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Issue Date: April/May 2000

Revolution in South African GIS market

1 April 2000

Computer Foundation and GIMS have announced a cooperation agreement guaranteed to revolutionise the GIS market in southern Africa and in Africa as a whole.
The Managing Director of Computer Foundation, Wilhelm Herbst, announced in Cape Town that the agreement between the two largest players in the GIS market in Africa would mean that apart from Autodesk and MapInfo products, Computer Foundation would in future also support all ESRI products.
"The benefits to our clients will be enormous. With the pooling of our resources and expertise, clients of the two companies will for the first time be able to get solutions based on their exact needs. Clients will now be able to get the best deal possible because the GIS solution providers in South Africa will no longer waste time and resources on competing against each other. Our focus will now be to give our clients better service and better solutions," he said.
The move would benefit all traditional GIS users in the country and would allow users loyal to the two companies to stay loyal yet still get a wider choice in products, he added.
The Managing Director of GIMS, Steve Hine said the agreement opened doors for GIS users to a larger pool of knowledge, expertise and access to a variety of software that caters for the small business to the large enterprise. He welcomed the fact that more users would benefit from ESRI's support and passion for GIS and the way that it was improving quality of life.
The agreement will also mean that both private sector and government clients will now have a one-stop solution centre offering products ranging from data capturing tools and database solutions right up to the most sophisticated geographical analysis tools.
GIMS has been serving the GIS community in South and southern Africa since 1989 and is well known for its stability, successful implementations and continual growth process. Computer Foundation has its roots in the development of ReGIS, the most successful GIS system in South Africa. Although development on ReGIS has stopped more than five years ago, a large number of organisations still use the package with great success and effectiveness.
The Chairperson of the ReGIS user group, Ina van Rensburg, said the cooperation agreement between the two companies was the best GIS news in southern Africa for years. (The ReGIS user group includes users of all the products supported by Computer Foundation up to now). Van Rensburg said the move could only lead to better service and a wider choice for GIS users.
Marcelle Hattingh of Midrand City Council said that at last it felt as though the GIS community in South Africa was being united. "Hopefully the energy previously spent on competing will now be focused on GIS development for the country. Good luck for this brave decision," she said
Herbst also announced a number of upgrade options for clients using Autodesk World wanting to benefit from the co-operation agreement. This follows an announcement by Autodesk that no further development will be done on Autodesk World.
He stressed that Computer Foundation will continue to support and assist Autodesk World users but that a number of deals had been negotiated with Autodesk, ESRI and MapInfo. These deals include ways to use existing Worlds and partial trade-ins on AutoCad Map, MapGuide, MapInfo, MapXtreme and all ESRI products. Herbst said that most of the deals were very favourable and once again confirmed Computer Foundation's commitment to ensure the best service possible to its clients. Full information on the upgrade options will be made available at user group meetings in the next few weeks.
Computer Foundation
(012) 672 0100


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