Bitdefender’s country partner in South Africa, Cyber Security South Africa, has appointed three experienced ICT companies as its distributors in South Africa.

According to Simon Campbell-Young, Partner at CS Africa Group Holdings, the decision to afford distribution rights to Pinnacle, Techwise and Tepsa, was based on long-term existing relationships with the management of each company.

“It was important to be able to reach mutual understanding in terms of our expectations for the growth of the Bitdefender brand in South Africa and each of these companies was able to demonstrate both their technical and sales acumen in this respect,” says Campbell-Young.

The Techwise team has inherent skills around the Bitdefender product set, with both of the company’s shareholders having been involved with Bitdefender in previous entities for the past 10 years.

“Furthermore, the company has an excellent general sales ability and good product understanding of the online retail space in terms of B2C (business to consumer) consumer product business. This makes them ideal for marketing the Bitdefender range to the run rate SMME B2B (business to business) side of the business and to online retailers,” says Campbell-Young.

“Tepsa is a long-term valued Bitdefender B2B and MSP (managed service provider) reseller and sub-distributor, who we felt would bring us additional value via a direct relationship. The company, with its high level of technical skills, will be responsible for technical B2B SMME and corporate business,” Campbell-Young points out.

Pinnacle will be responsible for looking after Cyber Security South Africa’s consumer B2C initiatives across the retail landscape. “They are the market leader in terms of broad-based retail distribution, so it was a logical move to appoint them to grow the retail component of our business,” says Campbell-Young.