SEACOM and BT today announced a strategic alliance which will help SEACOM further secure its own infrastructure and deliver new networking, security and communications solutions to enterprise customers in Africa.
As a leading Internet connectivity supplier that owns Africa’s most extensive ICT infrastructure, SEACOM will be leveraging BT’s services, vendor relationships and global expertise to expand its portfolio of services aimed at African businesses. Since the launch of its Business division, SEACOM has substantially grown its customer and partnership base to strengthen its offerings and serve customers beyond existing markets.
Oliver Fortuin, Group Chief Executive Officer of SEACOM
SEACOM’s customers will benefit from access to BT’s Cloud Security Incident Event Management (SIEM) platform. In today’s business environment data, business applications and users live beyond an organisation’s traditional network. SIEM tools provide real-time visibility and monitoring across the organisation’s entire IT environment, providing an ideal security overlay to SEACOM’s existing ICT solutions.
BT protects some of the world’s largest organisations from a myriad of fast-evolving cyber threats with a global network of dedicated 24/7 Security Operations Centres (SOCs). BT’s more than 3000 cyber security experts help customers detect, analyse and quickly respond to cybersecurity incidents as they happen.
“We’re excited to form this strategic alliance with BT and see the combined value of what we bring to our respective markets. With SEACOM’s global network and local presence, and BT’s global reach and expertise, we will be able to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of Cloud, security, and connectivity services that are reliable, scalable, and at the cutting-edge of industry,” says Oliver Fortuin, Group Chief Executive Officer of SEACOM.
Alessandro Adriani, director of system integrators and telecom service providers at BT’s Global unit, said: “We are thrilled to deliver BT’s world-class solutions to SEACOM and to their customers across the African continent. The areas of secure multi-cloud connectivity, next-generation networking solutions and collaboration services are the sweet spot where SEACOM and BT will combine their respective strengths.”
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
South African based Seacom has agreed to buy two businesses from JSE-listed EOH Holdings, Network Solutions (EOH-NS) and Hymax, for R144.9-million. The proceeds from the sale, net of costs, will mainly be used to reduce EOH debt further as the IT services group continues with its plan to deleverage its balance sheet. “EOH-NS and Hymax have vast experience in the delivery of wholesale and managed service solutions for the networking and voice segments of the telecommunications industry. EOH-NS and Hymax are also strategic and essential partners to a variety of enterprise clients covering multiple verticals across the private and public sectors,” EOH said in a statement on Thursday outlining the details of the agreement with Seacom.
Seacom CEO Oliver Fortuin
Seacom CEO Oliver Fortuin said: “The acquisition of EOH-NS and Hymax forms part of Seacom’s ambitious growth strategy that will transform the business into a converged telecoms provider across Africa. By expanding our on-network capabilities and reach with this acquisition, and the acquisition of Hirani Telecom and Africell Uganda’s infrastructure, Seacom aims to provide customers with comprehensive, enterprise-grade ICT solutions and quality connectivity.” EOH CEO Stephen van Coller said the sale of the businesses is in line with its targeted disposals strategy, which includes the sale of assets that are capital intensive. “In support of this, and due to EOH’s current capital constraints relative to the mobile network operators, and as the group prioritise creating a fit-for-purpose capital structure, we have looked to ensure that EOH-NS and Hymax can continue investing in world-class infrastructure and maintain their service excellence.”
The transaction is subject to several conditions, including the unconditional approval of the competition authorities. Seacom will make an upfront payment to EOH of R115.9-million to secure the assets, representing 80% of the enterprise value, upon deal close. The remaining money will be held in escrow for 12 months as security for the payment of any warranty and indemnity claims. Fifty percent of this retention amount will be released after six months, assuming no claims are made.
The value of the consolidated net assets of EOH-NS and Hymax at 31 July 2021 was R70.5-million. The normalised profit after tax of the businesses came to R4.7-million for the financial year ended 31 July 2021.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Africa’s leading ICT service provider SEACOM is expanding to bring its software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) services to Kenyan businesses, offering reduced connectivity costs, increased security, agility, and local support to customers. The company is deploying its vast experience in ICT towards ensuring full digital transformation across the continent.
It could be recalled that SEACOM launched Africa’s first broadband submarine cable system in 2009 and provides continent-wide secure Internet. It also offers a full suite of communications and cloud solutions that enable the growth of Africa’s digital economy. Their new SD-WAN services are now available to Kenyan businesses.
Tonny Tugee, Managing Director at SEACOM East and North East Africa
The addition of managed SD-WAN to SEACOM’s services is great news for Kenyan businesses. With the increased global adoption of cloud applications, mobile workforces, and voice and video communications becoming the new norm, traditional networks have been placed under significant pressure to meet increasing demands. Using a legacy network solution can easily lead to exorbitant transport costs, poor end-user experience, security vulnerabilities, and unsuitable management capabilities. With data traffic sure to increase exponentially over time, having a future-ready network solution has become a business imperative.
