IBM plotting African expansion

IBM is not the first destination for small to medium enterprises when it comes to business solutions, but that is something  Jeanine Jennings, IBM’s new MidMarket Executive, and Andy Monshaw, MidMarket Global GM, want to change.

“Broadly speaking, for IBM South Africa, we have two things. We have identified customers who wanted to expand into Africa and thought about ways in which we can support them to do that. So we looked at big and key clients to see how we could support them. Secondly, we have established branches and infrastructure on a very rapid scale — we have opened offices in Ghana, Angola and Kenya. And then we signed a big contract with Bharti Airtel that accelerated us even more. We (have) opened up in 16 countries in the space of six months,” Jennings said during a press event.

Monshaw believes this is only the start of IBM’s expansion into Africa. “We have a very structured model for expansion. We (have) named a chairman of Africa, which is one of IBM’s top 60 executives, living in Johannesburg.”

While IBM focuses on Africa as a whole, Monshaw says South Africa specifically has the company’s undivided attention. “IBM’s growth plates include Smarter Planning, Cloud, Analytics and Growth Markets. Inside Growth Markets, I can easily say that right now Africa is at the top of the list of everyone’s attention.”

Monshaw hopes IBM’s programs will educate SMEs and show them IBM has solutions for their business.

Charlie Fripp – Online editor