Eclectics transforms banking in Africa with Red Hat partnership

Many Africans do not have a traditional bank account. Innovative, technology-based solutions can provide part of the answer; they let the unbanked have access to banking services.

Over the last 13 years, technology-savvy company Eclectics International has transformed Africa through affordable, state-of-the-art IT solutions for the African financial market. “We’ve been working on solutions for the unbanked in Africa,“ said Boniface Ouko, Head of Enterprise Business at Eclectics International, “We have solutions for internet banking, mobile banking, telephone banking, mobile wallet, and specifically omnichannel banking.”

Industry leaders in Africa trust Eclectics to revolutionize their businesses. The technology company delivers solutions to more than 240 financial institutions and other corporations in 25 countries across Africa. While its vision is to be a trusted provider of quality and affordable digital solutions, its mission is to simplify lives through digital banking. “The banking industry is all about innovation,” said Joseph Nderitu, Business Development Manager at Eclectics International. “We help reduce banks’ costs and time to market for new products and features.”

For around a decade, Eclectics developed every aspect of the solutions it delivered internally, using products from various vendors. “We realized that we didn’t need to keep rebuilding something that has already been built; there were robust and affordable products out there that we could use in our solutions,” said Ouko. “Partnering with a leading provider and getting to know them and their products would allow us to deliver the best solutions for our customers.”

After talking to several IT industry leaders, Eclectics chose to partner with Red Hat as a Red Hat Ready partner. “We decided to partner with Red Hat because Red Hat products are innovative and cost-efficient, and Red Hat understands the banking industry,” said Ouko.

Partnering with Red Hat allowed Eclectics to focus on its intellectual property, with Red Hat technologies providing a foundation for its innovative solutions. After a few years, Eclectics felt a closer working relationship with Red Hat would enhance the solutions it delivers to its customers. “We understand our customers’ pain points, and building a deeper relation with Red Hat would help us deliver the very best solutions for addressing those,” said Ouko.

In 2019, Eclectics decided to actively grow its Red Hat skills and increase its partnership status from Ready to Premier Business, specifically focusing on the middleware specialization track. In addition, a  strategic business plan was built using Red Hat CHAMP (planning methodology) to capture jointly committed activities and revenue streams.

Joining the Red Hat Partner Program helped Eclectics grow its Red Hat skills. The knowledge Eclectics gained equipped it to address challenges its customers were facing, specifically scalability and resilience.

“Red Hat OpenShift’s scalability and resilience are vital for our customers,” said Ouko, “so we naturally wanted to move our core intellectual property into Red Hat OpenShift. Our teams' training with Red Hat brought them up to speed on best practices for implementing and operating the container platform. It really helped them on their journey.”

The partner program has also helped Eclectics convince the banking sector of the value of its innovative solutions combining Red Hat technologies with its own intellectual property. Red Hat demonstrated the robustness and scalability of Red Hat OpenShift to a sector new to container platforms, so when Eclectics demonstrated innovative solutions, customers quickly understood their potential.

“Red Hat held training sessions with our customers’ IT departments, getting the word out about how Red Hat technologies offer a reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient platform,” said Ouko. “That really helped us in terms of business development. When we spoke to potential customers, they already understood the value of what they were looking at.”

Unequaled reliability thanks to a tried and tested foundation

With Red Hat providing a tried and tested foundation, Eclectics’ customers can be confident that its solutions are robust and reliable. The partners worked closely together to ensure any Eclectics solution addresses customer reliability and scalability challenges. “Red Hat technologies are verified, well tested, and used in many places,” said Nderitu. “We can confidently tell banks that these technologies won’t let them down.”

Qualified experts focused on delivering innovative solutions

Because Eclectics solutions are built on robust, reliable, and innovative Red Hat products, the technology company can focus its energy on delivering innovative solutions to meet its customers’ evolving needs. “Combining the technologies and expertise of our two companies lets our customers know that they are getting something very innovative,” said Nderitu. Furthermore, whenever Eclectics implements a solution based on Red Hat technologies, it knows it is bringing its customers the best solution. Its teams are highly qualified, with accreditations and certifications on topics from cloud-native development to hybrid cloud infrastructure and beyond. “We have qualified sales and technical personnel,” said Nderitu. “Our sales teams are specialists and our technical teams are specialists—this means our customers get exactly what they need.”

Aligned on roadmaps to innovate together

Regular weekly meetings ensure Eclectics gains early insight into Red Hat technology roadmaps, and any relevant new Red Hat features are quickly incorporated into Eclectics’ solutions. “With Red Hat technologies being open source and Eclectics being a market leader in providing affordable, innovative solutions, banks can be assured of cost-efficient solutions,” said Nderitu.

Currently, Eclectics is the only middleware-focused Premier Business partner in Africa and the relationship is only getting stronger as time passes. Over recent years, the partners have expanded from working together on 15 accounts in one country, Kenya, to 111 accounts in 9 countries across Africa. “Our partnership has gone beyond a business relationship; it’s more of a friendship,” said Ouko. “That’s how a partnership should be. I can talk to Red Hat at any time about anything.”

Nderitu sees a bright future ahead, as Eclectics is synonymous with Red Hat across Africa. He said, “If there is a Red Hat partner who can be recognized, sought after because of its Red Hat skills and the services it delivers, it’s Eclectics.”