For businesses digitising their operations, network security is another growing concern. Cyberattacks are becoming more widespread and advanced, but upgrading hardware-based firewalls across various branches can easily become unmanageable and costly. Traditional networks also have limited visibility and control over network access, which necessitates a more modern approach to network security.
SD-WAN is an adaptable network solution that solves these problems and meets modern network requirements. The new SD-WAN allows businesses to transform their business networks into smart, intelligent, and cloud-ready networks. It simplifies the management and operation of an enterprise’s networks by using centralised software to control the connections and services between data centres, computers, and cloud-based servers. Tonny Tugee, Managing Director at SEACOM East and North East Africa, explains, “If you want to create more resilient branch networking operations, dynamically adjust to changing conditions, and empower business transformation and business continuity, SD-WAN can help.”
Network administrators can use SD-WAN to optimise bandwidth usage by dynamically routing different kinds of traffic through different transport routes to reduce usage costs, improve application efficiency, and strengthen network security.
Using multiple Internet services from different providers improves connectivity resilience, but managing all of the different services and last-mile technologies in a wider business network is challenging. With SD-WAN, business have the flexibility to use dynamic rulesets that route certain data traffic through either cheaper or more reliable transport routes. During network failures or downtime, it can also ensure that traffic is automatically rerouted so that businesses don’t experience the negative effects of a break in connectivity.
With traditional network solutions, data traffic would usually have to be hauled to a data centre for security filtering before it can be routed to the cloud, slowing down application performance. SD-WAN is designed for applications hosted in different environments, including on-premise data centres, public or private clouds, or SaaS platforms, so businesses can expect improved speed. It also offers real-time visibility into application traffic and performance to ensure session quality of business-critical applications.
Tonny says that in delivering SD-WAN solutions, SEACOM has partnered with leading global organisations to provide Kenyan customers with modern and secure networking capabilities. “We understand that customer requirements are unique; instead of offering a one-size-fits-all solution, our team will look at a business’s existing infrastructure and apply the best vendor to address the customer problem.”
If businesses want to meet growing network demands and transform their networks with a solution that is intelligent, flexible, and cloud ready, they need to take advantage of SD-WAN. The best way to do that is to choose a reliable partner that understands your business requirements and knows how modern networks have changed.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Africa’s leading fiber optics cable firm SEACOM has announced that its current Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Claes Segelberg is leaving the organization with Prenesh Padayachee being his replacement. Segelberg has been with the ICT company almost since its inception in 2009. Segelberg and his team are credited with building up the organisation from a small new private linear east coast cable system into the leading data transmission backbone of Africa.
Prenesh Padayachee, new CTO, SEACOM
Explaining why now is the right time for him to hand over his CTO responsibilities is, Segelberg said that “SEACOM is heading into a new future of investment and growth, focusing on the rapidly expanding corporate segments in our key markets. This requires fresh ideas and new skills that will take SEACOM from its current strengths into its future expansion and development.”
Prenesh Padayachee, former CTO at Internet Solutions and former Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Telkom Openserve, will officially take over as SEACOM Group Chief Digital Officer (CDO) in January. In addition to the CTO’s responsibilities, Padayachee will also be absorbing the Chief Information Officer role, and thus the new title of CDO.
Incoming Group CEO, Oliver Fortuin expressed his confidence in Padayachee, “We know that Prenesh will continue to lead the team professionally and uphold the high standards our customers have come to expect from SEACOM. This transition marks the start of exciting changes and new beginnings for our group. Thank you for supporting me, Claes, Prenesh, and the rest of the executive team as we make this necessary transition.”
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
One of Africa’s leading telecoms services firms, SEACOM has appointed Oliver Fortuin as its new CEO – effective 4 January 2021. This follows the resignation of its erstwhile CEO Byron Clatterbuck, who joined the ICT company in 2012 as its Chief Commercial Officer and became SEACOM Group CEO in February 2015. Fortuin, who is currently the Group Chief Enterprise Officer at MTN, has worked for over two decades in the ICT sector, across South Africa and the rest of Africa, with industry-leading organisations such as IBM, BT, and, most recently, MTN.
Oliver Fortuin
“The SEACOM team has built an excellent data connectivity platform in the markets where we operate. We now hope to expand upon this, as well as to develop more industry-leading services that today’s corporate customers in Africa require. Our key focus will be to strengthen our customer base in the corporate segment by offering a wider range of services that provide greater value to our customers, and can help SEACOM capture more share of wallet in this space.”
SEACOM CEO, Byron Clatterbuck, who joined the ICT company in 2012 as its Chief Commercial Officer, and became SEACOM Group CEO in February 2015, has resigned and will be ending his tenure with the company on March 31, 2021. “Clatterbuck has been instrumental in shifting SEACOM from a subsea cable operator to becoming Africa’s leading Internet and data transmission provider – offering services to other service providers, direct to corporates, and, more recently, into the consumer market with the WonderNet brand. The shareholders and employees of SEACOM would like to thank Clatterbuck for his valuable contributions over the last eight years,” says SEACOM’s Chairperson, Pieter Uys.
