With renewed focus in the KwaZulu-Natal region, Novell South Africa has proudly announced phenomenal growth in the region over the past two years. Most notably this is evidenced by the fact that the KwaZulu-Natal branch office raised its revenues by 50% over the past 12 months and by 300% if the past 24 months are taken into account.
To a great degree, the growth Novell has achieved in KwaZulu-Natal has resulted from the strong focus Justin Foxcroft, current regional manager, afforded KwaZulu-Natal`s channel and customer base over the past two years.
Over the past financial year, Foxcroft says a number of events have happened in the KwaZulu-Natal region, events that he believes have not only revitalised the KwaZulu-Natal market, but have paved the way for additional growth.
"We have established some key partnerships in the region," he says, "With two of our regional partners achieving the highest-level status Novell has available within its channel programme, namely platinum partnership.
"The first of these partnerships came from Business Connexion and Dynatech. Business Connexion currently holds platinum partner status on the solutions front, and Dynatech has focused its platinum partnership towards the support angle," he says.
While both companies are fully BEE compliant, Foxcroft says Dynatech is one of the few 100% black owned businesses in the IT market.
"We haven`t only focused our efforts towards these two platinum partnerships, however," Foxcroft continues.
"All of the long-standing relationships we had forged over the past decade with our partners in the KwaZulu-Natal region have been revitalised. These existing relationships were also substantially strengthened by Novell`s implementation of a very attractive incentive scheme, which is aimed at motivating partners to achieve their business goals," he adds.
Looking at the progress the region has made in terms of it product lines, Foxcroft says the KwaZulu-Natal region has proven to be a ripe ground for sowing opportunities in the Linux and open source arena.
Interestingly enough, Foxcroft says Novell`s opportunities have not arisen from its Linux and open source offerings themselves, but rather from the fact that all of Novell`s solutions complement an open source and open standards strategy very strongly.
"We have learnt that, providing we can show our customers additional value through the increased open source solutions afforded to them, they will see the value offered by Novell`s resource management and identity management solutions.
"Our progress in this region truly boils down to the new business we`ve managed to gain in the past 12 months," Foxcroft maintains.
"Through no less than 12 open source, resource management and identity management solutions we`ve delivered in the provincial and local government arena, with medium-sized deals coming through the private sector, we`ve managed to prove that the KwaZulu-Natal market is serious about business agility, cost reduction and the development of new efficiencies via technology."
While he says the multinational is very satisfied with the results it has achieved to date, over the next financial year, the majority of the groundwork has been laid for further evolving those 12 projects and garnering new business. "Importantly, we`ve also announced a strong desire to establish a presence in the KwaZulu-Natal Smart Exchange, a facility designed to help small, innovative and entrepreneurial business get a start in the business community.
"This presence has been provisionally secured through Dynatech`s representation," he says. "Novell, however, does have strong plans for implementing a competency centre at the Smart Exchange, allowing customers and partners to experiment, test and build solutions using Novell technology, as well as gain access to valuable training facilities.
"Additionally, SITA`s KwaZulu-Natal presence has shown strong support for our business goals and the value we can bring customers in the public sector. We feel confident that we can look forward to their ongoing support over the coming financial year," he adds.
With these efforts due to yield valuable results, Foxcroft concludes that Novell`s KwaZulu-Natal office is poised to once again reach a 50% growth margin over the upcoming financial year.
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