Nutanix Sub-Saharan Africa highlights customers appetite for multi-cloud.

19 Oct 2023

The African ICT market is poised for further growth, and IDC predicts that ICT spending across Sub-Saharan Africa will increase at a CAGR of 6.1% over the 2021–2025 period. According to IDC, the drivers will be investments in digital "innovation accelerators" such as 3D printing, AI, AR/VR, robotics, blockchain, and IoT, which will also increase by more than 19% over this time. Unfortunately, these apps drive complexity, the answer for which is adopting a simplified approach to hybrid multi-cloud.

Speaking at the Nutanix .NEXT on Tour event held in Johannesburg recently Alex Russell, Regional Sales Manager, SADC said that Africa remains invested in using technologies to automate, streamline, and reduce the costs of daily operations. However, many remain tied down in legacy environments past their sell-by-date or in a cloud environment where cost creep is spiralling out of control. "Critically, the message we want to take to our partners and customers is that we deliver the flexibility and choice of platform and solution African customers need to run their applications and workloads where they are better suited.”

“In Africa, the company continues to grow its footprint adding boots on the ground across its regions and has enjoyed a 10% growth in customers over the last year. This, coupled with a renewed channel focus, is providing customers direct access to Nutanix skills and resources in the region at a time when other vendors are still uncertain of their commitment to the continent.”

Cloud costs continue to be top of mind for IT leaders. In fact, according to the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index, 85% of enterprises struggle with managing cloud costs. A figure Russell suggests is even higher in Africa. To help customers meet these challenges head-on, Nutanix has equipped its local channel with the skills to act autonomously when working with customers. Through its Customer Lifetime Value commitment, the company also works closely with customers to help them navigate key KPIs beyond costs and is assisting with sustainability targets and demands and the adoption of future technologies such as AI.

"We win when our customers and partners win. At Nutanix, we have always sought to simplify and streamline IT tasks across the enterprise and now the cloud. While hybrid multicloud is what companies want, it can be complex. The simplicity we offer has driven increasing interest from companies we are talking to as they look to us to help them take the complexity out of managing their data and applications across clouds. In Africa, our role is to help customers get on top of the skills gap through simplified tools, embrace new technologies with systems that support them, and get on top of their data without landing up in a web of inflated infrastructure costs as a result.”

Also speaking at the event Gerhard Fourie, Channel Sales Manager, SSA and IOI said “We are focused on enabling partner autonomy, something we managed to deliver well on with our Elevate Partner Programme, where we directed efforts on helping partners with sales, technical and services certifications, and building partner competencies on Nutanix solutions. Announcing the 2023 partner wards he said that the next evolution of the company journey towards partner autonomy is to ensure that partners can see and deliver on the value in building businesses that lead with Nutanix.

The winners of the 2023 Sub-Saharan Africa partner awards are :