Global security distributor Computerlinks has opened a local office to represent the African region.
It has brought several vendors on board, including Juniper Networks, McAfee, CheckPoint and RSA.
The company aims to represent its vendors in this region, drive business across solution segments, penetrate new markets and establish additional routes to market.
He says Computerlinks is an extension of a global footprint and business operation, in the sense that it inherits the pedigree of the world's single largest security distributor.
“Computerlinks has 21 locations worldwide, and business revenues that run into the billions. The company also distributes adjacent solution domains, such as infrastructure, networking and storage.
“Security-only players need the infrastructure providers to sell the infrastructure before security can be attached. By having this versatility across multiple domains, we can take control, and create our own opportunities.”
He says Computerlinks Africa's strategy is to represent established vendors with broad solution portfolios, but is also open to representing niche vendors that offer unique point solutions.
“Computerlinks offers a global entity in this region, through the additional support of two 24/7 support centres located in the UK and Germany, that offer multilingual support. This offers our partners additional points of contact, as opposed to relying on vendors only.”
Biehn says the company is a channel-focused operation, built around servicing and enabling vendors and partners, and scaling its level of enablement according to the capability of the partner. “This covers elements of pre- and post-sales support.”
The company, Biehn explains, aims to deliver tangible and meaningful value-adds, and offers favourable trading terms to its partners to ease cash flow burdens. “Our business models don't threaten our partners, only enable them.”
Africa represents unique and tangible opportunities, and forms part of the global Computerlinks emerging markets development strategy, concludes Biehn. “The market indicates that the timing of the local operation couldn't be better, particularly because of the differentiators in our business model.”
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