Fortinet has announced the appointment of Andre van Zyl as its new channel accounts manager for Southern Africa.
In his new role, André will grow and reinforce the regional channel organisation and strategy. Based in Pretoria, he will report to Perry Hutton, Fortinet’s regional director for Africa region.
Andre’s appointment support Fortinet’s plans for significant business growth across the region. This is driven through the strengthening of its channel network with a better engagement towards the existing partners and adding new Gold and Silver partners. His support will aim to increase partner certifications and the number of Fortinet Resident Engineers to improve the customer service quality.
Fortinet Van Zyl, with over 20 years’ experience in the local IT sector, was a founding member of eSecure Distribution in 2003. He moved to Axiz as channel accounts manager after AxizWorkgroup acquired eSecure in 2012. With a long history in IT security and distribution, Van Zyl believes the scene is set for significant growth for IT security solutions in general, and Fortinet specifically, in the Southern African region.
“Threats are increasing, and people are becoming more tech-savvy and understanding the need to protect their data,” he says. “So there is great scope for growth of the IT security sector in southern Africa. However, people often find
the large range of security products confusing. This is where our channel plays a crucial role – acting as trusted advisors to end users and corporates.”
Van Zyl sees Fortinet as a dynamic company with a market-leading range of solutions. “Their growth speaks for itself,” he notes. “The channel model is already well designed, and functions efficiently, so our focus going forward will be to further improve the skills of channel partners and grow our market share in the region.”
“André has a strong market expertise and an extensive experience in the channel. With him on board, I’m confident that we are in a good position to gain market share in Southern Africa across all markets and maintain our market leadership locally” said Perry Hutton, Regional Director for Africa at Fortinet.
