Local professional services provider OSCOSM has partnered with CloudAfrica to develop an open source software-as-a-service (SaaS) service desk solution for the South African market.
The solution - OSCOSM Rapid Install - provides organisations with the ability to instantly (less than 15 minutes) deploy a cloud-based server running Ubuntu Linux as well as automatically installing open source service desk software.
Also installed are applications and services such as Apache and MySQL in the cloud.
The companies say the solution offers South African businesses the ability to run their service desk solution in the cloud while still maintaining a higher level of control and access due to the solution being hosted in in the country. It also allows them to freely modify and evolve the solution as they see fit.
Further to this, OSCOSM Rapid Install provisions an individual virtual machine. "This is a massive plus; organisations can also use the virtual machine for anything additional that they may require - it's theirs," says OSCOSM founder, Clinton Bruigom.
Bruigom says OSCOSM chose CloudAfrica as its preferred cloud provider due to the dynamic nature of its provisioning platform as well as its highly skilled team.
For this particular solution, he notes, the target market is small enterprises or even individuals wanting to easily enable or extend their ticketing capability.
"The solution does, however, offer a range of server specifications which means medium-sized enterprises can also benefit from the solution. The primary target is SA, albeit we are targeting all our neighbouring countries through our ad campaigns.
"We have a number of channels defined which we want to market within, the first is published media, and secondly, various social media channels," he adds.
Bruigom also notes the solution fulfils the ability to easily communicate with internal and external customers or teams, and allows for all IT service management (ITSM) information to be stored centrally in one technology that is easily integrated with other systems such as customer relationship management systems or lightweight directory access protocol.
"Further to this, the solution is supported by OSCOSM's ITSM consulting services which focus on customer experience and can add a significant amount of value to organisations in a relatively short space of time."
Len Weincier, head of CloudAfrica, adds: "CloudAfrica is a cloud built by Africans to empower Africa. Our cloud is performant, flexible and secure. It is built on enterprise-grade technologies that have been battle-tested in banking and real-time trading environments."
According to Bruigom, OSCOSM Rapid Install is comparatively priced against other SaaS service desk solutions and starts at R275 per month.
"This price ranges depending on specification of the server and add-ons chosen during the installation selection, which is offered through a convenient online shopping cart experience," he concludes.
Share