The recent naming of the City of Cape Town as a recipient of the Computerworld Honours Programme`s 21st Century Achievement Award for its visionary use of IT in Project Ukuntinga marked the coming of age of Cornastone, the enterprise solutions integration company.
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.
Cornastone, at the time a fledgling BEE company with an 18-month track record, was charged with architecting and rolling out the project`s entire supporting infrastructure - based around Hewlett-Packard 9000 hardware.
Says Mark Jones, Cornastone Cape Town`s branch manager: "It was a baptism of fire for our young company. We knew we had the hardware skills required to deliver on the infrastructure: the question was whether we had the right resources, the project management capabilities and the guts to pull it off.
"We knew that this project could break us - or make us. We threw all our energy and resources at it because we could not afford to fail. The fact that Computerworld has seen fit to rank the City of Cape Town among the top five of the 65 entries received in the category of government and non-profit organisations is testimony to the determination of our team to deliver, come what may," he adds.
Jones points out that the Cape Town ERP implementation is the second largest SAP project ever undertaken in SA. It is also being used as a global SAP reference site.
Mehboob Foflonker, ERP implementation director for the City of Cape Town, says the city opted to appoint Cornastone after an exhaustive evaluation process because the young company was able to complement the world-class skills that were already on board for delivery of the project.
"We also believed Cornastone could work according to the aggressive timelines we had set and that its staff had the required experience and skills to deliver. Cornastone also demonstrated its flexibility, offering us a good price that was benchmarked locally and indicated that it would be prepared to go the extra mile. We were not disappointed.
"And finally, we believed it important that Cornastone is a BEE company which has invested in its staff and shares the values enshrined in the City of Cape Town Smart City strategy," he adds.
As a result of the success of the ERP project, Cornastone has been appointed as the preferred supplier and technology partner of the City of Cape Town for Hewlett-Packard enterprise hardware systems.
Share
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 the 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.
Editorial contacts