South African ICT solutions provider GijimaAst foresees an 8% to 10% increase in revenues this year, boosted by the company’s new strategic focus on industry-specific ICT solutions, said the company’s CEO, Jonas Bogoshi in an interview with ITNewsAfrica.com.
The company yesterday welcomed the full integration of its partner, NEC Philips into NEC Unified Solutions, a cornerstone in NEC’s strategy to advance its communications and networking activities and market share in EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa).
According to Paul Kievit, President of NEC Unified Solutions, the wholly owned NEC subsidiary can offer enterprise customers a broad range of NEC technologies, including IT platforms, display solutions, digital signage and security.
We caught up with Jonas Bogoshi, CEO of GijimaAst, to discuss the role of NEC Unified Solutions in the company’s future strategy, among others.
ITNewsAfrica.com: What does the full integration of NEC Unified Solutions mean for GijimaAst ?
GijimaAst: We were primarily selling voice solutions from NEC. They are our exclusive partner in South Africa as a system integrator. Now NEC has taken the entire shareholding in NEC Philips, meaning we have access to a number of voice solutions, industry-related solutions that NEC has such as biometrics for the health industry, hospitality etc and mobile solutions and applications we haven’t had access to before.
ITNewsAfrica.com: Will the company offer cloud computing solutions or is this a new direction to follow, due to this stronger partnership with now NEC Unified Solutions?
GijimaAst: We are at an early stage in cloud computing adoption, we have not quite provided solutions in the cloud, so the access to the entire NEC portfolio of products will accelerate the process. We had in our strategy cloud computing implementation, now we can offer these solutions to mobile operators and phone industries. They have been implementing cloud solutions for Telefonica in Europe and also in Australia. We are aiming now to be one of the leaders in South Africa in terms of cloud computing offering.
ITNewsAfrica.com: What would be the company’s strategy for upcoming years?
GijimaAst: The fully-integrated NEC partnership is exactly in line with our strategy. If you look at the company 3-4 years ago our everyday margins were around 4%, now it has become around 10.9%. The reason we are becoming more profitable is because we are focusing on industry-specific solutions, primarily in the public sector. Secondly, we are aware of cloud computing and we are concentrating on that.
ITNewsAfrica.com: Are you expecting an increase in turnover this year, as a result of broadening the products and services portfolio?
GijimaAst: I’m looking at anything between 8% and 10% growth for this financial year (ending in June), but I think going forward is more exciting. We still haven’t quantified these opportunities, but I expect they will add to our portfolio of products and services.
ITNewsAfrica.com: What percentage from total revenues will be represented by sales to the public sector and industry-specific ICT solutions?
GijimaAst: 47% of our business comes from the public sector and 17% from mining, but those industry-specific solutions are not exceeding 15-20%. That is where we want to focus on.
GijimaAst provides its clients with diverse service delivery options in the infrastructure, solutions, system integration and networking arenas. The company’s market focus includes broad market penetration in the manufacturing, mining, telecommunications and financial services markets, as well as national and provincial government departments and parastatals.
NEC Corporation is a leading provider of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions.
