ICT intervention for growth: The Garden Route software factory
The Garden Route is open for business. Serious business, software business.
This is the first in a series of posts identifying and substantiating several ICT projects to stimulate and grow the Garden Route ICT industry.
In a previous post I gave some background as to the startup scene within the Garden Route. The area is full of promise and talent, and serious startups are already operating from the area, with others relocating to take advantage of the superior lifestyle and great infrastructure.
The Garden Route is the ideal place from where to run a software factory. Over R750 million worth of software development work is exported form the Western Cape alone to India and other off-shore destinations. The Garden Route has the skills, capacity and experience to attract a significant number of these currently off-shored projects. The close proximity to Cape Town combined with the skills base and business experience should make the shift from India to the Garden Route and obvious one.
The ICT sector is particularly active, with well over 
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A consortium of Garden Route based companies is ready to launch an IT technology hub in George which will create jobs and train up new skills.
George’s IT company owner Imel Rautenbach is currently drumming up support for the initiative at provincial and national level. The consortium aims to use the Western Cape Province’s business arm to market and develop in order to get launched nationally and internationally. IT technology and electronic centred businesses will be the engine that will drive this local initiative. “The idea behind pooling resources and skills is to keep all our software and hardware developmental work in the Garden Route. We already have around 30 businesses on our data base that have all the necessary skills and technology to form the nucleus. “
In the last year or two my working life has pretty much moved from a traditional office based setup to an