{"id":25230,"date":"2012-10-27T23:47:25","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T21:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=25230"},"modified":"2012-10-29T09:19:18","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T07:19:18","slug":"tarsus-boosted-by-rim-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/25230\/tarsus-boosted-by-rim-partnership\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarsus boosted by RIM partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tarsus<\/a>, traditionally a\u00a0PC and hardware distributor, says its quest to\u00a0increase margins\u00a0through a distribution rights agreement with RIM<\/a> earlier this year is already yielding positive feedback.<\/p>\n

The group said that, when it announced that it had secured the distribution rights for RIM\u2019s BlackBerry<\/a> range of mobile infrastructure solutions, it raised a number of eyebrows in the South African technology space.<\/p>\n

The Tarsus brand has been synonymous with products and solutions from the world of hardware. But, according to the company\u2019s CEO, Pierre Spies<\/a>, its partnership with RIM is unlikely to be the last.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe addition of BlackBerry to our product mix represented another step in a strategy we put in place 18 months ago to provide our resellers with a broader range of the raw building blocks required to meet the changing infrastructural needs (both software and hardware-centric) of South African small businesses, corporates and enterprises,\u201d Spies said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a strategy that was implemented to respond to the growing competitiveness of the hardware market and the fact that margins in this space had become more pressurised\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that expecting our resellers to continue basing their livelihoods on the sale of hardware alone had become an unsustainable pursuit.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to remain successful, and in doing so, ensure our resellers are successful, we need to continue providing a set of complementary solutions around our hardware portfolio, which in turn allow our resellers to increase their relevance in the market,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Greg Pothitos<\/a>, general manager of the BlackBerry suite of solutions at Tarsus, said resellers have already begun responding to this move extremely positively.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great opportunity for both Tarsus and its resellers because BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and BlackBerry Mobile Voice System (MVS) were previously only available via the mobile telecommunications providers in the country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith these solutions, coupled with the Microsoft initiative announced recently, that Microsoft<\/a> and RIM have signed a patent licensing agreement that gives RIM broad access to the latest Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) for certain BlackBerry devices of RIM, our resellers can begin extending the important ground work that\u2019s laid by our hardware, networking and Microsoft software portfolios,\u201d the GM said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBES allows them to take great care of their customers\u2019 mobile, business-grade, e-mail, calendaring and contacts (among other) needs; while MVS brings the ability to provide desk-phone type functionality to all of the BlackBerry smartphone users in their customers\u2019 businesses,\u201d Pothitos said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt allows Tarsus\u2019 resellers to play a more central role in their customers\u2019 strategic IT requirements and become more deeply embedded as a provider of valuable services to the business. And in our book, that hints at success.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already seen valuable successes in this space and are convinced this new avenue will serve us well in the coming years. Watch this space,\u201d\u00a0Pothitos said.<\/p>\n

Tarsus\u2019 head office is situated in Johannesburg, with branches in Cape Town, KwaZulu-Natal, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Nelspruit. Tarsus has also extended its footprint into Africa with branches in Namibia, Botswana and Mauritius.<\/p>\n

Related article<\/strong><\/p>\n

The need for upgradability in the PC world is dead<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Tarsus targets 18%-22% revenue growth<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Esquire taking on the big guns (and winning)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tarsus, traditionally a PC and hardware distributor, says its quest to increase margins through a distribution rights agreement with RIM earlier this year is already yielding positive feedback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[161,26,157,3790],"class_list":["post-25230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-blackberry","tag-headline","tag-rim","tag-tarsus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25230"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25240,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25230\/revisions\/25240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}