Welsh Cisco and Ruckus partner Pinacl forms global alliance with pre-vetted partners

WAN and LAN specialist links arms with a handful of international partners to help it deliver global projects

Cisco and Ruckus partner Pinacl has launched a new entity to help it fulfil international projects with like-minded partners across the globe.

Through its Pinacl Global Delivery Alliance, the North Wales-based integrator aims to provide UK-based customers who have an overseas presence with a consistent service globally.

Pinacl - which specialises in WAN, LAN and the Internet of Things (IoT) - has pre-vetted a handful of partners across the Americas, Europe and AsiaPac that match up with its own vendor accreditations around the likes of Cisco, Ruckus Wireless and CommScope. These include Novabase in Portugal and Heyday Group in Australia.

"The biggest part we bring to this is the project management and pre-vetting of the local partners, to be able to deliver IT in a consistent way," said group CEO Rob Bardwell. "It allows the customer not to be incumbent with six different relationships and trying to manage six different contracts."

Bardwell said the GDA delivery partners are selected based on their vendor accreditations but that Pinacl also flies out to visit them to ensure they also have a compatible mindset.

Parent company Pinacl Holdings, which turned over £12.5m in its fiscal 2016, has set up a new subsidiary, Pinacl GDA, to house the new business and has promoted Liam Wynne to head it up.

Language and customs barriers would make it tough to deliver the overseas components of an international project without the help of local specialists, said Bardwell.

"What you get from having pre-approved partners is they can deliver technically, but more importantly they know all the local electrical issues and the country's labour rules," he said.

Pinacl also wants to use the alliance to grow its IoT consulting business, said Bardwell, who added that two of its staff are currently in Ghana to help design the African country's public Wi-Fi.