First Distribution, South Africa's leading distributor for datacentre, enterprise and cloud solutions, has assumed a refreshed corporate identity as part of an expansion strategy for the distributor's holding group of companies.

Epsidon Technology Holdings (ETH), the parent company, will comprise four separate and distinct companies, namely:
- First Distribution
- The Linux Warehouse
- CBS Africa
- Epsidon Management & Marketing Consultancy

As part of its corporate refresh, First Distribution will comprise three major business units, namely Enterprise Solutions, Networking & Security, and the Cloud division. The distributor has expanded its business operations into Africa recently, opening regional offices in Nairobi and Lagos, and has created an Africa-focused division overseen by industry veteran Brett Stevens.

Headed by Tony Abrahall and Tamzin Gray, the Enterprise Solutions business unit will continue to focus on datacentre technologies and build on the distributor's traditional strengths of offering business partners a wide variety of best of breed solutions from some of the world's most established and trusted hardware and software companies, built up through a history of consistent trustworthy service, and backed up with a high level of expertise.

The Networking & Security division will be run by Simon Campbell-Young, which as per its name, will focus specifically on a wide range of networking and security focussed products including Kaspersky, Sophos, AVG, RSA, Brocade, Ruckus Wireless and Krone amongst others. In addition to traditional channel distribution, a variety of other methods will be incorporated into the distribution of these brands including Electronic Software Download (ESD), Point of Sale Activation (POSA) and Sub-Distribution.

The already well-established Cloud division, headed up by Kevin Derman, comprises both First Distribution's traditional and award-winning cloud licensing aggregation division, as well as Africa's original cloud services brokerage (CSB), First for Cloud. Some market-leading brands offered via the cloud aggregation division include Microsoft SPLA, Veeam Cloud Connect and VMware's vCloud Air Network (vCAN), amongst others. First for Cloud represents the top brands in cloud technology, including Microsoft Office 365, Azure, Amazon Web Services, IBM SoftLayer and over 300 SaaS products, whilst providing cloud technology solutions to the reseller that support the SMB, as well as the enterprise segments.

The Linux Warehouse, the second company within the greater Epsidon Technology Holdings group, retains its focus on open source business solutions, responding to the increased demand for enterprise open source software adoption by industry. Linux Warehouse's current portfolio includes Red Hat (open source technologies for the enterprise), SUSE (software infrastructure solutions optimised for computing environments and industries), Zimbra (email collaboration and web client) and MongoDB (a leading big data database).

CBS Africa forms the third company within the group, made up of a dedicated cloud consultancy as well as a platform which enables and licenses businesses throughout the continent to purchase and manage cloud brokerage marketplaces. CBS Africa focuses on supplying cloud marketplaces into the Africa market, whilst offering the supporting services and cloud services for resale through the customers' channels to enable businesses to get to market quickly and easily.

The final company within the group, Epsidon Management & Marketing Consultancy, will provide a variety of marketing, procurement and logistics services to serve the other companies within the ETH Group, as well as new and existing business partners.

Each company within the group has received refreshed corporate imagery such as new logos, and vital customer touch points such as websites will be updated shortly to incorporate the new look and feel.
The restructure comes as an effort to more clearly define the various roles of each company within the holding group, as well as increase efficiency of business operations and share best practices, knowledge and experience across the group.

Managing Director for the ETH Group, Debbie Abrahall commented that "Our group restructure has allowed us to clearly define our various areas of expertise in a way that makes sense for both ourselves and our customers, whilst allowing for each unit's strengths to overlap and complement each other. With The Linux Warehouse catering to open-source demand and CBS Africa providing expertise in cloud, First Distribution now has access to, and is able to provide a unique and unprecedented array of business IT solutions throughout both South Africa and into Africa."