Appointments add expertise to Logicalis team

DATATEC’S subsidiary, Logicalis South Africa (Logicalis), strengthened its team by making three senior appointments in its regional management team and build on the platform established in South Africa to further expand reach and capabilities across the region.

Logicalis has appointed Jakes Jakobsen as managing executive of sales and marketing, Caesar Tonkin as chief information security officer and Morné Laubscher as hybrid IT and cloud practice manager.

The new members of the team have proven track records in their fields of expertise. Jakobsen will be responsible for leading the company’s business strategy and sales and marketing operations. He has more than 20 years’ experience in the IT industry and has held senior sales and consulting roles at leading South African IT firms responsible for delivering key business targets for large corporate and mobile service provider customers.

“Tonkin is seasoned in cyber security with 12 years of local and global information security experience while Laubscher is a cloud technology expert with more than 20 years’ experience in the industry,” the group said.

Frikkie Grobler, the chief executive of Logicalis South Africa, said the three appointments added a great deal of expertise to the team as the business continues to expand its offering across southern Africa and other African markets.

“We are extremely proud of the world-class managed services business we have built in a short space of time. We are servicing local and international markets and are positioned to extend our scope beyond services by offering bespoke digital business solutions to our customers,” Grobler said.

Logicalis is one the three divisions under Datatec. The others are Westcon International and consulting and financial services divisions.

In the group’s last set of financial results for the six months to end August, Logicalis produced good results, despite emerging market currency headwinds, especially in its key Latin America region.

Logicalis reported a 14.4 percent increase in revenue and contributed 39 percent to the group’s overall revenue with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, up by 37.2 percent, supported by a significant multi-year project in Latin America.

The contribution from Logicalis was instrumental in turning a previous loss of $29.4 million (R418m) to a profit of $6.6m.

Logicalis South Africa has grown to 120 employees since starting operations in March 2017 with six employees. The Cape Town headquartered division has grown rapidly, including through the acquisition of IP telephony cloud and managed services business Clarotech in September last year. The business said it continues to look for opportunities to expand further.

Grobler said the company’s goal was to be the strategic partner of choice to vendors and customers.

Datatec shares closed 0.48 percent lower at R31.35 on the JSE on Friday.