You wouldn’t normally expect to see the words ‘show-jumping’ and ‘supercomputing’ in the same sentence, but thanks to a partnership between Mellanox and one of South Africa’s sparkiest show-jumping teams, that has changed.
Mellanox is best known as a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end smart interconnect solutions for data centre servers and storage systems.
Now meet Mellanox My Hot Chocolate, a beautiful liver chestnut show-jumping champion, and his talented owner and rider, Belinda Duke.
Mellanox says it is in the business of being fast, innovative, agile and forward-thinking, which is why it relates to those same descriptions of Duke and her trusty steed.
Together, Duke and Mellanox My Hot Chocolate have become a force to be contended with on the local show-jumping circuit. Duke also happens to be product manager at Networks Unlimited Africa, which distributes Mellanox’s intelligent interconnect solutions throughout the continent.
“Mellanox and Networks Unlimited Africa have had an excellent working relationship for some years now, and we know them to be ever-innovative and forward-thinking,” she says. “An out-of-the-box brainstorming moment, in which we unpacked some of the similarities between my show-jumping career and my horse, My Hot Chocolate, quickly became a reality thanks to both Mellanox’s ability to embrace new thinking, as well as their innate generosity as a partner.”
Duke will wear Mellanox-branded riding clothing when she and Mellanox My Hot Chocolate participate in events, while her horse will be wearing Mellanox-branded accessories. A special show-jumping obstacle, in the form of a wooden wall jump, has also been created, using Mellanox’s branding and messaging.
Syd Virdi, senior director of EMEA channel sales at Mellanox, says: “In a world of high-tech solutions, Mellanox is ever mindful of its impact on the physical world. Channelling the imaginative firepower of this energetic show-jumping team reminds us once again that IT exists to serve people and the planet. We couldn’t be happier at the birth of this exciting new partnership, which is a visual reminder of our ethos of elegantly ‘jump-starting’ solutions.”