07 July 2023
Vertiv has officially opened its African head office and state-of-the-art customer experience centre, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
According to Wojtek Piorko, the recently appointed managing director for Vertiv Africa, the formal opening of the South African premises forms an important part of Vertiv’s ‘Africa for Africa’ initiative and underscores the organisation’s investment in the region.
“Vertiv is placing a strong business focus on Africa, as well as expanding our local network of authorised partners and service providers. Our ‘Africa for Africa’ project also emphasises the importance of meeting our local clients’ needs, of which the opening of the African head office and local customer experience centre play a key role,” said Piorko.
The Johannesburg customer experience centre provides customers with the opportunity to engage with Vertiv’s diverse range of critical infrastructure solutions for applications from the edge of the network to the cloud. In addition to the products displayed at the centre, Vertiv offers the experience of its large-scale modular data centres, power and thermal management solutions through VR to African customers.
“Using our VR offering, the Vertiv Virtual Showroom, clients can embark on a unique virtual trip to experience Vertiv’s capabilities, giving both novices and seasoned experts of Vertiv products a way to fully understand the entire layout of the critical digital infrastructure,” said Piorko.
Users wear a headset and use hand controllers to navigate the VR environment, interact with equipment, and watch animations that demonstrate a product’s value and key features. They can observe the spatial placement of Vertiv’s rack and row solutions, as though they were actually on site. They are also able to customise a Vertiv VR rack by placing servers, power, thermal, and storage devices into the unit.
“This experience gives decision-makers a deeper understanding of the entire infrastructure at work,” said Piorko. “In addition, our new Customer Experience Centre will provide presales, sales, and product training, as well as full-service certification courses for Vertiv’s authorised service partner network.”
Piorko was joined recently by a number of senior Vertiv leaders for the African head office roof wetting celebration, including Karsten Winther, president of the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region; Paolo Gattagrisa, chief financial officer and VP of finance for EMEA; Peter Lambrecht, VP of sales for EMEA; Vicente Chiralt, VP of marketing for EMEA; Viktor Petik, VP and global leader for Vertiv’s integrated modular solutions business ; Kjell Lovqvist, VP for DC power and outdoor enclosures for EMEA; Andrea Ferro, VP for technology application and market development; and Juraj Sekera, transformation director EMEA.
