Specialising in AV/IT connectivity and management solutions, ATEN is looking to branch out in South Africa.
The company has been operating locally for a few years now thanks to a dedicated distributor network, but recently it has worked to increase its presence in South Africa, expanding from being known as a key player in the KVM (keyboard, video and mouse) market to a provider of many connectivity and data centre solutions.
We recently sat down (virtually of course) with sales manager for ATEN South Africa, Benji Pienaar, to discuss how the company’s plans for greater local presence are shaping up and what the next year potentially holds.
Our first topic of discussion was, of course, the pandemic, which has impacted several companies in the same field as ATEN thanks to component shortages and supply chain issues.
“The biggest hurdle we faced was setting up the local office, from venue and lockdowns, to securing parts and delays in getting everything up and running. We knew we had to get a showroom that could show clients ATEN’s different capabilities, however, getting all those scenarios set up was challenging, given the current landscape,” notes Pienaar.
“On the sales side, certain areas struggled a bit initially during the implementation of lockdown. Fortunately, ATEN does not just do one product line like some of our competitors, and we could still play off the strengths of the other product lines such as our KVM and KVM over IP ranges,” he adds.
This as the global connectivity solution provider is headquartered in Taiwan, affording it access to a robust amount of manufacturing power, meaning availability of components is not an area where it has stumbled.
While unfortunate for the industry at large, it has at least given ATEN the capacity to continue to operate, and as we head into 2022, the potential springboard to claim a greater market share locally.
Speaking of which, ATEN is being both measured and ambitious in terms of goals for the coming year. The team under Pienaar is relatively small, but looking to grow and the greater the success the company achieves over the coming quarters, the more ATEN will look to scale.
Pienaar also makes mention of the company’s local distributor network, which includes the likes of Pinnacle, Rectron and Solution Tech.
All three have large footprints in South Africa and across the SADC region, which increases the potential reach of the company’s hardware, but given that each distributor specialises in a different area of the channel, it also widens the breadth of solutions that customers take up.
As regulations potentially ease in the coming year, ATEN is also aiming to have more customers come to its offices and explore its experience centre (pictured above and below), which showcases the company’s most innovative products. It also allows customers to see how ATEN hardware can be integrated into their environments, as well as see the breadth of solutions on offer.
Pienaar has noted that customers viewing the space for the time have been surprised by what is on offer, which is perhaps a compliment to ATEN’s dominance in the KVM space, but also an indication that more needs to be done to make the rest of its solutions known.
On that front, ATEN has seen a significant uptake of its products being used in the local data centre environment.
“The CC2000 software manages all your ATEN KVM solutions, PDUs and UPS systems, giving you the ability to remotely administer your full data centre without being there physically. The only reason to physically access your data centre would be to add new hardware or attend to hardware failures. The ATEN range caters to everyone, and supplies units for the legacy devices you may still have,” he enthuses.
Pienaar is also of the opinion that those businesses utilising a remote or hybrid working model could also benefit from what is on offer, with ATEN’s range of switches making content sharing and collaboration at an enterprise level far easier.
“The ATEN solutions have already started supporting each team member in the company with the USB-C docking stations we have available and in conjunction with our Desktop KVM range we can even help with your home office set-up, getting you ready to work remotely,” explains Pienaar.
“Our IP-based KVM and LCD KVM range gives you a secure connection to connect to all your data centre servers with military-grade encryption. These systems are superior to software solutions currently used by companies since they can be run from a separate network with an internet breakout, with the added benefit of BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) access and removable media,” he highlights.
Added to this is the ability to create custom solutions in the procurement phase and offer expertise for customer service after-sales, which is another reason why growing a local presence has become a key priority for ATEN South Africa.
As we see how 2022, it will prove interesting to see ATEN grow its presence and look to offer local customers support to meet changing demands brought on by the pandemic.
