One of the main reasons for this venture is to bring important service management skills to Venture's customer base throughout the African continent, the companies say.

According to Charles Osburn, CEO of Quintica Group, the two companies complement each other well. "We bring focused skills and solutions in the service management space, ranging from best practice ITIL processors all the way through to assisting organizations to achieve BS15000/ISO20000 certification, so as to be able to play a meaningful role in companies' corporate governance programs. What we did not have is operational presence in these territories.

"Venture Communications has a presence in nine countries across Africa, which allows us to immediately start placing skills within the established infrastructure, being confident that we will be able to service our client base moving forward.

"Venture also has a blue-chip set of customers in these territories, and they are all very keen to embrace the service management journey that the Q-Venture business is able to offer," says Osburn.

Osburn adds that the African service management market is not only experiencing a rapid growth cycle, but is also demanding that this expansion is based on business practices that are sound, sustainable and auditable, and not just 'pushing numbers'.