Speaking at the Radisson on Friday, IT and Investments minister Austin Gatt said that in the coming months “we can expect these projects to employ Maltese people who will be joining the 306 now working in hardware firms; 588 working in software firms; and 81 working in other ICT businesses.”
One of the these new investments is relocating its business from Ireland, Dr Gatt said. Malta has recently clinched new investments from Germany as well.
Dr Gatt was speaking at the launch of a partnership between local firm Newtech and multinational company Veritas. He also spoke of Malta’s roadmap and what it entails for the future.
Investors need comfort that they will find the human resources and the infrastructure they need to grow at the pace their business plans dictate. Malta “has implemented major changes in the way we think, work and educate to match Malta’s pace with the pace of the world-wide industry. We are aiming to support our education system so that by 2006 it will equipped to prepare 500 new IT specialists for the IT industry every year.
“By 2006 as well, all knowledge workers within the Government will be ICT literate; all Government services will be available on line; 90% of Maltese businesses will be on line; and we’ll have an ICT Centre of Excellence serving as our central magnet to attract even more investment in this sector.
“These targets will place us well on the road to our most ambitious target for 2010: to be the first among the best,” Dr Gatt said. The EU plans to become the best bloc in the world over the next years and Malta aims to become the best of the world’s best.
The new way to use IT
John Poulter, vice-president emerging markets, said Veritas had $1.78 billion in revenue, employs 6,900 employees. 99 per cent of companies listed in the Forbes 500 use Veritas technology.
Speaking to The Malta Independent on Sunday in an exclusive interview, Mr Poulter said business has changed in the way it tackles IT investment over the past years. While previously it used to purchase IT equipment mostly as a stand-alone with resulting under-usage and outsourcing the section to its principals, today’s business environment aims to cut expenditure and to do more with less. Hence the search is for IT equipment which can be used for various processes instead of just one process, which can be used more to justify its expense instead of for just one purpose, and which mixes in hetereogeneity rather than depend on a single vendor. It is thus important to have multiple platforms, which is where Veritas excels.
The role of IT in business today, Mr Poulter said, is to add value and to bring about reduction of costs. The IT section of a business is no longer a separate almost independent section, cut off from the rest of the business: on the contrary, it has become an integral and essential part of the business.
He spoke of IT becoming a “utility company”: just as we do not care how the electricity we get in our homes is produced, as long as we get electricity, so too, he said, bus9nesmen today do not care fr4om where they get their IT requirements, as long as they get it and is of standard and functions well.
Baring unforeseen fundamental technological developments, he sees the future as a continuing scenario where businesses remain very careful about their costs, measuring everything in terms of the bottom line.
Concluding, Mr Poulter said he appreciated meeting Dr Gatt and having explained to him the strategy which Malta is following as regards IT. Any potential investor will appreciate that coming to Malta he will find a ready to plug in system as against having to set it up from scratch.
The world has now become a much smaller place and everything depends on the quality of service and the reliability and dependability one can obtain. In this matter, Malta raises the bar, compared to other countries.