Viven Bhowani, new COO of NEC XON.

Viven Bhowani has joined NEC XON as COO to oversee the organisation’s transition as it increasingly digitises services, integrates solutions to exponentially multiply business outcomes, and explores growth into broader markets.

Bhowani was formerly the solutions director at iOCO, one of Africa’s largest system integrators.

“NEC XON has always been very customer-driven,” he says. “The founders have nurtured great human assets with exceptionally strong technology expertise and a passion for innovation. Now we want to harness their deep skills and enhance our efficiencies through digitalised operations to provide more business value to our clients. We also want to increasingly supplement our capabilities through the deep global skills and innovation available through our integration with NEC Group.”

“Our vision is to relentlessly pursue innovative technologies to safely and securely overcome some of society’s greatest challenges,” says Carel Coetzee, CEO of NEC XON. “Viven will help us achieve that goal by uniting and projecting our strengthened value proposition, from across our group’s solutions portfolio, into broader sub-Sahara, East and West African markets.”

“Having been a customer myself when I was CTO at Webber Wentzel, I always try to take a customer-centric approach,” he says. “I’ve been there when suppliers don’t deliver and also when they do. It’s about being partners, especially when exploring unchartered territory together, which is what innovation is all about and at the heart of digital transformation and the fourth Industrial Revolution. We are up for that challenge and excited about what we have to offer.”

“We started XON in 1996,” says CEO Carel Coetzee. “In 2010 we began working with Kapela Capital, our B-BBEE partner, and by 2015 we partnered with NEC, which does in excess of $30 billion in annual business. Now we are growing to the next level by taking our integrated value proposition from across our business units into our markets across South Africa, the 16 sub-Sahara countries where we operate, and broadening our business interests in East and West Africa.”

NEC XON serves the energy, telecommunications, enterprise, retail, financial, mining, pharmaceuticals, public and other sectors. It provides solutions for smart and renewable energy, safety and security – including cyber and digital physical security solutions, smart cities, telecommunications service providers and carrier-grade networking for enterprises. It also provides cloud, ICT infrastructure, data, analytics and information management solutions, and managed services.

“Our solutions portfolio strategically positions us to augment organisations across Africa with an integrated value proposition,” says Coetzee. “African organisations are a key future global growth market and they are hungry for the innovative technology solutions to address business challenges in uniquely African socio-economic contexts. That’s where we’re deploying the capabilities of smart telecommunications services with our customers, the energy solutions to make them robust and available, with the service level agreements to support them throughout their lifespans. Safety, security, narrowing the inequality gap, to produce more with less, and to create better qualities of life for all our people become sustainable outcomes when we develop them on these robust foundations.”