Ericsson South Africa is implementing a comprehensive information technology project, valued at over R3-million, that will see the local operation run an office and networking environment totally in line with global Ericsson methodologies.
"The merging telecommunication, data communication and information technology environments led Ericsson globally to formulate a strategy and company-wide philosophy geared towards being a major supplier of services and products in this merging market, as well as a world-class in-house user of IT," comments Par Lovgren, director at Ericsson South Africa. "This decision resulted in a project which we believe to be one of the most ambitious IT projects in any corporation worldwide - the Ericsson Global Infrastructure Program (EGIP), the major enabler for Ericsson`s future competitive position globally."
These high ambitions go hand in hand with the local government`s clear focus and strategy of bringing South Africa to a world-class benchmark level within IT and telecommunications.
Bengt Norman, IT manager at Ericsson SA says the SA operation looked at its own environment, ran a comprehensive hardware and software audit and produced a plan to bring Ericsson South Africa into line with the global strategy. "Our local project, termed ESOE - Siyavaya (Ericsson Standard Office Environment and Siyavaya meaning `the way forward` in Zulu) uses best practices, encompassing Microsoft principles, and utilises the skills of Ericsson South Africa`s staff, our IT partners, TCO Integrators, and staff from Ericsson Data in Sweden and Holland.
"The project introduces the infrastructure, methodologies, processes and technology to provide each Ericsson South Africa employee with the same logon, desktop and application set as all other Ericsson employees globally. It gives local employees the possibility to access their data globally wherever they are working within the Ericsson organisation.
"Through this project, which has really been a global effort involving skills from here and abroad, Ericsson South Africa will have global messaging, faster application deployment, simplified support, shorter re-location time for users and standard hardware platforms - all enabling the company to be an active player in Ericsson`s global plans and strategies."
Following the hardware and software audit, the project kicked off in January this year. It embraces the integration and certification of hardware and software to Ericsson global standards, the migration from a Novell LAN environment to the standard Ericsson environment of Microsoft NT, the implementation of Microsoft`s messaging environment,
Microsoft Exchange, the implementation of a new Microsoft back-office environment and the complete roll-out of the Ericsson standard office environment to all 250 Ericsson South Africa staff.
Bertie Painter, project manager for the whole ESOE-Siyavaya project at TCO Integrators, part of the Dimension Data Group, says working within a global team has highlighted the high level of local skills and emphasised the potential for global projects to be rolled out from a South African base.
"TCO was responsible for the hardware and software integration, the server environment and for the Novell to NT migration. The Swedish team has been handling the planning of the project and the roll-out to 100 of the over 300 workstations, while the Dutch team has been responsible for the server and set-up requirements, as Holland will be the support site for Ericsson South Africa. In addition, TCO handled the balance of the roll-out to the workstations."
The Microsoft infrastructure provides users with access to messaging, as well as uniform desktop and application installations. The servers, installed at Ericsson South Africa`s four branches, are integrated into the Ericsson worldwide IT hierarchy, which includes a mail system for over 60 000 plus users and access to and distribution of over 30 GB of applications available to Ericsson users globally.
Steve Welsh, sales and marketing director at TCO Integrators, says the project is designed to provide higher employee productivity and will reduce costs for higher return on investment in information technology.
To ensure on-going professional support in this new environment, TCO Integrators have a team assisting the Ericsson South Africa IT department to deal with issues arising from the ESOE - Siyavaya Project.
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