Trinidad and To­ba­go is on course to be­come the tech­nol­o­gy hub of the Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al ICT dis­trib­u­tor Nexsys In­ter­na­tion­al is hop­ing to see the coun­try to that goal.

Three months af­ter sign­ing on to be­come Huawei’s re­gion­al dis­trib­u­tor in the Caribbean, Nexsys In­ter­na­tion­al has opt­ed to ex­pand its op­er­a­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The com­pa­ny, a promi­nent tech­nol­o­gy dis­trib­u­tor based in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, is of the view that this coun­try is on course to be the re­gion’s pre­mier tech hub and is ea­ger to fos­ter ma­jor part­ner­ships in a bid to help the coun­try achieve this goal.

Gabriela Salazar, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Nexsys spoke of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­ten­tial as a dig­i­tal pow­er­house in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian fol­low­ing an ex­ec­u­tive cock­tail event at the Brix Ho­tel in St. Ann’s on Thurs­day.

The event al­lowed stake­hold­ers to meet sev­er­al mem­bers of man­age­ment from the Nexsys group as well as sev­er­al of their ma­jor busi­ness part­ners in­clud­ing Mi­crosoft and Huawei.

Nexsys’ port­fo­lio of of­fer­ings in­cludes cloud com­put­ing, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, da­ta cen­tre so­lu­tions, soft­ware and hard­ware and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion so­lu­tions.

“We be­lieve that T&T can be this hub of tech­nol­o­gy for the Caribbean re­gion. I see all the brands, it’s around 25 brands that Nexsys man­ages in our port­fo­lio and I can tell you be­cause it’s a re­al­i­ty that Trinidad and To­ba­go is the num­ber one is­land in (terms of the) num­bers of in­vest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy. So Trinidad can sup­port the oth­er ter­ri­to­ries,” she told the Busi­ness Guardian.

The com­pa­ny said it was very in­ter­est­ed in the coun­try’s dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion push, as she not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment would play a key role in shap­ing the di­rec­tion tak­en by the rest of so­ci­ety.

How­ev­er, she said many small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es have al­ready made ma­jor strides in terms of adopt­ing dig­i­tal strate­gies.

“Usu­al­ly we work to­geth­er with the brand in that as­pect. Nexus usu­al­ly will go through the part­ner and the part­ner man­ages the re­la­tion with the cus­tomer. We should be the bridge be­tween the brand and the part­ner to have the con­ver­sa­tion with the gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties. So we sup­port that kind of au­di­ence or con­ver­sa­tion with the part­ner in the brand with the cus­tomer. I think it’s very im­por­tant that they all the en­ti­ties that are sup­port­ing T&T in the eco­nom­ics in­volved in these in these IT strate­gies be­cause the eco­nom­ics moves around the tech­nol­o­gy,” she said.

She ad­mit­ted that the Gov­ern­ment’s adop­tion has been a bit slow com­pared to these en­ti­ties, but she still ex­pect­ed that it would play a ben­e­fi­cial role in the trans­for­ma­tion.

“We need to help (each oth­er). For ex­am­ple in the in­dus­try (there are so many) small and medi­um busi­ness­es that have im­proved their busi­ness (through tech­nol­o­gy) and we are es­pe­cial­ly proud to sup­port that kind of part­ner, to al­low them to grow. So I think the Gov­ern­ment is the most im­por­tant ver­ti­cal in the mar­ket be­cause usu­al­ly, they are de­cid­ing where (the coun­try) is go­ing to go. Yes, it is more slow. I un­der­stand this is nor­mal in the Gov­ern­ment sec­tor. But with the brands, we can im­prove this con­ver­sa­tion. Push them to go faster in the trans­for­ma­tion of the cloud on the Gov­ern­ment side,” said Salazar.

Salazar ac­knowl­edged that there would be some con­cern about adopt­ing cloud ser­vices, which Nexsys has been try­ing to pro­mote across the re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the in­crease in cy­ber at­tacks across the Caribbean. How­ev­er, she ex­plained that im­prov­ing se­cu­ri­ty in the ICT sec­tor al­so re­quired ma­jor col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“We are get­ting a lot of at­ten­tion from the hack­ers in Latin Amer­i­ca be­cause our cus­tomers have open doors or pro­vide open doors to that kind of at­tack. It is very im­por­tant that the brands that we have, and all oth­er brands dis­cuss this be­cause I think this is a com­mu­ni­ty. It’s strong, with part­ners in brands to go to the end cus­tomer and pro­vide the cor­rect in­for­ma­tion that they need to pro­tect their in­for­ma­tion,” she said, “And we have prod­ucts to do that. But of course, we need to in­vest in that.”

She how­ev­er ex­plained that with the right set­up, cloud in­fra­struc­ture could be even more se­cure than most busi­ness­es be­lieve.

“I think many coun­tries men­tioned that the cloud isn’t se­cure. We have a lot of (de­trac­tors) who don’t con­sid­er the op­tion, they don’t think they should go to the cloud. But with the hack­ers, the at­tacks hap­pen­ing right now are not on­ly in the cloud, it is on-premise as well. So we need to re­view that. One of the main top­ic dis­cussed with main­te­nance up­dates in the tech­nol­o­gy is that when cus­tomer ac­quires and re­views with our spe­cial­ist part­ners, they dis­cuss which is the best way to pro­tect my com­pa­ny my data­base. So it is com­mu­ni­ca­tion that al­ways needs to be on the ta­ble when the cus­tomer is with (Nexsys) or with our part­ners,” she said.

She al­so ex­plained that the cloud in­vest­ment al­so need­ed to be bet­ter ex­plained to po­ten­tial cus­tomers as she not­ed that cur­rent­ly, busi­ness part­ners had not prop­er­ly ex­plained the ben­e­fits of adopt­ing the tech­nol­o­gy just yet.

“We need the part­ners that buy the idea and if the part­ner doesn’t pro­mote this idea, the mar­ket is not go­ing to hap­pen,” she said.

Last year Nexsys ter­ri­to­ry man­ag­er Saman­tha De­o­raj ex­plained that tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions could serve as a buffer for for­eign ex­change chal­lenges.

How­ev­er one year on Salazar ad­mit­ted the com­pa­ny had to ad­just cred­it and pay­ment op­tions to sup­port its clients but it hoped that the com­pa­ny’s ex­pan­sion in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go would ease such com­pli­ca­tions.

“We are par­tic­i­pat­ing to­geth­er with our part­ners to un­der­stand what is the best way to do work. For ex­am­ple, we are pro­vid­ing our part­ners more days to (pro­vide) pay­ment by be­cause they need to go to buy these dol­lars in the bank and usu­al­ly the bank has some met­rics (for dis­tri­b­u­tion). And we un­der­stand that,” she said

“Part of the val­ue we have added is that we are pro­vid­ing more cred­it terms. But this is an eco­nom­ic in­dus­try that we can’t con­trol. What we can do is the strat­e­gy to sup­port the pi­o­neers to move in this econ­o­my so that the busi­ness doesn’t stop,” said Salazar,

“Maybe in the fu­ture Nexus can re­ceive TT dol­lars be­cause we es­tab­lished the en­ti­ty lo­cal­ly but we need the part­ner in the mid­dle.”