Logicalis to move 65 UK roles to South Africa

Integrator says nearshoring move is part of a wider managed services growth strategy, adding that it is working with Welsh government to ensure soft landing for affected staff

Logicalis is working with the Welsh government to help find a home for staff affected by its impending nearshoring of 65 IT support roles to South Africa.

The first and second-line support roles, which are currently based in South Wales and Slough, are being moved to Cape Town in two phases as part of a wider, global managed services growth push by the integrator.

Some 40 roles will move this September, with a further 25 transferring in March 2018.

A consultation period with affected staff, which kicked off in April, ended yesterday.

At least 50 of the staff affected will be made redundant as a result, Logicalis UK managing director Bob Swallow confirmed to CRN.

"We do have vacancies internally, and there are roles that have already been lined up for some of those people," he said. "Some will leave the business, and we are working with the Welsh government to make sure those people are looked after and that we find jobs for them. When we started the operation in Wales [Nantgarw, near Cardiff], jobs were at a premium, but there are now at least 2,000 IT jobs within 15 miles of it."

Despite the nearshoring strategy, the UK business will soon house a new managed services practice set to serve as a centre of excellence for the rest of Europe, Swallow said. This will be headed up by a current Accenture executive who cannot yet be named because he is still serving his notice.

Swallow (pictured below) said the goal is to develop more repeatable managed services and add more offerings in areas such as desktop support, as well as emerging tech areas including big data. Currently, 70 per cent of its managed services projects are bespoke in nature, he said.

"We've moved into big data, analytics and IoT solutions," Swallow added. "These are areas of technology where our customers don't have the maturity of skills they've got in the networking space, so we see a need for more managed services until customers have got themselves up to speed. The other area is security - there's a real increase in demand for professional and managed services around secure operations.

"Logicalis is looking to use more of its global capability, and it will develop centres of excellence; for instance [the operation in] South Africa will provide services to the other Logicalis entities. And we certainly see ourselves as being the lead for managed services in Europe, at a minimum for Logicalis. We will be working with the other countries to provide them with support on their managed services propositions."

This investment will see Logicalis' UK services headcount ramp back up to 170 to 175 after the initial redundancies cut it from 205 to 140, Swallow said.

"But more importantly, our managed services revenues are going to increase significantly."