Barnstone Extends Partnership with SAP in Africa
March 14, 2013
By Jyothi Shanbhag, TMCnet Contributor
Barnstone, a company offering strategy, advisory, system implementation and outsourcing support services to many leading organisations in South and sub-Saharan Africa, is extending its partnership with SAP (News - Alert) in Africa.
This new relationship with SAP will allow Barnstone to offer managed mobility services (MMS) utilizing the SAP Mobile Platform. In addition to this, many other IT service companies will also be allowed to sell the Barnstone Mobility Services to their own customer bases, including SAP channel partners, resellers of other enterprise software solutions.
"Enterprise mobility has become a vital competitive differentiator in today's fast and fluid markets," says Conrad Steyn, director at Barnstone Corporate Services. "The platform as a service model will allow customers to benefit from enterprise mobility quickly without the need to purchase new hardware. They can also benefit from significant discounts on licences, thanks to our volume licensing from SAP."
Barnstone Mobile Services is accessible using a platform as a service model and is charged on a 'per user per month' basis, with no upfront capital costs - and is instantly available. One more advantage for Barnstone that the new extended partnership brings is, it can include connectivity; device and data contracts; the SAP Mobile Platform; access to apps in the SAP Store; custom or white-label apps, depending up on customer needs. Additionally, the offering could also comprise Agentry, a Syclo offering.
"I think more now than ever before we are seeing how innovative use of technology is having such a significant impact in business and the partner ecosystem in Africa," said Desmond Nair, director for Ecosystem and Channels, SAP Africa. "Barnstone's entrance into the mobile arena is in line with SAP's strategy of growth through partners in areas of innovation. SAP understands the challenges our customers in Africa face, and work with our partners to bring these technology innovations such as cloud computing, mobility and software as a service to the continent."
Through the alliance with SAP, Barnstone has also been offering SAP “Business All-in-One“ medium-sized businesses with a single configurable solution to help them manage everything from financials, human resources, procurement, inventory, manufacturing, logistics, product development and corporate services, to customer service, sales and marketing.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey