He may work in a futuristic, hi-tech industry, but Derek Wilcocks admits he is fascinated by the past.

The newly appointed MD of Dimension Data division Internet Solutions (IS) has a keen interest in world and African history.

Wilcocks, who has just taken the reins at IS from Angus MacRobert, says the transition from the Dark Ages to modern times — the period from around the 12th century to the early 20th century — captivates him.

He’s particularly interested, he says, how historically economic development, coupled with new technology, has resulted what he calls “new societal forms”.

A modern-day version of this phenomenon, he says, is the cellphone. Affordable telecommunications is changing the world — and particularly Africa, where it’s having a dramatic impact on growth and development.

“It’s a fascinating field of study,” Wilcocks says.

Equally fascinating will be watching how Wilcocks, a long-serving Didata executive, shapes SA’s largest Internet service provider in the next few years.

Wilcocks, 38, is no stranger to IS. Though the company was headed by MacRobert for the past eight years, Wilcocks was MD of the company for three years, between 1998 and 2001, before he moved on to other roles in the Didata stable.

Born in Pretoria, Wilcocks travelled the country extensively when he was a child. His father worked in the motor trade and was something of a specialist in turning around car dealerships. That meant constantly moving around the country.

Eventually, he completed his schooling in Rustenburg, before enrolling at Wits, where he stayed in residence.

“My res was Barnato Hall, one of the first residences in the country that was both mixed gender and mixed race,” he says. “I had a really fascinating life experience staying there.”

It was at Wits that Wilcocks met Ronnie Apteker, who was a year ahead of him. Apteker went on to found IS.

After varsity, Wilcocks “made a mistake” — his words — and joined state-owned IT company Denel Informatics. “It was a good experience, but I realised my aspirations and culture didn’t fit with Denel.”

Wanting to pursue something new, Wilcocks approached then-IS MD David Frankel with an idea of developing a solution offering network management over Internet links. “David wasn’t really interested — it probably wasn’t his number-one priority at the time — but he called me two weeks later and offered me a job. It was the shortest job interview ever.”

Wilcocks started a small firewall company called Trusted Network Solutions, which was later rolled into IS. He became an IS director, focused initially on business development. He later became operations director and in 1998 was appointed as MD.

Three years later, when another Didata company, Omnilink, was merged with IS, Wilcocks became joint MD of IS with Omnlink’s Brett Dawson.

That arrangement didn’t last long, though. That same year, Dawson, who would later replace Jeremy Ord as Didata Group CEO, left to become finance chief at Didata’s North American operations. Wilcocks was appointed as head of strategy in the Middle East & Africa. MacRobert took the top job at IS.

After four years in the strategy role, Wilcocks was tasked with building Didata’s services business in the region, broadening the focus away from low-margin product sales. He excelled in the role.

“When Gus decided he was going to resign from IS, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved again,” Wilcock says.

Married with two children — a daughter, 6, and a son, 3 — Wilcocks says his focus at IS will be on building on the work done by MacRobert.

His key areas of focus include building on IS’s core access business, expanding in Africa, developing voice solutions, and identifying opportunities in fixed-mobile convergence. There’s also the small matter of IS being allowed, for the first time, to build its own telecoms network infrastructure.

With all this activity, perhaps Wilcocks will have the opportunity to write some history of his own.  — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral