Saab Grintek to enter billion-rand router, switch market with Huawei products

Saab Grintek announced it will promote the Huawei core network products which are state-of-the-art next-generation routers and switches in South Africa.

"Saab Grintek will make a major contribution to cost containment in the IT and telecommunications industry," said Angelo Manzoni, managing executive of Saab Grintek's Enterprise division. "Routers and switches are widely deployed in IT networks covering government, corporate and business markets of all sizes. We are well positioned to supply Huawei products to these markets."

Huawei is a significant player in the telecommunication field and has over the past few years introduced some very innovative, high quality equipment in ICT and has up to now made significant inroads into the market in most parts of the world.

Huawei products are well priced with superior performance and offer more inclusive features than the products currently holding the lion's share of the South African market.

The intellectual property is packaged with the products, which means that there is no need to buy separate licences. This is of major benefit to the industry as it reduces costs and does away with lengthy licensing processes. Huawei products are based on its independently designed Network Processor (NP) technology chips. Its NP technology designing capability is among the most advanced in this field worldwide.

Huawei is the largest supplier of equipment to the Chinese telecommunications market and has developed major markets in Africa, Europe and the US.

"We have made major inroads into world markets, and now with Saab Grintek as our partner, we can further promote our technology in the South African market," said Barron Si, Datacom director of Huawei. "We selected Saab Grintek for its reputation as a major supplier in the telecoms and IT industry as well as its depth of market knowledge and experience. Saab Grintek engineers have already been trained in our headquarters and are fully conversant with the Huawei range of products. They are ready to support the new Huawei product customers in South Africa," he said.

"We are confident of taking up Huawei's challenge and expect to gain a sizable share of the estimated R1 billion per annum market," Manzoni said. "It is important for end-users to appreciate the quality of the Huawei range of products and the cost savings they can achieve.

"Our staff has been extensively trained overseas, enabling us to offer high level support to our customers and their suppliers. While our main distribution will be through resellers and system integrators, we will support the end-user on a 24/7 basis. In addition, Technical Training Solutions Africa, a Saab Grintek operation which looks after customer and engineer certified training, is fully set up to handle all the training requirements of resellers and integrators," Manzoni said.

As telecom and enterprise networks continue to grow, they will benefit from the range of next-generation routers and 10Gigabyte Ethernet (10GE) switches that have been launched by Huawei. 10GE is fast becoming the standard mega-backbone for networks. With data volumes increasing exponentially as demand for video, VOIP and multi-service applications rises, 10GE is a prerequisite for future network development.

Saab Grintek has a proud record of supporting the IT and communications industry in South Africa and the rest of the African continent. The company works with best of breed partners and has built up a strong team of engineers and technicians who have the expertise and the knowledge of local networks and conditions to add value to customers.