Enterprise solutions provider African Legend Indigo is executing its structured expansion plan into Africa with the announcement of the opening of its Nigerian office. The organisation has entered the market of Africa`s most populous nation in partnership with local distributor Channel IT.
According to Reg Swart, Sales and Marketing Director for African Legend Indigo, the organisation has divided Africa into five regions in which it seeks to play an active role in delivering enterprise hardware, management software and skills.
"These areas are the SADC countries, East Africa, West Africa and South Africa - where we are headquartered," he explains.
He says the expansion plan is being driven by significant activity in these markets, particularly around enterprise infrastructure.
"Specifically in Nigeria, there is considerable demand from the oil and gas, financial and telecoms vertical markets. Essentially, this market is similar in some respects to where SA was some 15 years ago - infrastructure needs are high, while the availability of skills is in short supply," Swart notes.
Particular attention is being focused on the effects of consolidation within the financial industry. "Banks in the country are required to lodge a surety of 25 billion Niara (about US$180 million) with the Central Bank of Nigeria; this has had the effect of driving consolidation as those organisations unable to raise this capital are compelled to merge. Within this environment, there is a particular demand for enterprise integration around storage, servers and core applications," Kevin England, MD for AL Indigo Nigeria explains.
The lack of presence of enterprise vendors and technology partners in these markets has resulted in a strong appetite for the model adopted by AL Indigo, he continues, explaining that the organisation is leveraging the local market knowledge of its partner - with account managers and presales technical staff on the ground - and a centrally located pool of skills. "This allows us to leverage economies of scale across the full African region," he adds.
While England acknowledges that existing solution providers in the country are able to support and supply commodity computing solutions such as basic networks and entry-level server infrastructure, he says as complexity and load increases, the problem of skills availability rises.
"This is not an issue limited to Nigeria or even Africa - worldwide, high-level skills that are critical to the running of core applications for large organisations are in short supply. Our value proposition is to take these skills across the region as well as develop the skills of local people, and help customers to reduce the risks of failure of critical technology systems," he explains.
Noting that competition is increasing steeply in emerging markets, with European and Eastern service providers vying for a share, England says this model delivers the availability of highly skilled resources at a competitive rate. Furthermore, he says, with many of its existing South African-based clients expanding their businesses into Africa, AL Indigo acts as a trusted partner providing the necessary infrastructure.
He believes the timing for its entry into what is one of Africa`s biggest emerging markets is good, owing to the increased activity in particularly the financial and telecommunications industries. "With the participation of Channel IT, we have been able to rapidly establish a presence, with our partner addressing local empowerment, while providing understanding of the market and logistics support across banking, currency and legislation," England concludes.
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