Six months after the purchase of IBM’s enterprise server business, Lenovo South Africa has become the first territory in EMEA to launch the fully integrated System X ThinkServer.
Graham Braum, GM of Lenovo Africa, says that the Enterprise Business Group which, combined with the PC Business Group has become a key strategic business unit within the company, is one of Lenovo’s top priorities. He says the acquisition of IBM’s System X now allows Lenovo the opportunity to offer a complete portfolio of hardware products from end-to-end and from A to Z.
“The Enterprise Business Group is a real focus for us and we’ve done a lot of work over the past six months to formulate the right portfolio of products,” Braum says. “Our global share in this space is 9,5% and we know we have a lot of work to do to close the gap on our major competitors. But we’re confident going forward and will be doing a lot of work in the coming months in the channel, building and educating them on our efficiencies and effectiveness.
“We are investing a lot more in channel training and we will also be investing heavily in the end user space,” he adds. “This investment will include a lot more face-to-face engagements and we will have a team specifically targeting end users, offering them end-to-end, A to Z solutions.”
Bevan Lock, head of Lenovo’s local Enterprise Business Group, says the business unit is already starting to reap success.
“To be successful in the enterprise space you have to have a full range – from servers and storage, through to networking and the services that are wrapped around this,” Lock says. “As it stands today, we’ve got a very complete product set.
“The fact that we have already deployed some large sites with some of our partners, and the fact that we are the first territory in the region to launch the System X ThinkServer bears testimony to this,” Lock adds.
