According to a new study recently released, around 3,1-million South Africans will have access to the Internet by the end of 2002. 'The Goldstuck Report: Internet Access in South Africa, 2002' reveals that only 1 in 15 South Africans had access to the Internet at the end of last year. This has emerged from a six-month research project led by Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of the technology research and consulting company World Wide Worx.
"South African connectivity figures compare with at least one out of every two people in countries like the USA, Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong," Goldstuck points out. "China, at one out of 18, is catching up fast despite its huge population and underdeveloped infrastructure. At current growth rates, there will still be only 1 in 10 South Africans with Internet access by 2006."
There are some interesting figures that emerge from the findings of the research, specifically with respect to business Internet access. "Sluggish dial-up (consumer/home-user) growth stands in dramatic contrast to the growth in the total number of leased lines - permanent high-speed connections to the Internet - installed in South African businesses. The number reached just under 7000 at the end of 2001, reflecting an insatiable demand for bandwidth among corporate users of the Internet. This year the number of leased lines will see a growth rate of around 20% in total market size."
It would appear that many businesses are taking advantage, at least on a superficial level, of the value that networking technologies can bring to the workplace. Whether the companies will recognise the long-term strategic importance of these technologies is yet to be seen. Many corporates still glibly contract third party 'specialists' (operating from a garage in suburbia) to maintain the technology running the companies' IT systems. Or worse still, they hand IT matters over to some poor sod in the accounts department that has the IT skills of a snail. Do not get me wrong, I do not have an axe to grind with the accounts department, but rather with the senior management of the company that regard their company's information systems as a necessary evil, rather than as a tool that can help them get the edge over their competitors.
In the more progressive companies the engineering and manufacturing departments are developing a higher degree of integration with the rest of the company's operation. The poor unfortunates in the instrumentation department are increasingly being expected to perform miracles and integrate all manner of data from the shop floor into the company's MES and ERP systems.
There is little doubt that the ongoing drive towards the new economy will require the skill-set of our instrument engineers and technicians to be expanded to include a new level of understanding of IT systems. Good luck to our Technikons, colleges and universities that will have to balance the need for strong fundamentals in instrumentation and control with the ever-increasing drive toward a data driven world.
Included with this month's issue, readers will find an A1-size poster entitled 'Optimising the control loop'. The poster takes a humorous look at many of the critical issues discussed by industry guru Michael Brown in our regular feature 'The control loop'. Michael has succinctly laid out key issues that will assist all levels of engineering staff in the planning, installation and ongoing operation of industrial plants.
Graeme Bell
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
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