Parallels today announced expansion of its foot print in Africa with a new office and sales representation in the Republic of South Africa.
Parallels also announced that Business Connexion (BCX), an Information and Communications Technology company, and Global Micro, a hosted infrastructure IT provider have adopted Parallels Automation Platform to deliver a broad range of cloud services to Africa’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
With over 20 million SMEs and rapidly expanding Internet infrastructure, the SME cloud market in Africa is estimated at $1.6 billion with an expected CAGR of 46 percent in the next three years, for a market opportunity of $4.1 billion.
Parallels believes that this expansion will empower the African service providers to enable their customers to get access to enterprise-grade IT services that come from using cloud solutions.
For instance, Business Connexion has built a public cloud environment in partnership with Parallels. This platform gives SMEs the access to IT services that have traditionally been capital intensive at a low monthly cost. SMEs will also be able to add or adjust services based on their needs.
“We are excited about the Cloud opportunity that Africa presents. Diverse service offerings enabled by Parallels Automation and Parallels APS ecosystem have never been more relevant to SMEs and are critical to drive increased innovation and cloud adoption in Africa,” said Birger Steen, CEO, Parallels.
“We are looking forward to working with BCX, Global Micro, and other leading providers in Africa to bring those new and innovative services to market,” he added.
“We are really excited about our work with Parallels and our Public Cloud Services offerings in the South African market because the demand for hosted services in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa continues to grow at an impressive rate,” said Jacques Loubser, General Manager, Cloud Infrastructure, Business Connexion.
“Because the majority of businesses in South Africa require these core IT services at a reduced cost, we foresee exponential growth with this offering,” he added.
At his recent session at WHD.India 2013, Mr. David Dzienciol, Regional Vice President and General Manager (Asia Pacific), Parallels, spoke at length about Parallels’ vision for the SMB Industry and how Parallels has designed and augmented its products according to the demands of the SMBs so that its customers and partners can grow their business selling nothing but what exactly the market demands for.
