{"id":30595,"date":"2013-01-31T10:31:46","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T08:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=30595"},"modified":"2013-01-31T12:29:32","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T10:29:32","slug":"dell-eyes-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/hardware\/30595\/dell-eyes-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Dell eyes Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking at an event in Johannesburg on Friday (25 January 2013), Dell<\/a> Africa general manager, Stewart Van Graan<\/a>, said that despite some challenges, there is ample opportunity for Dell to build a presence in the African market.<\/p>\n

According to the GM, over the past few years, Dell has slowly been transforming itself from “that computer company”, to a company that engages its market in different ways, offering various products and services.<\/p>\n

This transformation was driven by looking at buying patterns in the market – as well as through a number of global acquisitions.<\/p>\n

“Our transformation is done,” van Graan said, echoing the statements made by Dell CEO, Michael Dell<\/a> in 2012.<\/p>\n

“This doesn’t mean we’re done buying and changing – it just means the core of the offerings are in place, and we can see the application in Africa,” Van Graan said.<\/p>\n

Dell transformation was a push beyond simply computing, to being more of a services and solutions organization, dealing with enterprise, data centres, software and cloud services.<\/p>\n

The shift has specifically drawn attention to the enterprise market, where 30% of the company’s revenue is currently held within the mid-market channel (companies with under 3000 employees), which houses 40% of the profitability, Van Graan said.<\/p>\n

In the consumer game<\/h3>\n

While the company has diversified with a definite aim at enterprise and corporate business, Van Graan emphasised that Dell has not forgotten it’s roots.<\/p>\n

“We’re still in the consumer game,” he said. “Retail is an important part of where we’re at.”<\/p>\n

Van Graan said that, while the current trends point to end-user computing stepping back – ultrabooks and tablets will continue to grow, and mainframes and servers won’t be disappearing any time soon.<\/p>\n

“We’ll participate where we see necessary [in end-user computing] – but we want to participate beyond that.”<\/p>\n

Eyes on Africa<\/h3>\n

Dell currently operates in 27 countries across Africa, where Van Graan says the strategy for Dell is to find the balance between resource investment.<\/p>\n

According to Van Graan, the company is positioning itself as a “flexible” platform for mid-market companies – in that it aims to sell products and services which can be adjusted and suited to meet a company’s needs.<\/p>\n

“Our customers [in Africa] are telling us they have economic pressures…business is under pressure to deliver more.”<\/p>\n

Dell employs around 400 people to handle sales and handle operations in Africa – 280 of which are in South Africa, Van Graan said.<\/p>\n

Looking at East Africa, the GM conceded that due to economic and currency issues, “I think we’re under-invested there”.<\/p>\n

However, he noted that there was still big opportunity – particularly in school and government projects – to build presence in both East and West Africa.<\/p>\n

Looking at South Africa, the country is leading the foray into application redesign and using new platforms, access to data, and devices coming out, Van Graan said.<\/p>\n

“Dell is intersecting into that.”<\/p>\n

More tablet and PC news<\/h3>\n

IDC raises tablet forecast<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Global PC growth slowing<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Dell sounds the warning bell for FY results<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The need for upgradability in the PC world is dead<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dell Africa general manager, Stewart Van Graan, says that, despite some challenges, there is ample opportunity to build a presence in the African market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":18050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1174,393,26,473,1111],"class_list":["post-30595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-africa","tag-dell","tag-headline","tag-pc","tag-tablet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30595","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\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30595"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30924,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30595\/revisions\/30924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}