By Filipe Pacheco

Brazil's IT leaders could emulate the country's architects. (The Museum of Contemporary Art, in Niteroi.)

BRAZIL HAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME A GLOBAL IT GIANT, BUT NOT if it acts like every other country in the technology services business. “Me too” won’t work. And to paraphrase a famous Elvis Presley song, waiting until tomorrow is not a good strategy.

That was some of the strongest advice from a panel of international sourcing experts at Brasscom‘s Global IT Forum last week in São Paulo, an invitation-only event attended by country managers, CEOs, CIOs, and executives from domestic and foreign companies, and dominated by the word “competitiveness.”

Cassio Dreyfuss, a Brazil-based vice president of research at Gartner who has been in close contact with the local IT industry for years, said one mistake made by the directors of big domestic companies at the start of a conversation with potential clients is saying “We also do this or that thing,” whereas what they should be saying is: “We are the only ones who do this or that.”

“Companies here need to learn that it is more and more necessary to offer unique solutions and approaches to clients…. They have to adopt more of a consulting posture,” Dreyfuss said.

That idea was reinforced by David Tapper, vice president of Market Research and Outsourcing at research firm IDC. The Brazilian IT industry should consider different models of growth and not just follow models that are already applied abroad, such as those adopted years ago in India. “Brazil is not in the same place as India,” Tapper said. “It is just like a small supermarket chain trying to beat Walmart. It is not going to happen. Companies here need to do what they are good at.”

Tapper cited an example. “Look at Apple and what Steve Jobs did. His intention was not to beat Microsoft. He knew that would not happen. But he created products that made people dependent on them.”

Scalability is also crucial if Brazil is to succeed globally, according to Atul Vashistha, CEO of Neo Group, an advisory focused on managing outsourcing relationships and risks. “In the long term, you are not going to have 4,000 players, but just a few of them that will be very good players — that is the point. Companies need to gain in scale and be effective at it.”

< Read Vashistha’s analysis, “Outsourcing from Brazil: Trends & Traps,” here. >

Figuring out the future would also be helpful. Brazilian companies should focus on the things that are going to drive the growth of the industry in the next few years, such as cloud computing and its outsourcing possibilities, said Michael Corbett, president of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP). Brazil also needs to highlight its booming economy. “Brazil has such a developed economy, and that has to be seen as an advantage for the domestic market and the foreign clients,” Corbett said.

Tomorrow Could Be Too Late…

Another thing Brazil should exploit is the fact that it has been in the international spotlight recently. Major sporting events like the World Cup and the Olympics have resulted in a lot of attention from the general public, but people in the corporate and the technology spheres are also taking a closer look.

“A few years ago, I’d get a phone call with people asking me what was going on in Brazil once every two weeks,” Dreyfuss said. “Nowadays, I get a few of those phone calls daily.”

For Brazil, he said, “It is now or never. The country either takes advantage of this scenario in the next two or three years or it is simply not going to happen again.”

But is the national IT industry capable of accommodating growing global demand, especially with domestic demand rapidly increasing? The topic of the qualification of the local IT workforce came up often at the event, as it does in many discussions about sourcing IT from Brazil. During this panel, it was the consensus that Brazilian IT professionals have unique and different characteristics from those of other countries — but how to form and shape those professionals is still a challenge for employers.

According to numbers from Brasscom, for the year 2011 alone there is a lack of about 90,000 IT professionals in the country, and that number could be inflated to 700,000 by 2020, considering the current patterns of growth of the industry.

Atul Vashistha pointed out that most mature and growing economies have policies to attract foreign professionals and provide incentives to remain in the country — something that is still not done effectively in Brazil, but that could be a good alternative. He said that the bureaucracy makes it too exhausting and expensive for foreigners to enter the country and work or set up business here.

Venture capitalists could help by creating and fostering “new ideas and models,” Tapper said, but currently they represent only a small segment in Brazil. (Bedi Yang, who founded Brazil Innovators to match local entrepreneurs with potential funders, told Sourcing Brazil that Brazilian investors “are still very conservative, very cautious about where to put their money.”)

More training for young would-be IT professionals is often recommended as one obvious way to grow the workforce. But Dreyfuss indicated it’s not that simple. “Brazilian services are already too expensive,” he said. “Most companies simply don’t have enough money to invest in education.”

Instead, he said, actions taken recently by the government, such as the tax incentives on payroll recently proposed under Plano Brazil Maior, are a good alternative to lower costs for these companies.

So, in the meantime, how can talented Brazilian professionals contribute toward building creative models of IT and outsourcing services? On that subject, Tapper was emphatic. Holding up a biography of Steve Jobs, he said: “We should always have him in mind as an example.” An example of how to think outside the box — or maybe outside the borders.