SOUTH AFRICA – Cyber Security South Africa has been chosen as the African distributor for the global cyber security software supplier, Bitdefender. This follows its appointment as Bitdefender’s Country Partner in South Africa.
The agreement sees Cyber Security South Africa responsible for the management of the entire Bitdefender product range in Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.
“Based on the recent success of our Bitdefender Country Partner agreement and our extended reach on the continent via our local regional offices, both Bitdefender and ourselves believed the timing was right to expand our relationship,” said Simon Campbell-Young, Partner at CS Africa Group Holdings.
“We felt that a first step for the new territories would be via a standard distribution agreement, keeping the door open for further developments around Country Partner status for the additional territories.”
Campbell-Young says that the agreement entails the distribution of the entire Bitdefender stack – B2C (business to consumer), B2B (business to business), MSP (managed service provider) and Cloud – in the outlined regions.
“We already have a presence in the new territories, and all distribution is performed digitally, so the transition to offering the Bitdefender range is seamless.
“The addition of Bitdefender to our portfolio allows us to expand our revenue pool into additional territories and our customers in those territories now have the benefit of exposure to the Bitdefender range.
“Our local offices will continue to provide the highest levels of sales and aftermarket technical support to current and future customers,” added Campbell-Young.
Meanwhile, Cyber Security South Africa has appointed three experienced ICT companies as its distributors in South Africa. According to Simon Campbell-Young, the decision to afford distribution rights to Pinnacle, Techwise and Tepsa, was based on long-term existing relationships with the management of each company.
“It was important to be able to reach mutual understanding in terms of our expectations for the growth of the Bitdefender brand in South Africa and each of these companies was able to demonstrate both their technical and sales acumen in this respect,” says Campbell-Young.
The Techwise team has inherent skills around the Bitdefender product set, with both of the company’s shareholders having been involved with Bitdefender in previous entities for the past 10 years.
“Tepsa is a long-term valued Bitdefender B2B and MSP reseller and sub-distributor, who we felt would bring us additional value via a direct relationship. The company, with its high level of technical skills, will be responsible for technical B2B SMME and corporate business,” Campbell-Young pointed out.
Pinnacle will be responsible for looking after Cyber Security South Africa’s consumer B2C initiatives across the retail landscape. “They are the market leader in terms of broad-based retail distribution, so it was a logical move to appoint them to grow the retail component of our business,” said Campbell-Young.
