WestconGroup Southern Africa – created from the merger of Westcon SA and Comztek – last night officially opened its new headquarters at Waterfall Park, quite literally wetting the new facility’s roof.
Introducing the group’s new 4 000 square metre warehouse and 3 800 square metres of office space to vendors, partners and customers, WestconGroup enlisted the services of the local fire department who delighted assembled guests by turning their hoses on to the office’s roof and front façade as CEO Paul Conradie officially declared them open.
Conradie says that construction of the new building had been completed within a year of breaking ground and that staff had actually occupied it two weeks early – despite construction being delayed last year by a six-week strike.
“It is my privilege to welcome you to this fantastic facility,” Conradie told guests. “This building is state-of-the-art and we’ve incorporated many green features into both the offices and the warehouse. But more importantly, what this new headquarters really offers is the opportunity to enhance our business and add more value to you, our partners.
“Inside, we have world-class training facilities,” he adds. “We have outstanding customer experience centres for proof of concept (POCs), an auditorium and videoconferencing rooms that are available to you, and prep centres where you can build to specification orders for your customers.
“In all of these facilities we’re utilising state-of-the-art equipment from our own suppliers, so we’re eating our own dog food,” says Conradie. “And we’re really looking forward to introducing you to these new facilities so that you too can enhance your own businesses and those of your customers.”
In a brief fact sheet, the company says that the new warehouse includes 189 bays of racking, and four prep rooms which partners can use to build and test equipment on behalf of their end user customers.
The warehouse offers an integrated, state of the art security system, making use of products from the brands WestconGroup currently has in its portfolio of security products, and which can also be seen demonstrated at the
customer experience centre.
A customer services facility adjoins the warehouse.
The new building includes three training areas. The company is the authorised MEA training partner and academy for vendor partners Blue Coat, F5, Palo Alto and Juniper.
While all of its trainers are highly skilled and certified experts within their fields, it does on occasion, and when needed, fly in trainers from abroad to facilitate training.
The new Experience Centre provides the WestconGroup sales and technical teams an environment where they can demonstrate how the technologies it represents work. It has been designed to provide customers with a hands-on view of different vendor technologies and how they integrate with other technologies within the WestconGroup offerings.
The two videoconferencing rooms also demonstrate the technology supplied by Westcon, with one Avaya VC room and one Cisco facility.
