SecureData Security, a company within the JSE-listed SecureData Holdings Group, has played a central part in RSA Security's growth into the largest supplier of authentication, encryption and related solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past four years.
RSA, the Security Division of EMC, appointed SecureData as a distributor for Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean islands in 2004. Since then, SecureData has helped RSA to grow a significant base of customers and resellers throughout South Africa and the rest of the region.
During the previous financial quarter, RSA's Sub-Saharan Africa business outperformed many emerging markets of the similar size or larger, such as the Middle East.
Says Rob Watson, Country Manager of RSA in South Africa: "We chose SecureData Security as a partner four years ago because we were impressed by the skills, reseller network and marketing support they could offer us.
"Since then, the relationship between the two companies has grown from strength to strength. As our as a value-added distributor, SecureData built the market in Sub-Saharan Africa for us and helped to grow our business here to a size that it justified the opening of a RSA office in South Africa."
"One reason that SecureData and RSA have enjoyed such strong growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is that value-added distribution is an excellent model for the region," says David Naud'e, Identity and Access Management product manager at SecureData Security. "In a smaller market, skills are generally more scarce, and distribution companies are required to be more involved from a support and demand generation point of view."
The value-added distribution model is the most cost-effective way of ensuring that specialist vendors such as RSA and their resellers are able to reach customers with high-quality security solutions. SecureData creates end-user demand directly through its direct-touch engagement model, and offers a base of skills that customers and the channel can draw on for implementation and support of their solutions.
EMC, the world's leading storage vendor, acquired RSA Security in 2006. Since then, SecureData, RSA and EMC have all worked closely together to grow RSA's share of the Sub-Saharan Africa market.
Over the years, RSA has evolved from a supplier of authentication products into a provider of a comprehensive range of products that help enterprises to manage information security risks. SecureData Security is a value-added distributor of RSA Security's entire product range, including identity and access management, data loss prevention (DLP), security information and event management and file encryption.
Says Naud'e: "RSA is best known for its authentication products, but we plan to step up marketing for products and solutions such as its DLP and Encryption and Key Management suites. We look forward to working with RSA to grow its market share in these areas in the years to come."
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SecureData is a specialist, value-added distributor of perimeter, application, network, endpoint, storage and identity information security solutions and risk management solutions for the African sub-continent and Indian Ocean islands. A cross-section of the available solutions from SecureData illustrates wide coverage of the following information security and risk management domains: business continuity, security appliances and devices, hardware authentication, identity and access management, security and vulnerability management, secure content management, threat management and security services. SecureData's information security and risk management solutions include best-of-breed solutions, devices and appliances for the perimeter, data centres, applications, network, endpoints, messaging and Web. In addition, as a value-add to vendor, channel and customer, SecureData also provides a full complement of support, pre-sales and professional services around the solutions positioned in each discrete security vertical.
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