There is immense value in partnerships. In a report released toward the end of 2019, International Data Corp emphasised the value of maximising ecosystems in a landscape that has fundamentally changed go-to-market strategies and customer expectations.

The old ways of working are not enough — not anymore. There has to be a move toward collaborative partnerships and ecosystems that allow for partners to leverage off one another’s expertise to achieve sustainable growth and success. And, of course, to deliver to customer expectations.

According to Donna Mostert, Huawei business unit manager at Mustek, strong and strategic partnerships allow for an organisation to build stable foundations and explore new ways of engaging with customers and markets.

“Mustek is Huawei’s longest-standing distributor and the initial distributor to be onboarded by the Huawei Enterprise Business Group in South Africa,” she says. “Huawei is Mustek’s only enterprise vendor and it supplies the full range of hardware and software solutions. Seeing as Huawei is Mustek’s entire enterprise business, it means we have a great relationship, working together symbiotically.”

The solutions provided by this partnership deliver next-generation cloud capabilities at a time when South African organisations need them the most. The sudden and rapid move to remote working over the course of 2020 has seen many companies turn their heads toward the cloud, looking for strategic answers to complex questions.

‘Support and insight’

“Working with Huawei, we can provide customers with the support and insight they need, helping them to create a complete cloud ecosystem that’s both relevant and scalable,” says Mostert. “It includes the connectivity and routing that the business needs, the storage, the energy supplies, and a richly varied bundle of products that have been selected specifically to drive cloud. Whether the business is private, public or hybrid in its approach to the cloud, we’ve created a solution that fits their needs.”

The relationship between Huawei and Mustek evolved out of a shared commitment to providing South African companies with high-end solutions that met the very specific needs of the continent. Power and infrastructure limitations, wariness around moving to the cloud – these are some of the challenges that the partnership sought to address.

“What we can offer the customer is now driven by the technology and our relationship,” says Mostert. “We have not only invested into end-to-end solutions, but into skills development so that customers can rely on our expertise when considering a cloud investment.”

Moving to the cloud is not an easy decision to make. It changes the way the business approaches services and it relinquishes control over how those services are managed. If the move is done with a trusted partner, then it will ensure that the organisation is given the right tools and road map to deliver long-term cloud success.

Partnerships are critical. Your cloud partner must understand your business and know which solutions will meet your very specific business requirements. It’s never going to be a one-size-fits-all and that’s why skills and expertise are critical.

“We have invested heavily into the Huawei certifications and training platforms and we’ve already received more than 84 certifications within our Huawei product portfolio,” says Mostert. “The fact that Huawei provides such an extensive training programme and allows us to invest into our people has played a huge role in our relationship. Thanks to consistent in-house training and support we can provide customers with lower cost and higher value solutions that are relevant to this market.”

Mustek’s collaborative approach to working with Huawei forms part of the organisation’s move away from the traditional box-dropping methodology toward a digitally enabled solutions provider. It has also cemented the company as a leader in the market, one that forms long standing relationships with its customers and with global organisations such as Huawei.