Software - The Business Year

Daniel Chávez

Director General, Dextra Technologies

Dextra was established in 1997 as part of a large corporation called the Pulsar Group with the purpose of providing software development engineering for emerging technology companies in Silicon Valley. In 2003, an investor and I took over the company, which was in bad shape as a result of the dot com implosion; however, we have since acquired valuable experience and strong talent along the way that has helped us gain momentum with larger companies in the telecom sector. Nokia, at the time, was the world leader in the phone market, but did not have any relevant third-party Symbian expertise in the Americas, the operating system then used in those phones. We started working with it on Symbian engineering and grew with Nokia, who outsourced its chips to Texas Instruments. We then worked with Texas Instruments as well and also started growing with Hewlett Packard in its Global Delivery Center in Guadalajara. Right now, we are focused on the US market, with 80% of our revenue coming from US-based engagements.

Carlos Mondragon

Director General, Dimension Data

Dimension Data was founded more than 30 years ago in Johannesburg, South Africa, dedicated to the sale of solutions in the information and communications industry through important partners like Cisco. We started to expand into other countries in Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Today, we have a direct presence in almost 60 countries and have partnerships in over 120 to support our clients. Six years ago, the company was bought by NTT, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world and based in Japan, whose customer solutions and global markets we now complement. From the beginning to the end of a project, we are able to cover everything our global clients need. About 50% of our business comes from international clients because we can provide worldwide solutions. Some are centralized and require us to fulfill everything in the same way across the world. Finally, there are domestic clients that are typically large enterprise and government institutions.

Juan Pablo Medina Mora Icaza

Director General, Juan Pablo Medina Mora Icaza

When it was set up 32 years ago, CompuSoluciones only did consultancy software development and training. We did not sell hardware or software; however, over time we found an opportunity for software and training and thus CompuSoluciones became a value-added reseller for ICT. From the beginning, we were selling to end-users, and HP subsequently approached us. HP in Mexico had an operation but could not go to all the resellers it was reaching. It invited us to adopt some resellers within Guadalajara. We decided to close the end-user initiatives and distribute everything through resellers, becoming a value-added distributor. We thus managed to grow significantly in value-added distribution and now have a strong growing operation. In general, the ICT market is in constant evolution. In 1989, there were no cell phones, mobile computers, or internet. Since the sector is in constant evolution our work is extremely exciting. New technologies are being introduced almost every day.

Ricardo Wolff

Director General, BMC

The software trend in Mexico is positive compared to other countries, because it adjusts well when crises arrive. Different industries are trying to do more with less, and the only way you can do that is to simplify; once you simplify, you try to change processes and, later, to automate. Software has been helped as an industry because cost pressures are high, the political costs are uncertain, and now that we are 18 months away from changing presidents, everybody is struggling, and there is uncertainty. We are trying to do as much as possible with the government for the next four months because then we have to switch to the private sector and better adjust to the government’s change. BMC is a company that helps other companies become digital in every way, starting from the multi-cloud environment, which is our core and our heart. After that, we can branch out into different parts, such as security, big data management, and mobile, for example.

Jose Luis De Alba Gonzalez

Director General, Kórima

We got our start in Guadalajara as a bit of a coincidence. Guadalajara is a startup center because there are industries related to electronics, such as HP, IBM, Kodak, and Motorola. When electronics came to Guadalajara a different type of people arrived. People were more open to global thinking because these companies sold worldwide. That started to change the entrepreneur system here because a lot of companies started to sell something to these global IT manufacturing companies like IBM. Then more universities such as Tech de Monterrey arrived, and we had a much larger number of professionals, especially in regard to engineering. Our premise getting started was simple: online accountancy software. Now, 33 years after the creation of the first company, we have an ecosystem including myself. We have almost a million clients and hope to reach that level by the end of this year. We have a huge network with 250 major distributors and 3,000 associates.