Clatterbuck explained why now is the right time for him to hand over the reins; “I am making this decision for personal reasons, and this has been planned for some time. However, I did not want to make the final move until we had the right leader lined up to take over the leadership of SEACOM as we push further into African markets and continue our growth in the enterprise segment.”
“I am very pleased and confident to be handing over the leadership of SEACOM to Oliver Fortuin, who will be ably supported by SEACOM’s world-class executive team.”
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Tonny Tugee writes that the world is eager to do business with Africa but finds it difficult to access African markets because of poor infrastructure.
Without a doubt, Africa is one of the world’s fastest-growing economic hubs. Crucial to this rate of development is the ability to meet the demand for key infrastructure. At the end of last year, a World Bank economic update reported that Kenya has seen its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector grow at an average of 10.8% annually since 2016, becoming a significant source of economic development and job creation with spillover effects in almost every sector of the economy.
Tonny Tugee, Managing Director at SEACOM East Africa
While this is hugely encouraging news for Kenyans, it also raises questions about the factors which might impact the ongoing positive trajectory of infrastructure development, both in Kenya and the rest of the continent.
Fixed-line networks
In 2019, Kenya invested US$59 million in the Djibouti Africa Regional Express (DARE) submarine fibre-optic cable system, which reached the shores of Mombasa during March this year. The others include SEACOM, East African Marine System (TEAMS), Eastern African Submarine Cable System (EASsy) and Lion2 systems. According to Njoroge Nani Mungai, Chairman of Kenya’s Communications Authority, the investment demonstrates the government’s desire to improve Kenya’s position as a regional IT hub. It is also aimed at guaranteeing both companies and individuals’ access to a faster, more secure, and more reliable Internet connection. Revenues generated by the digital economy should reach US$23,000 billion by 2025, thanks to investments 6.7 times higher than those in other sectors.
In addition, terrestrial fibre networks have continued to expand, offering more connectivity options and better network redundancy – great news for land-locked countries. However, according to MainOne’s CEO, Funke Opeke, these remain underutilised due to high prices and a failure to establish an enabling environment.
Mobile network coverage
Telecommunications has continued to register positive growth, with increased uptake and usage of mobile phone services. High-bandwidth Internet infrastructure has become more widely available, while the rollout of 4G infrastructures by the MNOs has already led to substantial growth in subscriptions to data and Internet services. With the expansion of fibre-optic infrastructure across the country, more homes will be connected to better-quality, higher-speed broadband services, which will be extended to the rural areas.
Consequently, the increase in mobile network coverage has led to a decline in fixed-line networks related to voice calls. Alternative solutions need to be considered to ensure a stable Internet connection throughout Kenya to bridge the rural and urban digital development divide.
Poor infrastructure
The world is eager to do business with Africa but finds it difficult to access African markets because of poor infrastructure. Greater economic activity, enhanced efficiency and increased competitiveness are hampered by inadequate transport, communication, water, and power infrastructure. The World Bank economic update, mentioned earlier, highlighted challenges relating to the inadequate power supply, transport networks and communication systems as crucial to ensuring ongoing connectivity, and continental economic development. It found that the poor state of infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa reduced national economic growth by two percentage points every year and cut business productivity by as much as 40%.
It is estimated that about US$93 billion is needed annually over the next decade to overhaul sub-Saharan African infrastructure (https://bit.ly/3fChBKc). About two-thirds or $60 billion of that is needed for entirely new infrastructure and $30 billion for the maintenance of existing infrastructure. Only about $25 billion annually is being spent on capital expenditure, leaving a substantial shortfall that must be financed.
Economic potential
The economic climate of Kenya will determine access to the tools needed to build the relevant infrastructure. According to André Pottas, Deloitte’s Corporate Finance Advisory Leader for sub-Saharan Africa, this translates into exciting opportunities for global investors who need to look past the traditional Western view of Africa as a homogeneous block and undertake the detailed research required to understand the nuances and unique opportunities of each region and each individual country.
The key to unlocking Kenya
With governments across the continent committing billions of dollars to infrastructure, Africa is at the start of a 20 to 30-year infrastructure development boom. Fortunately, we have access to a global network of exports, which we need to be utilising optimally to ensure a stable infrastructure, both digital and physical.
However, in preparation for the boom, the only way for Africa’s infrastructure backlogs to be cleared and to unlock connectivity and communications in Kenya is through globally competitive, growth-oriented, mobile, and digital technology businesses. It is imperative to establish partnerships with trusted private sector players who already cater to the local and international communications market with reliable connectivity solutions.
Tonny Tugee is the Managing Director at SEACOM East Africa
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
