South African startup IoT.nxt has entered into a partnership with listed Dutch company ICT Group N.V. as part of its ongoing expansion into Europe.
The Pretoria-based IoT.nxt has developed a framework that moves business beyond islands of automation and towards a seamless horizontally and vertically integrated digital enterprise, and has been expanding in Europe after securing ZAR100 million (US$7.7 million) in funding last year.
The company opened an office in The Hague in December, where it had been engaging with different companies as it sought appropriate partners to help drive its entry into Europe, according to chief executive officer (CEO) Nico Steyn.
That partnership has now been signed with ICT Group, which is ranked in fifth place in the Computable 100, and has reached eighth place in the top 15 ICT service providers in the Netherlands.
“IoT.nxt’s hardware and software solutions in combination with ICT’s domain expertise in different industry verticals as well as the expert knowledge of cloud, machine learning, BI and IoT, will enable us – through this partnership – to completely shape the digital transformation journey of customers,” said Steyn.
Joe Bester, head of IoT.nxt’s Dutch office, said the ICT Group was an ideal partner as it is a leader in their field of expertise, and by partnering with them IoT.nxt would be able to drive business value for any company in any industry.
“Digital transformation is now a business imperative and our companies will jointly assist businesses to embark on and fast-track that process. We believe our innovation, especially around interoperability and edge intelligence, will enhance their offering and deliver fast results for customers,” he said.
According to Jos Bleje, ICT Group CEO, IoT.nxt’s technology-agnostic platform offers horizontal integration of ‘islands’ of digitisation with an unprecedented ROI.
“By leveraging all existing devices and infrastructure into one single platform, visibility and new insights are provided that will open doors for new business models and (strategic) services,” he said.
