In recent years bank-sponsored vendor lease programmes have became a major tool for the IT industry in North America, Europe and the Far East, to gain access to capital funds at very competitive rates. These programmes provide clients of the IT industry with a single point of contact for the supply of hardware, software, services and finance.
With the Absa Vehicle and Asset Finance flexible finance products, customers of EMC will benefit from being able to refresh their installed base in line with the advances in technology. This programme also allows for the risk of potentially low residual values of IT equipment to be factored into the lease. It combines the best of both worlds, ie the storage knowledge and capabilities of EMC with the financing skills and access to capital markets of Absa. This will benefit customers and enable them to get easier access to IT equipment.
Frank Touwen, CEO of EMC SA, said the new programme also enables EMC to offer its customers the additional value-added OpenScale solutions. "OpenScale is EMC`s trademarked acquisition model for utilisation of storage capacity. This allows our customers to pay for only the storage that they actually use, while additional storage is already installed and is available to be activated at any time. Automated billing facilities can also be used. OpenScale is a major tool in enabling our clients to implement the Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy which ensures they store their information at the lowest possible cost at each stage throughout the life of the data."
Sizwe Tati, Managing Executive of Absa Vehicle and Asset Finance, added: "Setting up a vendor leasing programme with EMC gives Absa the opportunity to enter into the IT vendor leasing market by working closely with the world`s leading storage systems company. It enables us to offer a powerful combination of high quality financial solutions with a leading IT product, accompanied with the full backing and support of the manufacturer."
Patrice Bouic, CTO of Discovery Health, said: "The combined financial offering of EMC and Absa enabled Discovery Health to procure the EMC Symmetrix DMX solution for our mission-critical environment as part of implementing our ILM strategy. Using the flexible financial solution proposed by Absa Vehicle and Asset Finance and EMC enables Discovery Health to properly control the costs of ownership associated with the product over its first three years together with the option to further keep it or refresh the technology thereafter with no additional unpredicted costs."
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EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in products, services and solutions for information storage and management that help organisations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle.
Information about EMC`s products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.
Absa Group
The Absa Group Limited (Absa), listed on the JSE Securities Exchange South Africa (JSE), is one of SA`s largest financial services groups offering a complete range of banking, insurance, investment and property products and services.
Absa`s business is conducted primarily in SA and elsewhere on the African continent, where it has holdings in banks in Mozambique, Tanzania, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Angola. It also has operations in the UK, Germany, China (Hong Kong and Shanghai) and Singapore.
On 31 March 2005, the group had 655.1 million shares in issue and a market capitalisation of R49.4 billion, assets of R348.7 billion, an annual turnover of R22.5 billion, 675 physical outlets, 7 million customers, 5 078 automated teller machines and 32 515 permanent staff members.
Absa is a leading player in the home loan, instalment finance and the debit and credit card markets. Armed with a comprehensive e-business strategy, the group continues to launch innovative new services that are both cost-effective and more convenient than conventional banking channels. The group`s more than 530 000 Internet banking customer base is the largest in SA. It also has more than 550 000 telephone banking customers.
Absa employs a customer-centric business model with targeted business units serving specific market segments. The group interacts with its customers through a combination of physical and electronic channels, offering from the basic products and services for the low-wealth personal market to customised solutions for the corporate market.
In addition to efforts to promote entrepreneurship and assist businesses of all types, the group also has an extensive social investment programme focusing primarily on job creation for marginalised communities, primary and secondary school education and the battle against HIV/AIDS. Absa is serious about black economic empowerment and is the first bank to complete a black economic empowerment transaction, transferring 10% of its issued shares to a broad-based black shareholder grouping.
Discovery Health
Discovery is a leader in international health and life insurance. Its core purpose is making people healthier and enhancing and protecting their lifestyles. Discovery`s health and life assurance is underpinned by Vitality and has evolved into four key areas, all at different development stages.
Discovery Health offers consumer-driven private healthcare cover. It was established in 1993 and covers 1.7 million lives.
Discovery Life offers pure-risk life assurance established in 2000 and has 100 000 policyholders.
Destiny Health offers consumer-driven healthcare in the US. It was established in 2000 and covers 40 000 lives.
PruHealth offers consumer-engaged healthcare for private medical insurance in UK. It was established in 2004 as a joint venture between Discovery and Prudential Insurance.