Company News
Citrix Appoints New Regional Director for Sub-Saharan Africa
Citrix has appointed Matthew McKay as its new Regional Director for Sub-Saharan Africa. With over 22 years of experience within the IT and telecommunication industry, McKay is expected to contribute extensive skills in sales, operations and go-to-market strategy. “Matthew brings great technology experience combined with a proven record leading teams at major international organisations,” says Amir Sohrabi, Area VP for Emerging Markets at Citrix. “He is joining Citrix at an exciting time, as many businesses accelerating their digital strategies and are focused on empowering people to work from anywhere, at any time, with any device. Citrix continues to be at the forefront of creating the next wave of work environments, and I am confident that Matthew will be a great leader for the team in S...
NTT Appoints New Global CEO
NTT has announced that Abhijit Dubey will succeed Jason Goodall as Global Chief Executive Officer. Dubey takes the role following over 20 years with global advisory firm McKinsey & Company. “We are looking forward to welcoming Abhijit to the NTT family in 2021 to lead the next generation of our business. He shares our passion for the technology industry and the role that technology can play in helping make the world a better place,” says Jason Goodall, current Global CEO for NTT. “He brings many years’ experience of our industry and context, as well as a strong track record in delivering high performance and profitability in organizations having advised clients on a range of strategic, operational, and go-to-market challenges. I am confident that we have solid foundations in place foll...
PayCentral and Mastercard Partner to Launch DigiCentral
PayCentral has partnered with Mastercard to launch DigiCentral, a secure online platform that provides small business owners with a simple way of paying out incentives, rewards, gifting, corporate expenses and even salaries to their employees through a prepaid virtual card. The virtual card replaces a physical plastic card and can be used for eCommerce and in-store purchases. To complete a purchase online, DigiCentral virtual cardholders receive a 16-digit card number, security code and expiry date, which they would use much like a physical card. It can be linked to online retail apps like Uber, Uber Eats, Checkers 60 Sixty and others. For in-store purchases, the virtual card can be loaded to any Masterpass-enabled digital wallet. Once loaded, the cardholder can use their mobile phone to s...
SEACOM Appoints New CEO
SEACOM has appointed Oliver Fortuin as its new CEO – effective 4 January 2021. He will succeed 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. “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 ...
Nutanix Appoints New CEO
Nutanix has appointed Rajiv Ramaswami as its new President and CEO, effective 9 December 2020. Ramaswami will succeed co-founder Dheeraj Pandey, who previously announced his plans to retire as CEO of Nutanix upon the appointment of a successor. Ramaswami is a seasoned technology industry executive who has held senior executive roles at industry leaders including VMware, Broadcom, Cisco, and Nortel, after having begun his career at IBM. He has an impressive 30+ year track record of building and scaling businesses in cloud services, software, and network infrastructure. In his most recent role as COO, Products and Cloud Services at VMware, Ramaswami co-managed VMware’s portfolio of products and services. During his tenure, Ramaswami led several important acquisitions and was playing a key ro...
Discovery Bank Appoints New CEO
Image sourced from MyNewsDesk Discovery has appointed Hylton Kallner as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Discovery Bank, with effect from 1 January 2021. Kallner takes over from Barry Hore, as the Bank has completed its build and migration phase. Building on this momentum and supported by the Bank team, Kallner is taking Discovery Bank forward as it accelerates this growth and increases its focus on integration. Discovery Chief Executive, Adrian Gore says “Hylton will leverage his experience as CEO of the SA businesses in building a powerful and integrated composite. His understanding of Discovery’s Shared-Value business model, along with his extensive experience at Discovery Group spanning nearly 25 years, position him well to drive continued growth and success for Discovery Bank....
