South Africa’s technology leaders are navigating one of the most demanding periods in recent memory. Boards are demanding AI capability. Regulators are tightening compliance requirements. Operational costs are rising. And technology budgets, already stretched by rand depreciation and global economic uncertainty, are expected to deliver more than ever before. For CIOs, CTOs, and CFOs trying to balance all of this simultaneously, the traditional approach to managing enterprise technology is no longer sufficient.
Enterprise software costs have become one of the largest and least flexible line items on the technology balance sheet, consuming budget that organisations would rather direct towards innovation, growth, and the digital capability their businesses need to compete. For many, the question is no longer whether to rethink their approach to enterprise technology. It is how.
Spinnaker Support South Africa, backed by African Rainbow Capital, is offering a direct answer to that question. Having established a strong foundation in the local market since its launch earlier this year, the company is deepening its engagement with South African enterprise decision-makers, moving beyond awareness to active strategic partnership with the organisations it serves.
With a client base of more than 1 200 organisations across more than 100 countries, Spinnaker Support provides independent third-party support for SAP, Oracle, and VMware environments, giving enterprises a proven alternative to traditional software support models. The company’s South African operation, priced in rands, gives local businesses a way to significantly reduce software support costs while retaining full control over when and how their systems evolve.
Teko Mojaki, Managing Director of Spinnaker Support South Africa, says the conversation in the market has matured significantly since the company’s arrival.
“When we entered this market, the conversation was largely about cost. And cost still matters enormously,” says Mojaki. “But what enterprise leaders are now asking goes further. They want to know how to build a technology environment that is resilient, that supports their AI ambitions, and that gives them the freedom to invest according to their own business priorities. That is the conversation Spinnaker is built for.”
Mojaki, a former Partner at PwC Africa where he led the SAP practice across the continent, has spent over two decades advising enterprise organisations on technology strategy. He argues that the most important shift South African technology leaders can make right now is to stop treating enterprise software support as a fixed, unavoidable cost and start treating it as a strategic decision.
“Enterprise software support is one of the biggest and least scrutinised costs in most technology budgets,” he says. “Organisations accept it, budget for it, and move on. But when you start asking what that spend is actually returning and whether there is a smarter way to structure it, the answers change the conversation entirely.”
A growing focus for Spinnaker Support in the South African market is AI readiness. As enterprises across the country accelerate their ambitions around artificial intelligence, Mojaki is clear that the quality of an organisation’s existing systems determines how far those ambitions can actually go.
“AI is not something you build on top of an unstable foundation,” says Mojaki. “The organisations that will lead in this space are the ones that have clean, well-governed, and fully optimised enterprise systems underneath. Getting that right is not a delay in your AI strategy. It is the starting point for it.”
Spinnaker Support’s independent model gives organisations the ability to maintain their existing enterprise systems at significantly lower cost, without being locked into upgrade timelines that do not reflect their business readiness. For South African enterprises managing complex SAP, Oracle, and VMware environments, that flexibility translates directly into budget that can be redirected towards the priorities that matter most.
The company is actively expanding its engagement with CIOs, CFOs, procurement directors, and technology leaders across financial services, manufacturing, retail, and the public sector, with a long-term view on building enterprise technology capability across South Africa and the broader African continent.
“South Africa has the talent, the ambition, and the enterprise capability to lead this conversation across the continent,” Mojaki says. “Spinnaker is here to support that as a strategic partner, as a long-term presence in this market, and as proof that when organisations take back control of their technology decisions, they are in a far stronger position to invest in their own future.”
