AxizWorkgroup’s new Advanced Technologies division, being headed up by former Westcon SA CEO Jacques Malherbe, officially announced its presence in the market late last week with the launch of its security practice – the first of four pillars the business will be based upon.

Along with security, the Advanced Technologies arm of the distributor will concentrate on three other major sectors – compute, storage and networking – and mainly in the enterprise space. It is widely believed that the formation of the new division was key in AxizWorkgroup securing the hotly-contested distribution rights to Cisco and TrendMicro in the region over the past few weeks.

The security arm of the business was officially launched last Thursday to about 150 prominent resellers and houses 19 major vendors ranging from TrendMicro and Cisco’s Sourcefire, through to Aruba, Tipping Point, Gemalto, Citrix, Blue Coat and InfoGuardian.

Malherbe says that the new security practice is specifically aimed at the convergence space and that additional products will be brought to market in the coming months.

“This is a totally different portion of the business than the distribution business within the group that you deal with,” Malherbe told partners. “And as time goes by, we will start rolling out more and more value products.

“Security systems are comprised of various different components and within Advanced Technologies we’ve assembled the world’s best vendors so that you can be confident that you can provide a total security solution for the enterprise,” he says. “We represent key vendors with best-of-breed products and we will continue to follow this strategy going forward. That’s where we’re going with this division.

“Our value proposition is that we offer a portfolio that you can take as a systems integrator, a VAR or a service provider, a whole security stack, that you can take into your customers’ business in order to provide the services around security that today’s environment demands,” Malherbe adds.

“You’ve got to understand that security is fragmented – there is not one company that covers it end-to-end – so we’re building an ecosystem with these various product sets that is manageable and allows you to provide a total solution.
“In security today, you have to deal with multiple vendors,” Malherbe says. “And we think we have assembled the best that are currently available in the market.”