After two years of analyzing the potential market Huawei Symantec is launching an office in South Africa, aiming at servicing our medium and large corporations.

South Africa is being approached as a gateway into the rest of Africa, where the spread of broadband and social networks makes online security and data storage a lucrative market.

“In addition to systems for data storage and Security, Huawei Symantec plans to win a share of the SA market for networking equipment, firewall and other solutions with integrated security mechanisms catering to telecom operators and the corporate segment,” Edmont Rao, general manager Huawei Symantec South Africa said.

Mustek has been signed as one of two local distributors in order to take advantage of its reseller market.

Siobhan Hanvey, Huawei Symantec business unit manager at Mustek, said registered resellers and certified partners will be appointed. “Mustek will market Huawei Symantec products through its extensive reseller network. The Huawei Symantec product range ably addresses both SMEs and enterprises.”

80% of the office’s staff will be South Africans, or have permanent residence here. The company also aims to be BEE compliant. Currently forty people are employed by Huawei Symantec in SA, and they hope to boost this to fifty to sixty by the end of the year.