Novell South Africa has jointly announced the re-opening of its KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) office and the appointment of Justin Foxcroft as regional manager for the KZN region.
Foxcroft says this is great news for the region after Novell closed its office at the end of 2003 due to a general drop in IT spending from the business community in KZN.
"Novell didn`t stop its support in the KZN market during 2004, however, with a focused presence on the region being run from the Novell head office in Johannesburg."
During the course of 2004, Foxcroft was personally responsible for activities in the KZN market in addition to his responsibilities as the enterprise accounts manager for the Gauteng region.
"But 2004 has proven that the KZN market is beginning to grow rapidly again," Foxcroft says, "and to support that growth, it`s key for Novell to have a local office in Durban."
He says this new found growth is being fuelled by a general community progression in both the public and private sectors. "The KZN market seems determined to prove it is not follower, but an equal and in some areas leader to other regions within SA. There is also massive collaboration between the public and private sectors to achieve this goal," he says.
Interestingly enough, Foxcroft says the growth in the KZN market did not result from the popularity Novell has gained through its activities in the Linux and open source space.
"Linux was not completely in the picture during the course of last year, so it wasn`t solely as a result of Linux that we achieved success in the KZN market. We put substantial effort into rebuilding relationships with partners and building new relationships in KZN and I believe this is the reason we saw growth in the KZN region," he says.
"That said, however, we believe we can use last year`s growth and the new potential brought to the table by our Linux value proposition to really ignite this market during 2005," Foxcroft enthuses.
Novell South Africa managing director, Stafford Masie, agrees wholeheartedly with Foxcroft`s comments and says the re-opening of the KZN office has been something towards which the company has been actively striving for some time now.
"When I returned to SA to take up the role as managing director, I promised the market that Novell South Africa would re-establish its national footprint. The re-opening of the KZN office sees the culmination of Foxcroft and his team`s efforts to deliver on Novell`s promises," he says.
In terms of Foxcroft`s aspirations for the KZN office during 2005, he says even more growth is on the cards. "We intend to drive growth in the region of at least 50% during 2005 and will be focusing primarily on the public sector and retail areas of the private sector. We believe this goal to be more than realistic, taking into account the strong partner channel we have built in the region and the core competencies that now exist in the areas of identity management and Linux migration," he concludes.
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