CMC Networks 2023

DELIVERING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN, TO, AND FROM AFRICA

PAN-AFRICAN CONNECTIVITY

Writer: Jack Salter | Project Manager: Josh Hyland

South Africa (SA) is a booming market that plays a key role in fuelling the entire continent’s digital economy.

A report by Google and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that Africa’s Internet economy has the potential to reach 5.2 percent of the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025, contributing nearly USD$180 billion. Africa is currently home to around 700,000 developers, and venture capital funding for start-ups has increased year-on-year for the past five years, with record equity funding raised in 2019.

CMC Networks (CMC), a global Tier 1 service provider that enables and accelerates digital transformation in the world’s most challenging markets, has been innovating in Africa for over three decades and has seen

local market conditions change significantly in that time.

“The region’s digital environments are so unique and thriving in many areas, but are routinely overlooked,” observes Marisa Trisolino, CEO of CMC.

“We are looking to change that with fast, flexible, and easy-to-manage networking.”

Headquartered in SA, CMC boasts the industry’s largest pan-African network, servicing 51 out of 54 countries in the continent as well as 12 in the Middle East, complemented by regional hubs in key interconnected locations across Europe, the Americas, and Asia Pacific.

Having joined as CEO in 2018, Trisolino is proud of what the team at CMC has accomplished over the years in servicing almost the entirety of Africa.

“In partnership with some fantastic companies such as Juniper/128T and Redvine, we continuously strive to increase our capability of delivering in hard to reach locations globally,” she emphasises.

Prior to CMC, Trisolino began her career at telecommunications company AT&T, carrying out a variety of roles including sales, supplier

With the industry’s largest pan-African network, CEO Marisa Trisolino tells us about CMC Networks’ commitment to delivering digital transformation, as demonstrated by its latest certifications, partnerships and platforms

Marisa Trisolino

management and strategic planning.

She worked at AT&T for over 21 years, learning from the ground up and specialising in improved service quality, increasing sales, and managing costs and carrier relationships in the wholesale industry.

“This really fuelled my interest in telecommunications, and I knew I wanted to progress further within the industry.”

CONTINUALLY INNOVATING

CMC’s experience and innovation in Africa has given it the skills, resilience, and mindset to seamlessly adapt to changing market demands and accelerate time-to-market for customers.

WHY PARTNER WITH CMC?

Security – CMC provides network and end-to-end security that meets international standards and encompasses the most recent technologies.

Cloud – CMC provides the building blocks for a secure, reliable, dedicated hybrid or private cloud strategy. A hyperscale cloud on-ramp provider, the company enables digital end-to-end transformation.

Connectivity – With a fully resilient and diverse global network, CMC guarantees a consistent and predictable experience, 24/7 support, and punitive SLAs.

Managed services – Fully managed end-to-end solutions, service assurance, and dedicated resources allocated to solution design, project management, customer support and tied to client requirements.

“We combine our network reach across six continents with innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, cybersecurity, EDGE, softwaredefined networking (SDN), network functions virtualisation (NFV), and a range of services to solve local enterprise challenges with world-class solutions,” outlines Trisolino.

Data connectivity services are provided to carriers, governments, multinationals, and various non-profit organisations by CMC, who operates in excess of 110 service locations delivering a cost-effective, scalable and resilient network.

As of September 2022, CMC is the first and only service provider that is both MEF 3.0 SD-WAN and Carrier Ethernet certified, a testament to the company’s innovation in Africa and beyond for more than three decades.

The former, achieved for CMC’s software-defined wide-area networking services, demonstrates the company’s commitment to digital transformation and conformance to rigorous specifications established by MEF, the industry’s defining authority.

“We’re continually innovating in

Africa and enabling enterprises and end users to benefit from worldleading technologies and digital transformation, no matter where they operate,” Trisolino says.

“Our MEF 3.0 certifications for both SD-WAN and Carrier Ethernet really indicate our commitment to delivering best-in-class services for our customers.”

CMC is proud to have partnered with BCX, another leading provider of ICT services in Africa, to bring the benefits of additional scale to its SD-WAN services.

The partnership also extends BCX’s footprint by adding more than 110 service locations, providing SD-WAN connectivity between SA, Africa, and the rest of the world.

“The vision of both companies is to build around the customer experience, digital transformation, and innovation,” states Trisolino.

“With our combined play in SA, extending across CMC’s footprint in Africa and the Middle East, this partnership not only enables real time provisioning, but also a seamless customer experience.”

‘‘The Brand Behind Your Brand’’

“Just because technology across Africa is evolving, it doesn’t mean that there is no longer a need for post original equipment manufacturer (OEM) warranty hardware support. In fact, this equipment has never been more critical, which makes finding an organisation that is capable of delivering on both the cloud and physical sides across Africa quite difficult,’’ stated Andre Hartley, Executive for Africa at Solid Africa.

‘‘Solid Systems has been in the business for 34 years, with our Africa operation seven years in the making, and works with all the major technology vendors, including DellEMC, IBM Cisco and HP. Globally, Gartner has ranked us as the most trusted organisation for third-party support and maintenance, which I believe is at least partly due to us being technology OEM-agnostic.

