GijimaAst delivers for NEC Philips

Johannesburg, 30 Oct 2007

GijimaAst continues to hold exclusive rights to sell NEC Philips` products and solutions in SA.

The continued partnership follows a strong 2006 performance, which saw GijimaAst emerge as one of NEC Philips` biggest partners. Additionally, it received recognition for producing some of the vendor`s best market share growth internationally.

GijimaAst`s NEC Philips business executive Thabo Johnson says there is definitely room for further growth.

"We already have 4 000 sites using NEC Philips solutions in the market. This is really just the beginning. Their solutions are probably some of the best available and I believe we can probably take 40% of the local business communications market through this partnership," he explains.

A key opportunity for the division is the growing interest in unified communications, says GijimaAst CEO Jonas Bogoshi.

"Businesses have got past the suspicion that unified communications could turn out to be a fad. They`re interested now, they just want to see the business plan," he explains.

Voice versus data

Despite Johnson`s optimism, he admits there are challenges within the business.

"We have three distinct areas we need to address: brand awareness, internal skills transitioning and overcoming the legacy of the historical split of ownership between data and voice in enterprises," he explains.

While the NEC Philips range gets a lot of support from the voice network owners, data network owners are less familiar with the brand, says Johnson.

"It takes time to get over this, but we are getting over it," he concludes.