Computer Warehouse Group : Starting a Business Revolution
Starting a Business RevolutionWriter:Matthew StaffProject Manager:Donovan SmithSince unveiling its 2.0 model three years ago, Computer Warehouse Group has continued to adapt and innovate as it strives to infiltrate as much of West, East and South Africa as possible with its business revolution.With the initial aim of embarking on a new adventure in 2010 with its more dynamic and profitable strategy for delivering cloud services and solutions to SMEs in Nigeria, the Company’s subsequent success has not always been achieved with a tailwind, but has been consistent and flexible enough to make it the dominant player across a range of sectors in the region.Over the course of the past 12 months, this ongoing success has been carried out in the face of a significant oil price drop in its historically oil-dependent home nation; a trend which has proven catastrophic for many significant enterprises in Nigeria, but one that has opened up a new opportunity for the entrepreneurial Computer Warehouse Group.“We believe that only the flexible survive and that has been our strength from five years ago when we decided we needed to become the dominant player in the cloud computing market,” recalls Austin Okere, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO). “We knew that our previous model would not carry on being successful into the future, so in 2010 we looked at what we can provide in the cloud at a better value proposition to our customers, and to create better profit for ourselves.”This flexibility, coupled with its commitment to empowering SMEs with technology in Nigeria has been…
Computer Warehouse Group
Q&A: Africa's ICT Entrepreneurs Africa Outlook hosted a Q&A with Austin Okere, Chief Executive Officer of Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) PLC and Entrepreneur in Residence, Columbia Business School, New York Writer Matt Bone Project Manager Donovan Smith Could you give me an introduction to Computer Warehouse Group? Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) was established in September 1992 with just a US$16,000 operating budget and six staff. We built the company up slowly and steadily in the ICT markets and began to expand. We thrive on staying ahead of the curve in the ever changing technology landscape and maintaining a dominant leadership position. We have evolved from being a Dell PC sales and support company, through providing Enterprise Systems, becoming an outsourcing company providing Managed Services to major clients such as MTN, where we have over 100 badged engineers managing their IT infrastructure, to becoming a dominant IT utility enabler in our region, providing Software-as-a- Service through Cloud Computing on a subscription basis. We crafted a major ICT plan in 2010, realising the popularity of cloud computing, and the major opportunities for this in our region, following the increase in broadband access from 0.65tb to a combined capacity of 9Tbits per second by the end of 2013. We now have a staff complement of 650 employees, of which 80% are engineers and ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) certified. We have consolidated our leadership position in the ICT sector with a record turnover of about US$130 million (N20.8billion) last year. We were very clear that while our tremendous growth…
