BUSINESS BRAINS
PORTRAITS IN SUCCESS
Arnold Garber
The changing world of IT
BY ILAN PRESKOVSKY
24 JEWISH LIFE ■ ISSUE 85
WITH LARGER ACCESS,
THOUGH, THERE
OBVIOUSLY COMES A
MUCH HIGHER LEVEL OF
COMPETITION. BUT
GARBER SEES THIS LESS
AS A PROBLEM THAN AS
AN OPPORTUNITY.
Garber notes that for all that people
have a nasty habit of viewing the current
economic climate – and the country as a
whole – through tar-coloured lenses, there
are opportunities open to young entrepreneurs today that didn’t so much as exist as
little as two decades ago, especially within
the IT industry.
When CompuClearing was launched,
South Africa was mired in anti-apartheid
sanctions, thereby ensuring that working
on an international level at that stage was,
if not outright impossible, then at least
very difficult and incredibly limited. Now,
for all of its problems, South Africa is a
part of a global community, where a business that might have once only serviced a
few thousand people, can reach literally
millions of people worldwide. This is why,
when the whole world is open to anyone
with a working internet connection, Garber cautions against aiming purely for a
South African market.
And, again, South Africa may be behind
when it comes to the internet in terms of
speed, reliability, and price, but not only is
the country constantly and rapidly improving in this area, even its more limited internet accessibility still puts the country light
years ahead of the reality in which Garber
first launched CompuClearing. The very
thing that spurred him on to create the
company in the first place, in fact, simply
couldn’t happen now, as there is certainly
no need to go through customs to transfer
a piece of software from one country to the
next. Nowadays, such a thing would take
little more than a click of a mouse.
With larger access, though, there obviously comes a much higher level of competition. But Garber sees this less as a problem than as an opportunity. He notes the
sheer number of different smart phone
applications out there that do precisely
the same thing, but still manage to stay
afloat, as proof that despite – perhaps
even because of – that compe ][ۋ B