“We support hardware across everything from parts, through to people and skilled maintenance, delivered by technicians who are capable of fixing whatever is required, when it is needed. This enables us to deliver a firstclass service to CMC Networks and other Tier 1 customers across the Middle East and Africa, regardless of the technology mix they choose to utilise.”

The company has also developed direct OEM support capabilities providing technical support to OEMs’ channel partners as an authorised support provider.

Solid Africa has 29 warehouses and is located in Africa and the Middle East. The business is exclusively service-focused, delivering, OEM warranties and multivendor support services (MVS) contracts as white labelled OEM services.

Solid Africa utilises highly trained and experienced field engineers who deliver technical services. We offer dual layer service delivery and fault finding. The first layer being Solid Africa support engineers tracking and analysing fault incidents, then delivering an action plan for the field engineer to resolve and close the fault either with our local engineering team or our extended partner network. Utilising this hybrid strategy allows us to guarantee our services are on time. Solid Africa maintenance is ordered in multiple tiers, ranging from 5x8x4, 8x5xNBD to 7x24x4.

Underpinning the Solid Africa services delivery is Solid Systems Global’s call centre and help desk comprising a team of fully trained specialists who are experienced in taking and managing calls worldwide. This multi-lingual team provides Level 1 and Level 2 technical support with escalation to Level 3 when required. Solid Systems Global makes use of state of the art call tracking software and provides a 24/7 service. Solid Africa is committed to working closely with our clients to continue our vigilant attention to the provision of world class service delivery and exceeding customer expectations. solid-global.com

REVOLUTIONISING CONNECTIVITY

CMC has the largest applicationaware, SDN-enabled network in Africa and the Middle East, with 99.99 percent availability across the SDN footprint.

“No other player in Africa or the Middle East can offer these capabilities,” Trisolino acclaims.

Revolutionising connectivity across the continent is CMC’s Rapid Adaptive Network (C-RAN®) platform, which consists of a series of next generation products and services developed to enable the workplace of tomorrow, built on an AI-driven WAN ecosystem.

Through the C-RAN® platform, enterprises and service providers can enable digital innovation, replace legacy models, and secure and accelerate their networking across Africa.

Within C-RAN®, CMC’s Flex-Edge combines SD-WAN, SDN, NFV and

network security into a single solution, with no physical in-country presence required.

“C-RAN® Flex-Edge connects service locations without needing to ship equipment or be physically present in-country,” elaborates Trisolino.

This solves the logistical challenges of network deployments in Africa and the Middle East, whilst bridging skills gaps and staffing shortages in the region.

In turn, Flex-Edge therefore reduces lead times and brings the speed and agility of cloud services to networking in Africa and the Middle East.

“C-RAN® Flex Edge provides a foundation for digital innovation across the continent, and removes the complexity from cross-border deployments and the optimisation of applications and services.

“For Africa’s Internet economy to grow, it needs fast, flexible and

easy-to-manage networking,” Trisolino notes.

Across Africa, CMC also recently launched IP Premier, a high performance dedicated internet access (DIA) solution.

IP Premier provides strict service level agreements (SLAs) related to jitter, packet loss and round-trip delay (RTD), in addition to standard availability.

It is also a trusted foundation for rolling out SD-WAN services and delivering an optimised user experience in challenging markets worldwide, with predictable performance for connecting enterprise locations, cloud, content delivery networks and Internet exchanges.

“IP Premier is designed to accelerate the adoption of SD-WAN across Africa by creating a robust formation and delivering an optimised user experience, as well as strict SLAs,” says Trisolino.

CMC Networks management team

DEDICATED TO DEVELOPMENT

CMC’s supply chain has a strong focus on obtaining and managing bestin-class internet service providers (ISPs) and vendors in the countries it services.

More than 180 local and international suppliers and vendors have partnered with CMC, who is dedicated to providing superior networking for customers and partners, no matter the challenge.

The company is just as passionately committed to the development of young, unemployed South Africans, working in close partnership with the Media, Information and Communication Technologies Sector Education and Training Authority (MICT SETA) and its training providers.

MICT SETA runs learnerships in both IT systems support and project management, as well as offering internships in IT systems support and supply chain management within an

exciting global telecommunications organisation.

CMC is also certified as a B-BBEE Level 1 company in South Africa, which demonstrates its continued dedication and ongoing commitment to aligning its operational plans to transformational objectives, whilst supporting employees as well as customers.

Looking ahead, Trisolino and the entire CMC team will continue to listen to customer needs and develop unique solutions that solve local challenges.

“Companies need to adopt new networking models and meet the demands of today’s cloud-centric enterprises. By understanding local market conditions, digital transformation can be accelerated across Africa,” she tells us.

“Enterprises, service providers and carriers need to utilise local knowledge and innovate solutions, so they can rapidly grow revenues and

serve new demand today and in the future.”

Outside of Africa, meanwhile, CMC is looking to tap into the Asia Pacific market and become a global player.

Technology and telecommunications are growing at a rapid rate in Asia Pacific, with many developing yet digitally savvy markets and the total value of transactions made in the Southeast Asian Internet economy on track to reach a staggering USD$1 trillion by 2030.

“We keep abreast of all new opportunities as we continue our focus on new markets such as Asia Pacific,” Trisolino concludes.

CMC Networks office

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