Software News West Africa

DataGroupIT appointed as BMC Software's Nigerian distributor

Global IT management solutions company BMC Software has announced a relationship with Nigerian company DataGroupIT to distribute BMC's industry-leading solutions to the IT channel community across West Africa.

Dave Funnell, territory manager for BMC Software says that BMC already services several marquee clients within Nigeria and across West Africa, mainly in the telecommunications sector. "Our aim now is to grow the business substantially over the next 24 months across all industry verticals, but with a specific focus on the telecommunications and financial service sectors."

DataGroupIT, based in Lagos Nigeria, specialises in the distribution of leading-edge IT products across West Africa with a more recent focus on security solutions. One of the company's key differentiators is the innovative processes they have developed to enable the creation of market demand, while developing the appropriate distribution channels for their product lines.

Innovative approach

"Our go-to-market approach with DataGroupIT has taken an entirely new and innovative form which I believe will be advantageous for clients in the region as well as strengthen the support structures we have in place locally."

Tal Gerner, managing director for DataGroupIT says that he is excited at the prospects for BMC Software in the region. "Africa is in many respects an untapped well of potential for IT infrastructure and solutions and as globalisation continues to take hold, more and more opportunities are emerging for vendors to move into Africa and achieve a growing market share."

As sole distributor for BMC Software in Nigeria, DataGroupIT will be working as a true value-added distributor and the company has already started the process of staff certification on the BMC solution set, from sales through to technical. "We are running a focused boot-camp specifically for DataGroupIT to accelerate the process of on-boarding the team and getting them up and running," says Funnell.

Nigeria is a focus market

Funnell says there will be a small number of selected partner resellers in West Africa working directly with clients with support from DataGroupIT and BMC. "Nigeria is a focus market for BMC moving into 2013, and the initial stage of investment in West Africa is important to this process.

"We are seeing a maturing of IT environments in Nigeria and a requirement for the business service management solutions delivered by BMC, whether in the areas of cloud services, pro-active operations, IT service management, applications performance management, and others," says Funnell.

Let's do Biz