Airborne launches infrastructure consultancy

Double gold certified Microsoft partner Airborne Consulting has announced the opening of Airborne Infrastructure to meet the growing need many companies have for independent consulting and services around hardware and networking requirements.

Says Airborne MD, Sean O' Connell, "We created Airborne Infrastructure to address the area of 'grey' that exists between where infrastructure and solutions companies start and end. All too often, architected solutions do not work optimally due to insufficient or poorly architected infrastructures (networks, operating systems, authentication, e-mail etc.), or a misalignment between required and available bandwidth, which all results in suboptimal performance or robustness."

"Our engagements at clients over the past 4 years have highlighted the need for a consulting service which successfully aligns the infrastructure strategy with their business and IT strategy, as well as driving the implementation. This offering includes an Infrastructure Optimisation exercise, agreement of SLA's with respective suppliers/departments and coordinating the entire transition on behalf of the client. It is noteworthy that 90% of our engagements have resulted in outsourced operations and development management services, primarily on the Microsoft platform."

O' Connell believes they are uniquely positioned in the market as they have extensive and demonstrable software development and infrastructure configuration and implementation skills. "Our solutions and software development backgrounds have made the transition and incorporation of this business critical offering a reality in today's converged and connected market," he says.

The new company, which will be headed up by general manager, Chris Lazari, has been driven to a large degree by Airborne's focus on Microsoft Sharepoint, which requires a real convergence of hardware and software. Says Lazari, "We were the first consultancy to implement Sharepoint in South Africa last year, and we learnt some valuable lessons. Infrastructure, licensing requirements, server setups etc. are all key to a successful Sharepoint implementation. The most important aspect of Sharepoint is configuration, which sits squarely on the infrastructure side."

Airborne Infrastructure will not operate as a licensed reseller for any one vendor and will purely provide independent consulting and services to assess existing infrastructure and provide a blueprint for what is needed to move forward. Says Lazari, "We will recommend hardware because we feel it is best suited to the company's individual needs, not because we have a relationship with a vendor."