One of Africa’s largest glass manufacturers, Consol Glass, has partnered with South African based ICT company, T-Systems to migrate their SAP infrastructure to the cloud.
T-Systems will supply Consol with information and communication services in a deal worth R25 million (about US $ 3.2million).
As with many companies, Consol was challenged to balance over- or under-provisioning of infrastructure due to the length of their investment cycles.
The move to dynamic ICT services removes these capacity issues, as T-Systems’ cloud services are optimised to deliver flexible, automated provisioning, when and where required.
Consol looked to T-Systems to provide a solution which could harness the benefits of their existing virtualised and hosted environment and meet global standards for cloud services while also making commercial sense.
T-Systems in South Africa has been Consol’s major ICT outsource partner since 2005.
“For us, the relationship with T-Systems in South Africa has evolved from that of a mere supplier to a strategic alliance where there is an alignment of needs,” says Mike Arnold, CEO of Consol Glass.
“T-Systems offers support that leverages its global standards and best practices, is implemented locally and backed by a strong team. The advantage of a partner such as T-Systems is the global support. However, the local team instilled our trust and confidence in the cloud services offering. As a customer we can now benefit from this expertise and are rest assured that we meet local legislative requirements.”
“T-Systems not only offers the cloud infrastructure but also delivers the platform, along with the capability to maintain and deliver ongoing support. In addition, they also provide value-added services on top of the standard offering. Today, very few service providers can run a SAP environment in a stable manner while tweaking, optimising and fine tuning it to meet your growth expectations; T-Systems can,” says Johan du Plessis, CIO of Consol Glass.
“Cloud provision with guaranteed service quality is still a new concept in South Africa, so navigating any possible risks involved was done jointly. That makes this agreement very significant for T-Systems, and we’re extremely proud of our partnership with Consol,” says Gert Schoonbee, Head of Sales at T-Systems in South Africa.
“Many providers add to the ‘hype’ around cloud service concepts and components, however T-Systems is able to deliver the full cloud services solution, and this deal is proof of that,” concludes Schoonbee.
Staff Writer
