Ben Uzor Jr
Software AG, a German software maker with revenues of €1 billion, weekend declared its entry into Nigeria’s N960 billion software market. The company said it is raising its stakes in the West Africa market with Nigeria becoming a strategic hub to serve other countries in the region. The €25.2 billion company said it was engaged in a strategic partnership with Northern Spark, an Information Technology (IT) company in the country to deliver best-in-class software solutions that improve business productivity and efficiency. Speaking at a seminar entitled: ‘Achieving Business Excellence with AG’s Enterprise software’, Barry De Waal, vice president, Africa region of the company, said its entry into the Nigerian software market represents a unique opportunity for Software AG to deepen its presence in Africa.
He said Software AG was committed to
expanding the scope of Nigeria’s software market, further adding, “We have made
a conscious decision that has been approved by the board to grow the market,
deepen our presence and drive the business forward.” Waal said the firm’s
strategy to catch up with competition was simply to develop local support and
capacity. “This is very critical for us going forward. It is one of the things
Software AG and Northern Spark agreed on from the beginning. Our goal is to
take over the whole of West Africa and we are starting with Nigeria which is
the largest market here.” Speaking in the same vein, Bob Anderson, general
manager, Northern Spark, said both firms were very keen on building and driving
local content development in Nigeria through technology transfer.
“This is the reason why Software AG
chose us. We pride ourselves with contributing to local content development. We
like to have technology transferred back to us and supported right from the
Original Equipment manufacturer (OEM). Northern Spark has become Software AG in
West Africa with the footprint here in Nigeria. We want to bring in the
technology to further grow the economy”. The software company said it intend to
play a fundamental role in Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) ‘Cashless Nigeria
Project’. He added that Nigeria’s conscious migration to a cashless environment
will throw up significant challenges for banks due the high volumes of online
transactions. Software AG, according to Waal offers enabling technologies that
can scale from a low range to a high transaction volume range.
“We are not confined to finance. Let’s
look at the oil and gas industry, specifically pipeline management. There is
huge amount of data coming out. Businesses can go into big data and extract
information very rapidly and efficiently. The telecoms industry, what is the
state of the network across the country? With the amount of data coming
through, you need high speed availability to figure what is going on and make
better decision that can improve the business. It is just as applicable to
finance as it is to telecoms and oil and gas industry”, Anderson added. In his
paper presentation at the seminar, Chris Ogbechie of the Lagos Business School
(LBS) urged Nigerian businesses to adopt good corporate governance structures.
He said good corporate governance currently influences foreign investment
decisions.
Founded in 1969 in Darmstadt, Germany,
Software AG is the global leader in Business Process Excellence. The software
company’s more than 40 years of innovation include the invention of the first
high-performance transactional database, Adabas; the first business process
analysis platform, ARIS; the first B2B (Business-to-Business) server and SOA-based
integration platform, webMethods; and pioneering big data technology with
Terracotta’s BigMemory. The firm has pledged to offer customers a variety of
end-to-end solutions that deliver low total cost of ownership and high ease of
use. It has more than 5,500 employees serving enterprise and public institution
customers across 70 countries.
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