Cape Town’s ICT solution provider, Xepa Consulting, has signed on as a reseller of Google Apps, through distributor Grove Group.
“The future of efficient and cost effective computing lies in hosted solutions. On attending a seminar given by Google distributor Grove Group, it was clear that Google Apps is an ideal fit for our strategic vision”, said Garth Francis, MD of Xepa.
Xepa’s solutions portfolio will add Google’s cloud computing services, a set of Web applications including Gmail (email), Google Calendar, Talk (instant messenger/VoIP), Docs (word processing) and Sites (wiki).
Cloud based services offer fixed cost, without the need for software licensing, hardware or archiving capacity. Google Apps’ Premier Edition is billed at USD50 per user per year and includes 25GB of storage capacity. All maintenance is performed by Google itself.
“That’s for full-featured email, similar to hosted Microsoft Exchange, as well as all other functionality relating to the other applications. For smaller organizations which may have personnel located in various places around the country, Google Apps is an ideal platform for the secure and effective exchange and ‘in-cloud’ storage of information”, explained Francis.
He added that data protection in the cloud is more secured than information stored on-site and, although large organizations believes costs can escalate when using cloud computing, bandwith costs are coming down and this expenditure against savings on hardware and software is still feasible.
The company already signed up several clients on Google Apps. Grove Group will distribute the cloud application, with Xepa Consulting the reseller responsible for customer relationship and first line supports.
Xepa is an ICT Solutions Provider focusing on Infrastructure Solutions based on the Novell, Linux and Microsoft platforms. In addition to Novell and Microsoft partnerships, Xepa is a VMWare Enterprise Partner, GlobalSign Authorised Partner and GWAVA Authorised Partner. Xepa also has partnerships with other hardware and software vendors, including HP, EMC, Juniper, Cyberoam, TrendMicro and Symantec.
Are you kidding me??? My company has been reselling google apps for almost 3 years already here in SA. How did this make the news? Leave technology to the techies please. Look at what the politicians did to Eskom & Telkom.
The story just mentions a South African company becoming a Google Aps reseller- the article doesn’t say that Xepa Consulting is the first SA company to have this deal. Hope that clarifies the situation. I’m sure other “techies” understood that already.
who else is doing this in SA?? I want in! who do we contact?