Africa-focused ICT service providers BCX and CMC Networks have partnered to add scale to SD-WAN services for BCX customers.

Jonas Bogoshi, CEO of BCX South Africa, said the partnership will extend BCX’s footprint by adding more than 110 service locations. These service locations are global, said Bogoshi, with the majority located across Africa, Middle East, Europe and USA.

Bogoshi stressed that through the alliance, they will gain access to 51 African and 12 Middle Eastern countries.

CMC Networks is focused on supporting businesses in efforts to address complex network requirements, offering advanced connectivity and cloud on-ramp solutions across Africa and the Middle East.

The partnership means CMC Networks will provide the connectivity layer and BCX will provide the service and assurance layer in the end –to-end managed solution.

BCX will own and manage the enterprise customer relationship with CMC being a key enabler to deliver the holistic solution, Bogoshi added.

The companies said there is a demand for robust infrastructure, specifically SD-WAN network and virtual customer premises equipment.

It referred to Gartner’s Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ research.

An excerpt from the report reads: “This market has evolved from traditional branch routers (often called “customer edge routers” in a Multiprotocol Label Switching [MPLS] implementation), and is undergoing a dramatic change, driven by the needs of digital business transformation and the demands of line-of-business managers. The market for branch office wide-area network functionality is shifting from dedicated routing, security and WAN optimisation appliances to feature-rich software defined WAN (SD-WAN) and virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) platforms. WAN edge infrastructure now incorporates a widening set of network functions, including secure routers, firewalls, SD-WAN, WAN path control and WAN optimisation, along with traditional routing functionality.”

Marisa Trisolino, CEO of CMC Networks, said, “The vision of both CMC Networks and BCX is to build around customer experience, digital transformation and innovation. With our combined play in South Africa extending across the CMC Networks footprint in Africa and the Middle East, this will allow for real-time provisioning and a seamless customer experience.

Shamith Maharaj, Acting Managing Executive: Data Networks at BCX, added: “This partnership further enhances our strategy to bring greater value to our clients and strengthens our position across the continent. This partnership enables our GWAN portfolio, our Global SD-WAN offering, to better serve our customers with multinational operations. In addition, the partnership unites the award-winning network of CMC Networks, covering Africa and beyond, with our local BCX engineering support and deep customer relationships.”