Datacentrix, Infoblox play key IT services role for Department of Basic Education

The Department of Basic Education faced a major challenge with the transfer of its IT infrastructure when it moved into new premises at 222 Struben Street, in Pretoria, recently.

According to Anthon Raubenheimer, Government Information Technology Officer for the Department of Basic Education, the re-organisation of the original single Department of Education into two separate entities for higher and basic education required the splitting up, relocation and migration of IT equipment and services into the new building with minimum disruption.

“The quotation we received from Datacentrix contained the spread of added value that we were looking for. In short, it provided us with the means to transfer the IT system efficiently, and very quickly re-established the services we needed to operate.”

Raubenheimer adds that the IT equipment was split up, brought into the new building and installed alongside new equipment. The routers and switches were configured to support IPT at the new site.

The process was fast-tracked with Datacentrix, by managing the system migration using Infoblox IP address management (IPAM) solution, which ensured that all the system users had to do was plug in and they were online with a totally new IP configuration in a process that took less than 12 hours to perform the cut over.

Richard Tsalavoutas, Sales Specialist at Datacentrix, says that IT system security problems have created a growing market for Infoblox in South Africa. “It is a product that is simply secure, is built on a hardened platform and was ideal for these circumstances, where secure automation of IP address management is also critical.”

The Infoblox solution provided a speedy means of setting up and managing the assignment of DNS and DHCP addresses, allowing reports to be run to establish where they are located, how many are being used and a history of the UP address allocation per user.

Raubenheimer explains that the solution brought visibility and access to usage information. “Ours is an environment that requires a static grouping that can be fully controlled, and Infoblox provides us with a listing that confirms whether an address has been used or not. A set space has been reserved within the system to maintain standards and management of the overall environment.

“The solution meets the Department's strict requirements and at the same time makes the lives of the technical support staff much easier. I have complete peace of mind that the system is being well managed. The two most critical and useful factors that Infoblox brings to us are manageability and security. We have control which is audited and measured against best practice.

“We actually discovered the real value of this product after using it,” said Raubenheimer. “There has been a huge return on investment as a result of much improved efficiency, the higher speed of work processes and value in terms of improved operational efficiency. Also, a very convenient value-add for us at the time was that certain groups on our network need to be highly secure and this need was completely met by Infoblox.”

The contract was won on merit after going through a full procurement exercise (RFQ). The return on investment and total cost of ownership aspects of the solution were never an issue. Raubenheimer says the Department has a good relationship with Datacentrix, and is comfortable with the levels of technical expertise and commitment.

“This was not an easy exercise, bearing in mind we had to split from one department into two, and physically move to new offices but remain on the same LAN. This partitioning was managed using Infoblox. We could not lose sight of the criticality of creating and connecting users and the proper management of access to IP addresses. This was where Infoblox and Datacentrix came to the fore,” he concludes.