Telkom Business Connexion (BCX) in partnership with SAP Africa has introduced its SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) service out of its Tier IV certified data centre.
Speaking at the unveiling held in Johannesburg yesterday, Guy Armstrong, SAP vice president of HANA Enterprise Cloud Sales, EMEA, said Telkom BCX is now SAP's seventh global premier HEC partner.
"Telkom BCX bring into this partnership a global network presence, SAP certified data centres, a large pool of ICT skills, and they support all our data security requirements, so we are excited to be able to take this solution to the African and global market.
"It's not our intention as SAP to build multiple data centres across the globe so our strategy is to choose partners like Telkom BCX to enable us to achieve that scale. HEC is not an industry specific solution, we have a massive target market base across the globe, focusing on an array of market sectors such as retail, banking, finance and more," he explained.
According to SAP, HEC offers enterprises real-time technology capabilities on a cloud-based consumption model. The platform is a privately managed, an on premises cloud solution enabled by SAP's in-memory platform that takes the clients premise solution and places it onto a streamlined boxed environment. The platform will ensure the clients' operating system is up and running, is regularly updated, well-maintained and managed while ensuring maximum data security, leaving organisations with more time to focus on their business targets.
Vish Rajpal, chief of Business Solutions at Telkom Business Connexion, said his organisation needed a world class leading cloud solutions partner to support its vision as Africa's premier end-to-end digital solutions provider.
"We have been taking our clients on a journey to, through and beyond the cloud for some time now. Following the integration of Telkom Business and Business Connexion, we are now a truly end-to-end digital provider, which allows us to give clients the best connectivity, access to the best data centres and the best skills for the best cloud solutions."
"By deploying SAP HEC, our client can speed up business execution and reduce time-to-value. It provides the flexibility to support businesses as they grow, without the investment associated with transitioning capital expenditures to operational expenditures, resulting in cost savings for the client," Rajpal pointed out.
This, he added, is a big step in driving agility and innovation, as clients can now build their own business applications or bundle them with cloud applications that the company and their business partners need to collaborate in an open and standards-based cloud environment.
Brett Parker, MD of SAP Africa, believes the move towards cloud makes sense for businesses across the board.
"Local enterprises are already seeing the inherent benefits of cloud, such as cost-efficiency and flexibility. Through SAP HEC, businesses can leverage the power of SAP HANA and gain access to the benefit of software subscription, which in turn guarantees agility, speed, scalability and security."
According to Jacques Loubser, chief of Infrastructure Solutions at Telkom Business Connexion, the cloud is the only route to go if organisations are to survive this digital era.
"In the past, lengthy IT deployments were acceptable, but not anymore. The speed of deployment is crucial to the success of organisations today and cloud enables this. It eliminates the risk associated with outdated technologies as it is much easier and more cost-effective to modernise the organisation's technology," he says.
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