NEC XON has won ADVA's Global Partner of the Year award and received the award at its annual Summit held at Sun City in October, 2019.

"This is a global OEM recognising that a South African systems integrator is its top global partner," says Anthony Laing, GM of Networking at NEC XON. "It signals the level of solutions across the board that we're capable of delivering to our customers based on the close collaborative relationships we have with our OEM partners, who provide the best technologies in their sectors, worldwide."

The ADVA award celebrates NEC XON's 125% year-on-year revenue growth, sales and business development through broad presence and excellent customer relationships in Africa, investment in ADVA technologies, and capitalising on the cross-selling opportunities into its large customer base.

"We strive to bring our customers innovative solutions that meet their practical needs," says Laing, "like the network we created for SANReN that connects thousands of researchers, scientists and students across Africa."

In May this year, NEC XON announced that it is deploying a national DWDM network based on ADVA technology for the South African National Research Network (SANReN), which is an initiative of the South African Department of Science and Technology hosted by the Council for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR). The deployment provides high-speed connectivity for research institutions, universities and other higher education institutions across the country.

The SANReN network consumes less energy and reduces truck rolls, which makes it an ecologically sound solution that delivers broadband connectivity for "researchers, educators and students, enabling them to push the boundaries of discovery and use advanced applications while collaborating with their peers in new ways."

ADVA is creating technologies that address the openness challenges that network operators face, giving them the flexibility to upgrade elements that meet new demands and also allow them to benefit from the latest technologies. Transponders, for example, develop faster than optical light source (OLS) components so it makes sense to be able to swap just them out rather than replace an entire dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM) system.

"The ability to work with elements of the total solution gives us the flexibility to give customers cost-effective, up-to-date solutions and upgrade them as technologies change," says Laing. "We're able to leverage that with our architectures, designs, and the way we deploy these solutions to provision some of the most innovative networks on the continent."