Most products take a somewhat circuitous route from vendors to your desktop. Vendors overseas will appoint local distributors in South Africa, which then supply a dealer network and assist the dealers to sell to the end users. Technology companies are no different. Large distributors such as AxizWorkgroup in Midrand have many vendor relationships – as you can tell when you walk in the front door: large banners of popular products are everywhere. AxizWorkgroup is the newly formed combined company of Axiz and Workgroup. The two merged when Pinnacle Technology Holdings bought 100 percent of Axiz’ equity and decided to merge specialist Workgroup with the more broad-based distributor. So far, there hasn’t been too much of an overlap on the product side but some people are going to be moving to another part of the building.

I’m here to see Sally Berimbau, a business unit manager at the distributor, and the go-to person for its working relationship with five vendors: Novell, Commvault, Nuance Enterprise, SAP Business Objects and Marshal. We start off in the downstairs shop and immediately she sees a friend: Nelson Machado from iDiD IT, who is grumbling at the lack of iPad 2 stock. Then it’s off to storage and backup specialist Commvault’s offices opposite the Palazzo hotel. Commvault’s staff members are around the table in the courtyard finishing off a meeting with GijimaAST.