The AdvTech Group, including the Mast and AdvEd Groups, are currently implementing a number of the applications proferred by the total solution presented by the Novell suite of products. As the largest diversified training, education and placement organisation in Southern Africa at present, the group says they are pleased with the flexibility, ease-of-use and reduced cost of ownership offered by the Novell solution.
With a number of well-known educational institutions in the AdvEd fold, such as the Global School of Business, Varsity College, Crawford Schools and the Luso-Zakheni Computer Institute, AdvEd is particularly pleased with the security that the BorderManager application has to offer.
Says Gavin Janse van Rensburg, IT manager at AdvTech, "BorderManager`s firewalling capabilities coupled with the fact that its proxy server ties into NDS (Novell Directory Services) means that the entire implementation can be managed from a single point, which is clearly beneficial to AdvTech. And, of course, the fact that we`re dealing with students represents an inherent security risk, which means that the system must, as far as possible, be hack-proof.
"Moreover, BorderManager brings costs down, while ensuring secure content filtering, which translates into the students being able to enjoy their freedom without feeling too restricted by the `Cyber Patrol`".
"Another major concern is that most educational institutions do not have the financial resources - or skills - to implement a WAN (wide area network). Thus, after experiencing firsthand Novell`s willingness to assist AdvEd wherever possible through their ongoing educational drive, our minds were made up to implement Novell".
AdvTech furthermore recognised that while their system currently runs off a UNIX server, the interconnectivity of Novell and NDS represents a solution that could be easily affected, whilst maintaining a low cost of ownership. Also, with NDS, all resources link into one structure, making the ease of implementing an enterprise solution hassle-free.
Ultimately, AdvTech asserts that the manageability of the network is made easier with NDS for NT, and, the need for a resource-hungry server to run the network is eliminated.
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