystems for over three years.
The company also has offices in the Unites States and United Arab Emirates, and agreements with companies in Europe. Prodapt is part of the Jhaver Group, a conglomerate of industrial companies that employs over 6 000 people in India, across over 45 offices.
‘We wanted to increase our presence in South Africa and felt it would be best to do this in a joint venture arrangement with a local company that was familiar with the local market, could provide impeccable BEE credentials, offered services that were complementary to ours, and had a culture and values with which we could identify. IQ meets all those criteria,” he says.
Prodapt will hold 51% of the equity in ProdaptIQ, with IQ holding the rest. ProdaptIQ is registered in South Africa.

Johannesburg - The IQ Business Group, which helps organisations to maximise their operational and technology efficiencies, has formed a joint venture company with India-based software provider Prodapt, to bring skilled Indian software developers into the local industry.

ProdaptIQ will source and manage skilled software developers required by local organisations on a medium- to long-term basis. Prodapt will hold 51 percent and IQ Business the rest.

According to Craig Rodger of IQ Business, economic growth is outstripping the availability of skills.

Johannesburg - A Johannesburg-based business solutions provider IQ Business Group has teamed up with a leading India- based software and BPO solutions company, Prodapt, to address South Africa's critical shortage of software development skills.

Prodapt provides software solutions and services around application integration, software development and QA/Testing Services

According to IQ Business Group's Craig Rodger, South Africa's economic growth is outstripping the availability of skills. This shortage is amplified by South Africa's focus on becoming an ICT economy. To achieve this objective, the country requires significant supporting skills.

"As a company IQ provides practical business solutions and leveraging off India's track record in building significant capability in ICT and related industries is one such solution," he said.

IQ and Prodapt have created a new joint venture company, ProdaptIQ, which will source and manage highly skilled Indian software developers required on-site by local organisations on a medium-to-long-term basis.

In addition, ProdaptIQ will facilitate the offshore outsourcing of software development to Prodapt's own development laboratory in Chennai, India.

Rodger, who has been seconded by IQ to head the new joint venture, says IQ has been experiencing increasing demand from clients for the types of services that will be offered by ProdaptIQ.

"We are seeing a shortage of up to six developers in virtually every one of our engagements with clients. Critical IT projects are missing key deadlines and going over-budget because companies are having to stretch their scarce developmental resources beyond optimal efficiency levels.

"Through Prodapt, we are not only able to tap into the vast lake of highly skilled Indian resources - particularly those with much needed .Net, Java and IBM WebSphere skills - we are also able to draw on Prodapt's experience in providing these resources at a cost-effective rate to organisations of all sizes around the world," he added.

Prodapt will hold 51 percent of the equity in ProdaptIQ, with IQ holding the rest. ProdaptIQ is registered in South Africa.

Outlining its vision to arm users with the right software to succeed in business, Microsoft Corporation India has announced "People-Ready" the foundation for a series of innovative solutions in new and existing categories that it will bring to market over the next year.

Unveiled by Jeff Raikes, President - Microsoft business division, Microsoft Corporation, he also previewed the 2007 Microsoft Office version (currently Beta, the latest release of Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003), which is to be released later this year.

Built to deliver information management and teamwork solutions through integration with new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 capabilities, it includes the Microsoft Office Communicator.

"Today, successful business leaders understand that it's their people who drive business success and growth. A People-Ready business will give its people software tools that enable them to collaborate and work together glob all y, to contact and serve customers instantly, and to streamline and reinvent processes intuitively," he remarked.

He also inaugurated a Microsoft Office solutions showcase of 18 information worker productivity solutions developed for the Indian market. Based on the "Innovating for and with India theme", ISVs demonstrated e-governance, education and defense applications, besides solutions for banking, publishing and retail sectors.

Notable applications included the e-gram application by the Department of Panchayat, the National Manuscript Project by NIC ( National Informatics Center ), Office for Banks developed in association with RBI and Office for Retail, developed by Pro d apt.

Microsoft will also release a new range of servers that will integrate solutions across collaboration, ECM and forms, BI, and enterprise project management (EPM) scenarios as part of the 2007 release.