Orlando Olumide Odejide is the CEO of G4V, a leading business consulting, system integration, training and capacity building services company.
Odejide has over a decade experience as an IT professional and as a project Manager. He has worked with reputable companies in Nigeria, in the United Kingdom and some part of America. He spoke to funmi ilesanmi on a wide range of issues.

Overview of Operations
The name of our company is called Global Foresight Advantage. We call it G4 really because that is easier us and for people to pronounce and what that means is that foresight gives us an advantage globally. As at today, we operate in three African countries, hopefully by the end of 2010, we would be in about six or seven African countries.
Three key things that G4 does is; one, we do what is called business consulting, the second is what is called system integration and the third is training and capacity building services. When we say business consulting, what that means is that we help clients look at their businesses and optimize their processes, so process optimization is an essential part of it. We help clients develop unbalanced score cards, make measurements for their business and we help them look at key areas of process improvement and things like that. So when we say systems integration, we are Microsoft Gold Partners with competencies in advanced infrastructure, licensing, information web postulations and we are also Cisco Partners with specialization in security and data centre. We train various people and corporate organizations primarily on various solutions and technologies. As an organization, we have 60 consultants working in Lagos, Abuja, Duala and in Accra, Ghana.
Relationship with Allied Computers
G4V is a part of the Allied Group; Allied Computers is also a part of that same group.
Software Development in Nigeria   
The business of software development in Nigeria is a market that has existed before hand and is getting better as the days go by. The needs of a lot of clients’ businesses in Nigeria both in the banking and telecommunications sectors are significantly improving and becoming much more complex so they do not need generic software anymore. They need extensions and customization for the generic software, that is where I see the growth part in the industry. Also, the key area is around business historical data but now they need to be able to mine the data to get a lot of intelligence out of it, so in the software development business, we would see a significant growth as the years go by.
Virtualization
Virtualization is key. You need to understand it and go with it, take advantage of it now or you would be left behind because virtualization allows you to completely maximize your resources, reduce your cost and increase your capacity as an organization.
Developing the Economy with ICT
IT is about the improvement of businesses. IT helps businesses to be more effective and more efficient at what they do. The growth of any economy at all has to be completely dependent on IT to improve and increase their productivity. It means it would grow and our economy in Nigeria is very much dependent on it. When you look from the hospitality sector to the financial services, to telecommunications and to manufacturing, the dependency of IT is there. The more these businesses want to grow and expand, the more their dependence on IT increases. Both of them go hand-in-hand and the business becomes completely dependent on IT.
Impact of Relationship with Microsoft
Like I said, we are Microsoft’s Gold partner with about five different competencies in that area, so because of that, Microsoft has been extremely supportive of us and the various initiatives we have embarked upon over the last couple of years. From marketing initiative, advertising initiative to the ability to create value added technologies to some of our clients. Microsoft has been supportive in terms of that and the Microsoft Blue Coast strategy is a working strategy, Microsoft support its partners and we are the recipient of one of such support.
Microsoft Nigeria Country Manager Leadership Award 
The award means a lot to us. For one, it is a recognition of the goodwork and the hardwork we have put into all the things that we have been doing.  Prior to that, from the perspective of us been able to further drive our value proposition with our clients, Microsoft basic core business that we do as an organization to promote the certified goal of the organization who are all Microsoft certified so it is an essential part of our strategy.
Prediction of IT in Nigeria
It will get some significant growth I can guarantee you and one of the good things I know would happen rapidly is our ability to export IT out of the country so we will be able to export resources, export capabilities out of Nigeria into other countries, especially all the African countries. It is a major economic growth factor and it will just keep getting better.
Manpower
An essential part of what we do is training and capacity development because the people locally need skills and they need capabilities and that is what it is that we are also doing to be able to build those skills; not only in terms of certifications but giving our people the right capabilities to do whatever it is they need to do. It is an essential part of what will happen and we are in a position to help Nigeria as a nation with the development of its workforce.
Challenges 
The major challenge in the environment is purely infrastructure. Infrastructure can be termed as: number one, power and obviously the absence of broadband which will happen in the next 12 to 24 months to guarantee very available broadband access. Primarily, it is the absence of power because you know everybody, the telcos, the service providers, everybody is completely dependent on power and that is the major hinderance to the development and growth of IT in Nigeria.
Impact of the Meltdown on G4V
The global meltdown has affected everybody. Before we started this interview, one of our business partners came in and he was saying and you know and everything was at a halt. So you know that has been difficult but nevertheless we will survive and we will not only survive, we’ve thrived even in a recession and we have been able to reposition better to do integrated things in years to come.

Support rendered to clients
We have looked at dedicated support plans for various technologies and solutions that we sell to our clients. From the data centre perspective, we help a lot of our clients with data centre implementation and optimization. Outside of the data centre area of work, we help a lot of our clients also with intranet development and software development and also messaging, collaboration and unified communication. We have great dedicated support staff and we have a very dedicated service desk for all the solutions.
Corporate Social Responsibility
One of the things that we do as a way of giving back to the society is working with the government and educational institutions, basically to facilitate initiatives and to actually go into training their people at no cost on process optimization and the use of technology to better equip their businesses and their organizations. It is one of the key things that we are heavily involved in.
Regulation of the software industry
There is a combination of things that needs to be done and it is a joint effort between we technology partners and technology providers like Microsoft and Cisco and established institutions like Coren and software, and builders computer association to be able to step down, have some form of discussion with regards to software standards, development standards, technology standards and how these things can be adopted locally. It is not what someone can do alone; it will have to take a joint effort.
Locally manufactured software 
Locally manufactured are the software and a lot of them have come a long way. We have more than 10 locally manufactured software that have been in business for more than 10 to 15 years. I think it has come a long way and I think it’s a good thing. I encourage a lot of them to get the ISS certification for their software and to actually start making exportation of these software to other African countries.
Supporting local software manufacturers 
From the support perspective, I think the key thing that can be done is basically for the government to give them rebate in terms of tax rebate, in terms of investors’ solutions rebate and support to help them to actually standardize their supply and put them in a position to be able to export it for the good of themselves and the nation in general.
G4V in the next five years   
In another five years, we will definitely be a pan African IT company. We are planning to be in three or more countries next year and to increase this. We have a five-year plan of been in 20 African countries and to have offices and clientele in each of these locations, that is our plan.