Red Hat in SA
The New York-listed company is expanding around the world and its Johannesburg office will be responsible for building up marketing and technical support services throughout southern Africa. That means the staff of one, country manager Louis Seyffert, will be recruiting more technicians and appointing other companies to support its software.
Red Hat believes it is the only company to survive purely from supplying open-source operating systems such as Linux and a variety of applications to run on top, and not backing those up with paid-for commercial products.
It makes its money by selling support and consultancy services, and running training courses for users and developers.
“We needed to have a credible, stable business before we came to SA,” regional director Paul Holt said this week.
“We have to be very careful about when and how we invest.”
Open-source software is developed collaboratively by individuals and companies, and users can modify the programs to suit their needs.
The government has a stated policy of switching to open-source products, partly to save money by avoiding brand name licence fees. It also believes using open source will help incubate a homegrown industry as developers modify systems for clients.
Local companies that already use Red Hat products include Tiger Brands, MWEB, Telkom, most of the other telecoms operators and the major banks.
Red Hat has had a few conversations with the government and the State Information Technology Agency. But bidding for tenders was a long and costly process, Holt said, so it tended to be careful where it focused its resources in the public sector.
Skills development will be another focus. While there were good open-source developers in SA, it was no different from the rest of the world in that demand outstripped the supply. “We need to put in place an infrastructure to do what we can to improve that, and we are looking to work with universities.”
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