Apulian ICT in full recovery. After the 2.4% decline recorded in 2020, the Apulian digital market – in value just under three billion – recovers positions, restarting the constant growth recorded in recent years. Net of the difficulties for companies to find all the specific professional figures that the university system is able to train only in part, the race has resumed.
As shown by the results of Exprivia, active in the ICT and listed on the MTA market of the Milan Stock Exchange. In the first quarter the turnover of this big player – total revenues in 2020 at 167.8 million, 2,400 professionals distributed in 7 countries around the world – grew by 5.4% compared to the same period of 2020, going from 38 to 41 million. Profitability has grown and is growing which, in 2020, was 12.7 per cent. «The companies – explains Gianni Sebastiano, investor relation of the group led by Domenico Favuzzi – are recovering profitability because they are reviewing their processes. The more digitization you put into the processes, the more you affect efficiency and costs: this is the great lesson of the pandemic ». The Apulian Spa aims to consolidate the growth recorded in recent months in all the markets in which it operates as a system integrator: public administration, banks, aerospace, territorial health, telemedicine.
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The sector has not registered, in recent months, major changes in the business development plans. An almost example of a school comes from the new building, worth 22 million, which is being built near the Bari airport. The Fincons group of Milan (application management and system building services) is building the “Future Gateway”, intended for to also host local start-ups, innovation and research spaces. The new facility will be ready within the year, is technologically advanced and will be able to accommodate over 1,000 IT consulting professionals, 300 more which will be added – according to the company growth plans – to the 700 already today in the delivery center, founded in the regional capital in 2008. “We have never stopped during the pandemic, because luckily we are a digital business that has managed to guarantee remote operations and services”, they tell the group’s headquarters which, this year, plans to further improve turnover , from 178 to 197 million (+ 10% approximately). The Spa, founded and led by Michele Moretti, an engineer born in Bari then moved to Milan, will provide services from the Future Gateway to customers of all its offices scattered across Italy, Switzerland, Great Britain, the United States, France and Germany. The other pole of regional ICT is Lecce powered by the presence of the university, like Bari which counts on the university and the Polytechnic, training centers that are decisive for the growth of the sector. Positive feedback and even acquisitions of new companies in Lecce, such as Giancarlo Negro’s Links spa (52 million turnover by 2021). “The digital business – says the CEO – has not suffered much in terms of turnover in 2020 and so it will be this year too”. At the end of June Negro will complete the acquisition of an Apulian Iot company (8.5 million turnover and 35 employees) and is close to that of another based in Milan (banking and financial sector, 7.5 million turnover and 70 employees). Within the year another 50 hires, trained in the internal academy, which will be added to the current 560. Even in SMEs, the assessment does not change. Salvatore Latronico, CEO of Openwork – turnover in 2021 at 1.8 million, up 10% on 2020 – confirms that “a certain effervescence is underway, there is a recovery”. The Bari spa, which creates process automation systems on the cloud, is expanding its customer base “thanks to Covid, which is overcoming the cultural difficulties of companies with respect to the cloud”. In fact, in 2020, services such as cloud computing grew by 16% in the region. Exprivia, Fincons, Links and Openwork are examples of an entire district in recovery. «All the companies – confirms Latronico, who also presides over the Apulian IT district, which has about a hundred actors including companies, universities, employers’ associations and trade unions – are hiring. Paradoxically, the brake is in the shortage of graduates in computer disciplines, new generation systems engineers ». It is obligatory to resort to internal academies to fill the gaps in digital technology – which today has over 5,000 employees – also by resorting to neighboring skills such as mathematics, physics, management engineering, and then turning to the IT component. But that’s not enough: for this reason, together with the ITS Apulia Digital Maker – ICT area, the district is working on professional growth courses for non-graduates.