While some companies believe the opposite, many South African businesses are still hung up on buying internationally-branded PCs and components. The argument is that the quality of these products, as well as the ability to support them, far outstrips anything that the local market has to offer.

However, some believe that this is not the case. A number of local companies have managed to build and maintain strong locally branded products, and base their entire go-to-market strategies on these brands.

Rectron CEO, Mark Lu, says that the days of marketplace domination by multinational branded PCs, notebook computers, and even servers, are numbered.

?Local brands have made significant inroads into the market, because they offer many benefits and advantages over their international counterparts,? he says.

The key drivers of this trend, Lu adds, include initiatives by companies such as Intel and AMD to persuade dealers to promote locally assembled PCs using their chipsets.

?The major advantage is that users can tailor a machine to suit their exact requirements in terms of memory and hard drive capacities,? Lu explains.

The hardware and business software market both provide good examples of very successful local brands, such as Mecer and Pastel, for example.

Since its launch on the market in 1989, Pastel?s accounting solutions have been the foundation for many small and medium-sized businesses in SA, and have been extremely successful.

?However, the success of local brands is dependent on a number of aspects, making it difficult to say whether local brands are successful as a general rule,? says Steven Cohen, Softline Pastel MD.

?International software vendors, particularly those in the entry-level and mid-market financial software game, tend to adopt a ?one-product-fits-all? mantra, focusing R&D spend on the U.S., U.K., and occasionally on Australia or New Zealand and/or other European markets.

?SA, not to mention Africa, is seldom on the priority radar screen for ?localization?, and remains a sales opportunity only for the core international product, as it ships for the principal country for which it was designed. Exceptions to this rule do exist, but it is not generally the rule of thumb,? he adds.

This, Cohen says, often results in cumbersome or highly configurable ?layered? applications, which are either expensive and/or time-consuming to set up, and which can be difficult to roll out into an organization.

?In the case of accounting applications, for example, imported solutions do not make use of local terminology, local tax methods and practices, such as with electronic filing of VAT returns. Local software vendors tend to be more nimble, fleet-footed and able to adapt to changing market conditions and requirements, particularly in the legislative arena, for example localized payroll and HR solutions,? he adds.

Lekker cliché?

?Locally developed technologies are fast gaining ground on competing international brands in the local market,? maintains World Computer Systems MD, Mohammad Denath.

?This is largely as a result of innovative world-class technologies that have emerged in this market over the past number of years, and which are now being exported worldwide,? he says.

He adds that international vendors have invested millions of rands in marketing their products locally, and have subsequently brainwashed the SA public into believing that their products are better.

?Local vendors cannot compete on the marketing front, international vendors have the advantage of exchange rates,? he says.

Many of the local distributors and vendors seem to be seeing a major change in the winds, however. Denath says this is also supported by government?s decision to stimulate the local technology industry.

?Not only has government indicated that it will support local technologies, but we are seeing a change in purchasing decisions by the corporate world as well,? he says.

?Previously, companies were concerned that they would not receive the required support from local vendors. However, local vendors have realized this, and have begun to provide better support and services than their international counterparts,? Denath explains.

Competing against the East

An argument that always manages to creep its way into local brand conversations is the factor known as the ?Middle and Far East?. These areas have always been notorious for being able to compete with high volumes at lower price points, sometimes at the expense of quality.

?From a competitive perspective, if local brands are set against products manufactured in the Far East, they cannot compete on a cost basis,? says Lu.

?However, if local brands are compared to those from Europe, the Middle East or America, SA?s cost advantage is noticeable. To increase this advantage, all we need to do is improve local skills levels -- and invest more in the technology and equipment necessary to drive the process,? he adds.

Dennis Parker, MD of SourceCode -- K2 WorkFlow, adds that SA should be encouraging its youth, government, and businesses to develop intellectual property (IP).

?It is the export product of the future, and there is no doubt that we have the intellect and the ability to compete if we apply ourselves and put the correct incentives, assistance, tax help etc in place to assist in making this reality,? he says.

In IT, Parker adds, it is not about international brands having the upper hand, it is simply about getting the job done at the right quality, with the right features, with the right level of support and service.

Space in Africa

Inus Dreckmeyr from NetShield believes that there is always space for something new in the market -- even for local brands.

?Local brands,? he says, ?focus on turnkey-specific solution for specific environment -- where a solution does not already exist, or where the existing solution is too expensive,? he says.

There is opportunity for exporting, not to the U.K. or the U.S., but to the rest of Africa, he adds. Africa is where the real opportunities lie for local products to really compete on an international level, and this also helps keep revenues inside the continent, the residual effect of which would be the creation of more jobs locally, he says.

Thibault Dousson, HP?s Personal Systems Group (PSG) Category Country Manager, cites an example: ?It is important to operate as closely as possible to the local market in order to react quickly to its needs and changes, and also to meet the market requirements of small and medium companies.?

This competitive advantage has been well integrated by HP SA, he says, through a very successful local desktop assembly facility that has been in operation since 2003.

Matomo Technologies partnered with HP to deliver affordable and reliable desktop PCs to the local market a few years back.

?Matomo?s Proudly South African accreditation ensures that previously disadvantaged South Africans benefit from real empowerment. This partnership has also highlighted the great quantity of solid skills in the country,? Dousson says.

In the end

Local brands in IT probably have much the same challenges as any other manufactured or finished product coming from SA, adds Parker.

?SA has not traditionally been associated with maintaining skill, expertise, facilities and the support industries in the high end ?manufacturing? sector. So be it software, music or electrical components our local infrastructures, banks, tax structures are simply not geared to support these initiatives on a wide scale,? he says.

A small example of this is the overhead associated with dealing with exchange controls, and the associated complexity with the administration around managing imports and exports in a multinational environment for small and medium-sized businesses.

?However SA has long been associated with an ability to produce ?diamonds? from the rough, and several of our local IT brands have done well in the international arena,? Parker concludes.