HP Appoints New MD for Africa
HP has appointed Bradley Pulford as the new vice president and managing director of Africa – effective immediately. Pulford joins the printing and PC devices company from Dell Technologies where he was the executive senior director for channel and distribution in Africa. In a statement, HP says that Pulford will “lead several ongoing strategic initiatives for HP in Africa. Among these are advancing the company’s diversity and inclusion vision across the continent, supporting education projects that removing barriers to doing business for young entrepreneurs, and broadly deploying future technologies and innovations, including virtual reality and 3D solutions.” HPE South Africa Appoints Two New Roles Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) South Africa has recently appointed Sandile Dube and ...
Salesforce to Acquire Slack for $27.7 Billion
Image sourced from Business Insider Salesforce has announced its plans to acquire workplace chat app, Slack, for an estimated $27.7 Billion. The cloud-based software company says that under the terms of the agreement, “Slack shareholders will receive $26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share, representing an enterprise value of approximately $27.7 billion based on the closing price of Salesforce’s common stock on November 30, 2020”. According to The Verge, both Salesforce and Slack have “only become more vital during the coronavirus pandemic as companies worldwide have moved to remote work and moved substantial portions of their businesses online”. “Stewart and his team have built one of the most beloved platforms in enterprise software history, with ...
Mimecast Strengthens Commitment to the Channel with Appointment of New Global Leader
Mimecast Limited (NASDAQ: MIME), a leading email security and cyber resilience company, announced Jonathan Corini has been appointed the new Senior Vice President of Global Channel Sales. In this role, Jonathan will be responsible for the strategy and execution of Mimecast’s global channel program. Mimecast is dedicated to ensuring its partner community is supported, engaged and armed for success and the appointment of Jonathan will help unify and strengthen its commitment to the channel. “As a leading cybersecurity and resilience provider to organizations using Microsoft 365, there’s a huge opportunity to grow in the enterprise while also serving small and medium businesses, and we can’t do that without the channel,” said Dino DiMarino, chief revenue officer at...
MTN Nigeria Partners with Gameloft to Launch Gameworld
Sourced from TheTechieGuy (https://thetechieguy.com/) MTN Nigeria has partnered with Gameloft to launch MTN Gameworld – a new gaming platform for its subscribers. The platform is expected to offer the Nigerian gaming community access to a variety of fun and exciting games online through an extensive premium catalogue from Gameloft and other renowned publishers. Speaking on the partnership, Chief Digital Officer of MTN Nigeria, Srinivas Rao said, “We are constantly seeking to deliver innovative products that support the aspirations of our customers, whilst delivering superior user experience. This partnership allows us to provide our customers with access to a variety of exhilarating games from Gameloft and other leading publishers at an affordable rate.” MTN Gameworld will provide customer...
M-Pesa Becomes First African FinTech to Join United for Wildlife Financial Taskforce
M-Pesa has revealed that it is the first mobile money provider in Africa to join the Financial Taskforce established by United for Wildlife, a coalition of charities that works to tackle the illegal wildlife trade. The M-Pesa mobile money system has become Africa’s most popular financial services provider and the continent’s leading financial technology platform. M-Pesa is actively used by 41.5 million customers across seven African countries who make over 12.2 billion transactions per annum. The platform also enables individuals and businesses to pay bills, create savings and loan accounts and to access overdraft facilities, commercial services and healthcare. “The environment remains a critical, shared communal resource and has been under threat from the illegal trade of wildlife. The fu...
Ukheshe to Acquire Digital Payments Platform, Oltio
Ukheshe has entered into an agreement to acquire Oltio, a digital payments platform that supports Masterpass – Mastercard’s QR payment service in South Africa with more than 300,000 merchants and billers. The use of QR codes in South Africa provides merchants of all sizes – from large retailers chains to individual shop owners and street vendors – a fast, secure and inexpensive way to accept payments. This deal is expected to strengthen Ukheshe’s partnership with Mastercard – combining its ability to solve local market pain points with Mastercard’s global scale, technology and payment expertise. Ukheshe will continue to provide the same support to the banks and other service providers that currently offer Masterpass, ensuring business continuity with no impact to consumer...
