Spinnaker Support, a US based provider of third party software support services for enterprise applications, is expanding its South African footprint as it builds local operations around talent recruitment and regional service delivery.
The company, founded in 2008, provides support services for Oracle, SAP and VMware environments as an alternative to vendor maintenance contracts. Earlier this year, it opened a Johannesburg operation backed by African Rainbow Capital, a South African investment holding company with interests across financial services and other sectors.
Company executives say access to technical skills is central to the expansion strategy.
“There is a lot of talent in the South African market that we’ve found, a lot of Oracle and SAP deep talent that we can leverage and build a support centre here that will support all of Africa and part of our European operations as well,” said Mathew Stava, founder and CEO of Spinnaker Support.
The company already had employees working from Durban and Cape Town before establishing a formal local presence. According to Jon Gill, vice president at Spinnaker Support EMEA, opening operations in South Africa changes how the company recruits and scales technical teams.
“There is a big skillset in South Africa. Before we entered the market, we had 11 resources working out of Durban and Cape Town,” Gill said.
“Traditionally, we hired through third-party agencies because we weren’t in South Africa. Now, we can hire directly in South Africa – the talent pool is huge. I can see us at a point where we quadruple the size of our resource pool easily in South Africa in the next 12 months. This, to me, is what we’d be looking to do.”
“It just happens that there is a huge amount of talent…with a lot of useful skills for us.”
Spinnaker Support says it serves more than 1,200 customers worldwide through offices across multiple regions. The company says one of its local customers is Telkom, where the relationship centers on third party Oracle support.
Telkom CIO Sello Mmakau said the telecommunications group is entering its second year using Spinnaker services.
Mmakau said the company reduced spending by half compared with previous payments to traditional OEM providers and added that access to engineers had also influenced the decision.
Local growth plans are also tied to market timing. Gill said SAP customers approaching subscription deadlines and VMware customers responding to changes in vendor licensing models represent immediate opportunities.
“We don’t want customers to decide thinking that they’ve got no other option. In terms of Broadcom and VMware, it’s the same thing. Customers probably have about 12 months left if they want to avoid moving onto subscription.”
“Although Oracle is a big player in South Africa, there’s less of a time scale pressure. For me, the short-term focus would be the SAP and Broadcom market.”
African Rainbow Capital participates as a minority investor in the local venture, contributing funding and market expertise. The investment group is owned by South African businessman Patrice Motsepe through its broader holding structure.
Teko Mojaki, managing director of Spinnaker Support South Africa, said public sector organizations also represent a target segment as the company expands.
“For me, as a South African, one of the frustrating things that I see in our industry is that our government departments feel stuck by contracts that they’ve signed with the OEMs (vendors).”
“We want to give them back the control by taking them to third-party support where they won’t be locked in to a vendor and have flexibility, with the limited resources that they have.”
