Brett, what is your background in the industry?
What has your career path been, and how did you
eventually get into African operations?
I
started in IT in 1992 as a technician working for a
Taiwanese component importer and it didn’t take long
for me to realise that I enjoyed being in front of the
customer, as opposed to sitting in the basement repairing PCs and I thus moved into sales, and then sales
management.
In 1994 I was fortunate enough to be hired by APC, an
American company to open their African office. Their plan
was pretty simple and involved a credit card, lots of travel
budget and a great product which allowed me to travel the
length and breadth of Africa building relationships and a
partner network, most of which remains today.
I have remained focused on Africa for the past 21 years of
which the last seven were as GM
for WestconGroup in Africa. Last
year I realised that I needed a new
challenge with a company that had
the resources, and was willing and
able, to make the leap into Africa –
something which I found here.
How is the African IT industry
as a whole different to the local SA one? What sort of challenges does an IT disty face
when expanding into Africa?
Pretty much the same in terms of
how the partner and customer are
engaged. The difference comes in
the number of cultures, economic
policies and languages which you
need to adapt to on the fly.
No day is ever the same in Africa!
For a distributor to succeed in Africa they need to ensure
that they localise. There isn’t a single SA-based distributor
that has successfully expanded into Africa. I’m not referring
to Southern Africa, which SA disties like to think of as Africa,
but rather East and West Africa, and this is largely due to
the mind-set of “if it works in South Africa, it will work in
Africa”. Many South African distributors are doing the same
thing, distributing the same brands and addressing the
same partners in Africa, just with a different company name
on the building which doesn’t offer any value other
than availability.
Our approach is to focus on enterprise, build our own partner community and offer value to partners all while offering
our vendors incremental business. This organic approach
may take more time to deliver a result, but it is a lot more
sustainable for all parties down the line.
Always remember - Africa partners are savvy and have
options out of Dubai, Europe and the US so African distributors need to offer real value in terms of skills, logistics and
face-to-face engagement - relationships are important.
We often read or hear about how ‘backward’ or
‘behind the times’ Africa is. How accurate is this
though? Is it true, or just a popular
misconception?
Actually Africa is on a par with the rest of the world. As part
of a global community, people in Africa travel the world on a
regular basis. From a tech point of view, Africans are early
adopters as they tend not to have legacy infrastructure in
place, so embracing leading-edge technology is common
throughout the continent.
Where does Africa stand on cloud? Has there been
any meaningful adoption throughout the
continent yet?
As mentioned in my response to the previous question,
Africa has been an early adopter of cloud services and
solutions, and the increase in bandwidth availability over the past five
years is a key driver to this. The big
differentiator moving forward will be
the ability for us to educate partners
and their customers on the benefits
of cloud services, and of course,
how we commercialise it.
Speaking of cloud, First Distribution has recently signed
a distribution agreement with
Amazon AWS. How do you plan
to market AWS in Africa, and
develop partners via the new
Cloud Catalyst Programme?
We have a great Cloud and MSP
team that are already transacting
and signing partners on the continent. The benefit of cloud
(and of course AWS via the cloud) is that cloud is virtual
and accessible anywhere and anytime - provided you have
the available bandwidth, you can access the
services available.
As you look to the future, what are your general
goals and objectives in your current role at
First Distribution?
I joined FD on the basis that they have the right brands,
people, skills and of course, the appetite to invest in Africa.
The sum of the parts which we need to be successful in
Africa exist as we stand today, so my main objectives for
the next quarter include aligning brands to our plan, getting
great people in the right places, and making sure we do the
basics very well.
Looking longer term, our goal is to secure dominant market
share on