Liquid appoints Deon Geyser new CEO for SA operation

Yesterday, Liquid Telecom SA announced that Deon Geyser has been appointed as its new CEO, effective from January 1^st 2021.

Geyser will be responsible for overseeing the strategic repositioning of the company as Liquid Intelligent Technologies and the execution of the new strategic direction of providing an integrated technology capability that enables customers to transform their business through new intelligent technologies.

We are delighted to welcome Deon to Liquid Telecom South Africa. He is a proven leader and his strong knowledge of both the local market and the continent, extensive management experience in both the public and private sector and the track records in digital transformation makes him ideally placed to continue Liquid’s next chapter of growth and sustainability, as well as to achieve its successful repositioning.

Ahmad Mokles – Liquid Telecom Group Chief Operating Officer

Where’s he been?

Geyser holds a master’s degree in engineering management as well as bachelor’s degrees in Electronic Engineering and IT from the University of Johannesburg. Prior to joining LTSA, and in his 18-year career, he has held senior management positions at Siemens and Millicom International Cellular (Tigo). His most recent position being that of Head of Southern Africa and Vodafone Africa for Nokia since 2014.

During his time at Tigo, Mr Geyser was responsible for CAPEX across the entire business. He was also responsible for supply chain management and technology strategy among many other things.

Where is Liquid Telecom going?

Earlier we mentioned a strategic repositioning and Liquid Telecom (which will come to be known as Liquid Intelligent Solutions) has talked about this before.

The company is moving away from it’s over reliance on the CAPEX heavy Telco industry and will emphasize cloud and software services a lot more going forward;

This requires a new way of doing things. This is the growth strategy we have been implementing. We have to do things a lot differently, and move away from our reliance on the telco business (which is heavy on infrastructure spending)… Through cloud and software-defined services and systems, you can orchestrate solutions for customers very quickly. But the whole way of working in Liquid has to change.

Craig van Rooyen – Liquid Interim CEO

This is probably why going forward, Liquid Telecom will place a larger emphasis on their Digital Marketplace. Liquid Digital Marketplace lets you find, buy, and manage all your digital solutions in one place.

Beyond the Digital Marketplace, the recent hires have also been indicators of Liquid’s direction. Last month they announced the hire of Clayton Naidoo who is now Liquid’s Chief Business Officer. His previous roles included working at CISCO selling networking hardware, software, telecoms equipment and other tech services and products – something we noted to be similar to where Liquid is going.