Altech in partner deal with Huawei

BUSINESS

JSE-listed Allied Technologies Limited (Altech) has announced it has signed a ten-year Value Added Partner agreement with Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider.

Under the agreement Altech will provide Huawei enterprise products and services to customers and offer post-sales professional services and support to the company’s value added resellers. The territory for the agreement covers South Africa, Angola, Botswana, DR Congo, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Craig Venter, Altech CEO said: “We are extremely pleased with this partnership with Huawei, which extends our existing solutions into the enterprise market. We recognise that our customers demand better value and more flexibility from the IT industry and this partnership helps us to work with our customers to provide the best possible solutions for their IT infrastructure. We look forward to continuing to develop our long-term relationship with Huawei.”

Commenting on the new partnership, Lauren Fan, president of Huawei Enterprise Business Group in the east and southern Africa region, said: “This agreement is an important step in the development of our African Enterprise business. Altech is a well-respected and leading technology company which will be a reliable and professional partner in the provision and ongoing support of efficient ICT solutions and services. Working together on this new enterprise collaboration will enable Altech to extend Huawei’s Enterprise’s extensive portfolio of services and products to its customers in Africa.”

Huawei Enterprise offers solutions for vertical industry and enterprise customers including government and public sectors, transportation and logistics, power grids, energy, healthcare, and finance, and include IT solutions such as cloud services, unified communications and transmission solutions, network and application security services, data centre networking and storage solutions and IT infrastructure services.

“Altech will provide end-to-end managed services and technology solutions that address the unique challenges faced by enterprise companies. Altech’s customers and partners across the public and private sectors will benefit from Huawei’s expertise in design, implementation, lifecycle and managed services” said Venter.

“Combining Altech’s impressive range of market-leading technology services with a product portfolio of Huawei’s calibre will massively impact our public and private sector customers. It is a partnership that will drive them towards meeting their challenging targets through technology, service innovation and cost effectiveness,” he added.

According to Fan, Altech was selected due to the well established relationships that it has in the enterprise market. Altech is also a leading provider of value-add vertical solutions to the market which will be enhanced by the product portfolio of Huawei. The enterprise market in South Africa is a new area of focus for Huawei and they have partnered with Altech in order to grow the market for their wide portfolio of enterprise products.

“This partnership with Altech is the culmination of Huawei’s search for a company that has the ability to implement systems integration and vertical application-led selling such as transforming the future of banking applications and enabling applications such as electronic health services and functions such as health and safety for the mining sector,“ said Fan.

With the partnership with Huawei, Altech, through its operations in the telecommunications, multi-media and information technology (TMT) sectors will be able to provide high-end fleet management services, traffic monitoring applications and cloud infrastructure services, to name a few.

Another component of the partnership is Altech’s ability to distribute Huawei devices, such as smartphones and tablets, through its existing Altech Autopage Cellular national distribution network.

“Huawei is a $32-billion business empire and is the world’s largest telecoms-equipment manufacturer and is one of the world’s ten largest mobile-phone manufacturers. Through this partnership with Huawei, we will implement a broader focus on the TMT sectors where we already have a significant footprint,” said Venter.

According to Dr Willie Oosthuysen, Altech Chief Strategic Officer and Chief Technology Office, the partnership with Huawei is an important strategic move for Altech as it will not only result in enhanced services for Altech customers, but will also provide them with access to quality, affordable technology supported by a partner that is well aligned with Altech’s focus on customer service and innovative technology solutions.

“As part of this agreement, Huawei Enterprise will provide its recognised worldwide expertise to Altech to further develop the service experience of our customers. Coupled with our expertise in local market conditions, this is a relationship that will positively impact our enterprise services and solutions,” said Oosthuysen.