There's a strong message coming through from the tech market: corporate SA has all the mainframes, networks and other IT hardware it needs to do the job.
Demand for hardware boomed before Y2K as corporates threw money at the date problem.
"Demonstrating that hardware was Y2K-compliant was often all that was needed to clinch a deal," says Glotec CEO Ray Leonard.
And, from all accounts, there's no quick recovery around the corner.
Extracting value from hardware is not all bad news - if you supply the software and services needed to do the job. IBM, the world's largest tech group, came to this conclusion in the early 1990s.
Software's nature is about to change radically.
"Within the next five years the market will be dominated by a few product vendors ," says CS Holdings development manager Dave Vink.
Tech companies that follow IBM's strategy of software development to support sustainable, revenue-generating service operations will be better off.
Here, particularly for smaller groups, the niche market concept will take on even more significance. "You must be highly specialised, with something unique to offer in a world where software is becoming a commodity," says Idion CEO Nicolaas Vlok.
As a global top contender in the market for continuous service and disaster recovery, Idion has a fighting chance. So too have other SA groups such as retail industry focused UCS and Aplitec .
