In an exclusive interview, TECHx spoke to Pierre Havenga, Managing Director of Vertiv about their data center solutions and key strategic partnerships in the region.
Pierre: At Vertiv, our focus has always been on delivering high-quality services to a broad range of customers, including SMEs, who often have unique, very specific requirements, and are especially value-conscious. Within our portfolio of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, we have turned into the needs of small businesses with a line-up of cost-effective, high-quality products ranging from critical power to thermal management solutions, racks and enclosures, as well as monitoring and management, with the full backing of Vertiv’s highly-skilled support resources at their disposal.
All-in-one offerings like our Micro Data Centres are designed to be a customizable and flexible entry point for SMEs to deploy data center capacity at speed while allowing room for scalability as the businesses grow.
We have also realized that access is a critical success factor for small businesses, which is why our strategic distribution partnerships continue to be instrumental in this regard. Through our partners, we are able to ensure widespread availability of Vertiv’s premium technology, speed of delivery, and fast-track digital transformation for organizations of all sizes.
Pierre: Data centers have become such a critical part of business continuity to the point where they should be understood as intrinsically linked. Today’s digitally dependent businesses can suffer huge losses from just a minute of downtime in a data centre. We offer a full suite of tools and products to guard against such disruptions, from Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Power Distribution Units, to racks and enclosures, along with intelligent monitoring and management solutions to support data center continuity and ultimately business continuity. Our goal is to support organisations in this process with holistic end-to-end solutions.
Pierre: Through strategic partnerships, Vertiv is able to offer complementary solutions that when sold together can create greater value for data center customers, one such example is the Honeywell Vertiv Partnership which together creates end-to-end differentiated solutions focused on four key data center customer outcomes: uptime and resiliency, efficiency and sustainability, safety and security and modularity and agility. The companies are bringing their complementary experience to co-develop solutions to differentiate and address critical data center needs. The first Honeywell-Vertiv joint offering has limited competitive solutions which serve data center energy management needs as well.
In terms of the future, if it enhances our value to customers, I’m sure we will see many more such announcements.
Pierre: Companies in a wide range of verticals are investing in digitalization to compete more effectively in their own markets. Much of this digitalisation must reside near the users, at the edge of the network.
Edge Growth is not an isolated trend, it’s about a reorganization of workloads across enterprise, colo, cloud and edge. Hyperscale operators are investing in core facilities but also fuelling colocation growth including at the geographic edge. All of these trends are key opportunities for the channel market which is a key focus for Vertiv especially over the next 3 years.
As part of our growing focus on Africa specifically, we have entered a few distribution partnerships on the continent. One of those partnerships is with the Fajoba Group who are helping us meet the growing demand for our products in that region. Fajoba is also expected to open new sales offices and widen distribution channels, which is very exciting for us.
In southern Africa, we have recently partnered with Cyber Security South Africa. The partnership aims to make our solutions more readily available in that market, but also address the infrastructural challenges currently being faced in South Africa, particularly widespread power outages. This effectively encapsulates our collaborative approach in the Middle East & Africa. Our partners help us identify the most pertinent industry-wide challenges, and guided by their insight, we can address them with the relevant solutions whilst anticipating future needs.
