Cloud services firm Pamoja and Symantec, will on 25 September 2014 host a partner information session in Nairobi, Kenya to launch their Cloud services.
Pamoja Africa is the Cloud services business unit of Pan-African ICT enabler SEACOM. Its partnership with Symantec, a recognised leader in the security technology solutions development space, has been established to distribute Symantec’s suite of Cloud services in sub-Sahara Africa to meet growing security, compliance and archiving needs.
The alliance will ensure that Pamoja’s expanding channel and service provider ecosystem has access to these services, thereby enabling transfer of value to customers and add impetus to Pamoja’s objective of solidifying Africa’s Cloud community.
The information event forms part of a proactive partner roadshow initiative established to inform and recruit reseller partners, including telecommunication companies, system integrators and consultants.
As an aggregator for Symantec.cloud, Pamoja is maximizing the SEACOM capacity it has access to. SEACOM peers with Symantec in Amsterdam and the result is much reduced cost and latency for core Symantec.cloud services.
“Our objective is to provide our resellers with quality Cloud products which they can bundle with their unique skills and services and sell to customers,” says Albie Bester, CEO of Pamoja.
From its two Cloud data centres in Africa (South Africa and Kenya) Pamoja continues to deliver wholesale Cloud services to the market.
“The addition of the Symantec.cloud range addresses the security Cloud angle comprehensively,” Bester adds.
He describes the alliance as a ‘win-win’ for all stakeholders in the evolving ecosystem. “We are all about adding value and assisting the market with all the dynamics involved in Cloud service and solution uptake. This is another major achievement for the market and our contribution towards it.”
Symantec’s strategy is to protect, secure and manage customers’ information wherever this resides.
“We know the approach to securing information must change. Security can no longer be about running numerous point products. Customers want unified security – security that’s multi-tier, multi-layer, integrated and automated – all delivered as a service,” says Marc Dijkstra, Solution Architect, Symantec South Africa.
The value of the alliance between Pamoja Africa and Symantec to the broader African market is that Symantec’s email security and archiving services are plugged in the back of Pamoja’s Hosted Exchange environments.
Accordingly, customers do not have to carry the cost of international internet traffic between Pamoja and Symantec, and this configuration has also reduced service latency to an absolute minimum.