IBM, Tri-continental Partner on Multi-million Innovation Centre

IBM and Tri-continental Limited have unveiled an innovation centre in East and West Africa, which were recently launched in Lagos.
Speaking at the event was Oliver Fortuin, general manager, sub-Saharan Africa, who stated that that the new centres were aimed at helping local communities to build skills and develop new technologies to support demand for digital infrastructure projects in banking, communication, energy and government.
“The centres located in Nairobi and Lagos will provide entrepreneurs, business partners and users across Africa with access to training workshops, consulting services, a broad technical infrastructure and hands-on assistance to help bring new technologies to market and to conduct proof of concept,” he said.
Fortuin added that in support of growth opportunities, the IBM Innovation Centre will provide technical expertise and customised hands-on support to test and validate users’ hardware and software technologies before deployment, as well as offer training and access to open standards-based technologies such as Storage Area Networking, Unix, Blade servers, Tivili service management and computing designs with energy and environment benefits.
Steve Cowley, general manager, IBM Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa said that IBM will continue to make major investment in African markets, growing businesses while helping to develop local skills that advance IT innovation.
According to him, “With this IBM Innovation Centres we are able to make IBM’s technical resources and expertise more accessible to fuel innovation and help local businesses compete on a global scale.”
He added that the centres in Nairobi and Lagos complement the growing network of 43 IBM Innovation Centres worldwide, part of the company’s $1billion yearly investment into the success of its 100,000 global business partners.
In 2008, IBM Innovation Centres assisted more than 22,000 business partners with workshops, seminars and consultations to build their skills and develop solutions on IBM technologies, culminating in over 7,000 technology enablement.