PC-WARE, an international large account reseller for Microsoft and other software vendors in South Africa, today announced it has sold a 26% stake of its local operations to a local black IT partner, Unishe.
The announcement comes shortly after the signing of the shareholding agreement at PC-WARE head office in Leipzig, Germany, by PC-WARE Group CEO, Dr Knut Loeschke and Unishe Chairman, Cheslyn Mostert.
Unishe is jointly owned by Lefatshe Technologies and Unicus Business Solutions. Lefatshe Technologies is a black-owned company that provides best-of-breed IT security solutions for the southern African market through powerful partnerships with the world`s leading security vendors.
Unicus Business Solutions is a black-owned South African ICT company that provides services and solutions to clients in both government and the private sector. Unicus` solutions cover availability, reliability and performance of every component of the complex communication infrastructure, including servers, network elements, applications, storage devices and databases across the depth and breadth of the enterprise.
Commending the deal, the newly appointed CEO of Lefatshe Technologies, Noedine Isaacs-Mpulo, said: "The partnership with PC-WARE is a special one. It is a clear and unqualified demonstration of PC-WARE`s commitment to black economic development, as not many international IT companies take this step to show commitment to the country`s economic development".
Isaacs-Mpulo added that "the partnership means that the black equity partners will have access to the know-how and expertise from PC-WARE resources worldwide, enabling them to provide turnaround solutions, specifically in the area of security, licensing and software asset management".
PC-WARE country CEO Maurice Staal said: "Many of our existing customers, government as well as private businesses, requested us to consider increasing our BEE status in order to justify their relationship with us. We also realised the chance of doing business in South Africa should be approached by PC-WARE as a possibility to generate new opportunities with a new vision and a new unique local strategy for our international company. As we were already working with our partners for quite some time, this was a logical way forward.
"Given that private companies and government departments are also measured on their BEE spend, the partnership forged with Unishe means that PC-WARE has a new rating, and becomes a `value adding supplier`. As a result, customers procuring from PC-WARE add an additional 25% points when calculating their BEE spend reported to government," Staal added.
PC-WARE entered the SA market in 2003 as a Microsoft EMEA Large Account Reseller focusing on multi-vendor software sales and licensing and software asset management with a variety of services around these core offerings. The certification of Level II compliance underlines the strong commitment of PC-WARE to South Africa and its customers.
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