Citrix appoints Smart Axess Solutions as First Platinum Partner in Africa

Citrix has appointed IT solutions company Smart Axess Solutions as its first Platinum Solution Advisor in Africa. The move to upscale the partnership reflects the growing need in the South African market for dedicated service providers in the virtualisation and desktop virtualisation field.

Alex Russell, managing director, Smart Axess says: “Windows 7 migration is creating an ideal inflection point for CIOs to rethink their desktop strategies companywide. Coupled with the pressure of greater regulatory compliance whilst providing disparate IT services to a mobile workforce and virtualisation becomes a solution to manage IT more effectively and cost-efficiently.”

“As an organisation, Smart Axess has built our offering on being a niche specialist. Over the past five years we’ve grown into an experienced, knowledgeable and focused organisation with the expertise needed to deploy holistic Citrix solutions. This means helping clients select and implement their chosen strategy by effectively positioning, designing, actualising and maintaining the technologies within a dynamic work environment,” adds Russell.

“A combination of market forces has created the perfect opportunity for desktop virtualisation. Over the next 18 months desktop virtualisation is geared to become one of the few breakthrough technologies that holds as much promise for end users as it does for IT,” says Sean Wainer, country manager for Citrix Systems in South Africa.

Wainer continues: “Building a business on virtual computing solutions in this environment makes sense. Smart Axess has a highly skilled, highly focussed business proposition in terms of providing end-to-end virtualisation solutions to multiple organisations. Their appointment to Platinum partner status reflects an excellent level of Citrix expertise as well as a dedicated focus on designing, implementing and supporting Citrix desktop virtualisation, cloud and data centre solutions.”

Smart Axess will work with Citrix to educate customers and deploy Citrix virtualisation solutions in South Africa, offering services from offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The partnership will also extend to opportunities across Africa specifically in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Madagascar and Lesotho. Support will be provided to clients in a combination of on-site and virtual services. Plans are in place to extend coverage to Nigeria and Kenya in the next two years.

“Our first mover advantage in this market is key to our growth, but our goal to be a Platinum Citrix partner was set almost two years ago, when we deepened our focus on Citrix solutions. Now the opportunity is there for Smart Axess Solutions to become the benchmark for desktop virtualisation in Africa,” concludes Russell.

Smart Axess clients include ABSA, Barclays, Discovery Health, Barloworld Logistics, Sappi Saiccor, Transnet, American Express, Orange Botswana and Dynatech Madagascar. Smart Axess also works with systems integrators in designing and deploying Citrix desktop virtualisation, cloud and data centre solutions.