NEC Europe, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japanese multinational NEC, has invested in sub-Saharan African ICT group XON.
The partnership was announced by the two companies in Rosebank, Johannesburg, yesterday.
The two organisations aim to combine their local expertise in an integrated market approach that will provide greater sales coverage in the sub-Saharan African market and accelerate regional growth for both companies in the telecoms, enterprise, government and energy sectors.
In what is essentially a share exchange between the two organisations, NEC Europe now owns 25% of XON and XON now owns 49% of NEC Africa, explained Carel Coetzee, XON CEO. NEC Europe covered the financial shortfall between the two shares, Coetzee added.
"For us as a South African, or African organisation, having a shareholder with annual revenue of 30 billion dollars really changes the game," says Coetzee. "One plus one becomes five, it creates exponential growth opportunities for both organisations."
NEC is a global Juniper Networks services provider infrastructure partner with elite specialisation in advanced network structure, while XON designs, builds and operates high-performance networks for consumers in the fixed and mobile network, public sector, retail and financial services industries. XON also provides managed and outsourcing services.
"The deal sees XON in partnership with NEC Africa, bring very exciting technologies to the continent of Africa," says Coetzee.
Eugene le Roux, MD of NEC Africa, says, in each of the 'pillars' NEC focuses on - telecoms providers, enterprise business, government and energy - they have found synergies with XON.
The partnership aims to expand the scope available to XON and NEC customers relating to networking and security, infrastructure and datacentre, information management, cloud, retail, alternative energy, consulting services, public safety, and carrier networks.
NEC's services enable XON to offer end-to-end networking solutions and "enable new consumer and enterprise services, improve the overall network service experience and efficiencies, and help increase the average revenue per user for telecommunication and Internet service providers," said Coetzee.
XON's networking and security portfolio complements NEC's carrier-grade transmission solutions by "massively expanding [NEC's] sub-Saharan business consulting, systems integration and managed service support footprint as well as sales coverage," said Naoki Iizuka, president and CEO at NEC Europe.
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