Business Connexion, as an integrator of innovative business solutions, requires strong alliances with key technology vendors. The Technology division successfully maintains strong partnerships, and in-depth product knowledge, with international vendors including Avaya, Cisco Systems, EMC, HP and IBM. These alliances allow Business Connexion to design, implement and manage business solutions which meet our customers’ specific strategic and operational needs with the flexibility to address the ever changing demands of the business environment.

The Technology division consists of three business units providing end-to-end communication solutions and building cloud computing infrastructure for enterprise-wide business critical systems. Their highly skilled people, certified at the highest required levels on Avaya, Cisco, EMC, HP and IBM technologies, offer a diverse range of proficiencies for customers to draw on including consultancy, architectural design, support and maintenance services. If required, the Technology division can attach additional offerings and services from the rest of Business Connexion allowing the customer a single point of contact to address their ICT requirements.

The global economic crisis restricted capital investment projects across the Technology division’s customer base. In many instances customer projects have been placed on hold.

Unified Network Services (UNS) was proud to have played an active role in the 2010 FIFA Soccer World CupTM by providing all the IT venue managers at each stadium to manage all the vendors and ensure that the IT infrastructure was in place and operational for the duration of the event. In addition UNS provided turnkey project management for deploying and supporting the hardware for the ticket printing systems across the country. However these benefits were insufficient to offset the effects of the global economic crisis and public sector budget cuts due to pressure from the fiscus following the 2010 World Cup expenditure, wage demands from public sector employees and lower tax collection. Despite these tough trading conditions, dedicated sales efforts and strict cost control produced positive results for the year.

The Technology division enjoyed several major milestones during the year under review, most notably:

• customer retention under extremely tough trading conditions;
• numerous accolades and executive level certifications for all represented technologies; and
• awarded top certified Solution Provider for cloud computing infrastructures and related services.

UNS continued to solidify its vendor relationships with the following accolades awarded during the year under review:

• Cisco Master Managed Services Certification;
• Cisco Unified Computing Certification; and
• Symantec Platinum Partner of the year.

A huge focus in the past year to bolster skills and invest in training has placed UNS in a unique position to be able to provide highly skilled resources that can be leveraged across all divisions in Business Connexion and in so doing provide comprehensive end to end solutions to customers.

The past year has seen Persetel Q-Vector (PQV), the Technology division’s system and storage business unit, continue to leverage relationships with partners and capitalise on these to meet customer needs in supplying complete solutions. Value added services such as installations, maintenance and support services continue to provide a differentiated service offering to our customers, as well as, generating a strong annuity-based revenue stream. Of all the business units in the Technology division, PQV was hardest hit by the economic crisis, but despite a downturn in revenue, tight control of costs allowed the business unit to remain profitable. The advent of the virtual computing environment creates exciting prospects for PQV as the group enters the new financial year.

This unit received the following accolades in the year under review:

• Top IBM Maintenance Services Partner.
• EMC: Best Unified Storage Deployment Partner.

The Technology division has a proud record spanning over fifteen years as one of Microsoft’s premier licensing and consulting accredited partners. In a saturated market and under very difficult trading conditions the Microsoft licensing business unit maintained its market share and is one of the top three Microsoft licensing partners in the country.

In an effort to make capital investment projects more affordable for customers the Technology division has a financing business unit allowing customers access to competitive financing solutions.

This unit received the following accolade in the year under review:

• Most Innovative IBM Financing Partner of the Year.

The Technology division can be viewed as the design, build, optimise and maintain segment of the group. It is through the technology infrastructure provided by the Technology division that Business Connexion is able to drive comprehensive, value adding, customer specific solution offerings.

Looking ahead, the Technology division remains cautious about the market and will maintain its focus on strict cost control. It is anticipated that the advent of cloud computing will impact technology sales as customers opt to use public cloud computing solutions. In these instances much of the Technology division’s sales will be to the Services division to allow the group to meet customer capacity demands but there will also be those customers that choose to create their own private cloud computing environment. The group believes that these new technologies will give impetus to the market which should see improved trading conditions. Business Connexion has been awarded a contract by a multinational to build a large private cloud computing environment, the first of its kind in Africa. We see this as the beginning of one the new trends that will drive the market.