Cornastone, the black-owned and managed enterprise solutions integration company, has been awarded the tender for the City of Cape Town ERP (enterprise resource planning) technical architecture support centre project.
Cornastone, as part of the Accenture Consortium, will be responsible for running the technical architecture team, which will handle the design and roll-out of hardware and infrastructure for future upgrades. The team will comprise between 10 and 12 technical support staff and will be based in the Cape Town Unicity.
Cornastone will provide comprehensive enterprise architecture skills and support as well as provide SAP Basis Consulting and Unix skills for the next 18 months to three years.
The awarding of this tender follows the successful roll-out by Cornastone of the entire supporting hardware infrastructure - based around HP 9000 technology - for the City of Cape Town ERP implementation programme, Project Ukuntinga, over the past two years.
Project Ukuntinga is the second largest SAP project undertaken in SA and is being used as a global SAP reference site.
Mark Jones, Cornastone Cape Town branch manager, says the technical support centre deal is a significant win for the company.
"This is an example of true empowerment that acknowledges the investment we have made in our staff and our commitment to the values represented by the City of Cape Town `smart city` strategy," he says.
Project Ukuntinga, which commenced in late 2001, is designed to enhance the ability of 28 000 municipal employees to provide service to more than three million citizens.
The current SAP hardware infrastructure, supplied and supported by Cornastone, is hosted on an HP Unix platform.
"We have been able to complement the world-class skills that are already on board for delivery of the project, and were therefore seen fit to run the technical architecture team and support centre," Jones concludes.
The other members of the Accenture Consortium - apart from Cornastone - are Accenture, Baraca Enterprise, DLK Group, Mokoodi Technology and Shocked Technology Solutions.
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Cornastone is a black-owned company founded by two IT professionals and entrepreneurs with an extensive track record of delivering business value to stakeholders. Lufuno Nevhutalu, a founder of Yashu Solutions (Pty) Limited, before merging Yashu Solutions business interests into Computer Configurations Holdings Limited in 1998, brings entrepreneurship and proven business leadership skills.
Hamilton Ratshefola, a former IBM and CCH executive director, has extensive business leadership and sales experience. Ratshefola led the IBM Public Sector business from a R30 million business in 1995 to a R300 million business in 1999.
BMI-T Forge Ahead and Black IT Forum honoured both Ratshefola and Nevhutalu as members of Top 20 Black IT Professionals in SA in 1999.
In 2001, Cornastone was HP VAR of the Year with over R80 million of sales in HP enterprise infrastructure. In 2002, Cornastone was voted the ICT Top Achiever Company of the Year 2002 with sales around R100 million.
Cornastone has assembled an array of highly skilled professionals at management and technical level, with outstanding track records in sales and solutions delivery.
Project Ukuntinga
Project Ukuntinga, which commenced in late 2001, was the name given by the new-found metropolitan local authority to the R355 million ERP (enterprise resource planning) project to integrate the billings systems of its seven constituent local councils - Blaauwberg Municipality, City of Cape Town, City of Tygerberg, Helderberg Municipality, Oostenberg Municipality, South Peninsula Municipality and the Cape Metropolitan Council.
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