Internet Solutions (IS), Africa's leading converged communications services provider, has announced some executive changes.
Greg Payne, COO, is leaving to take up an executive position at Afrihost - a large customer and partner of IS, and Tony Walt will assume the role of COO, combining some of his current duties as Chief Customer Officer for IS with the duties of the company's COO position.
Making the announcement to staff, IS CEO Angus MacRobert wished Greg Payne well in his new business venture.
"Greg has been with IS for 12 years exactly, and done a lot for our business and our customers during this time. He has an opportunity to join some close friends and partners on a permanent basis and we know they will go from strength to strength under Greg's new executive leadership. We wish Greg all the best of luck in this new era, and we know we will stay very close to him."
MacRobert continued: "As with any changes of this nature, it gives us the opportunity to allow other long-standing senior colleagues the ability to take on more responsibility. We are therefore going to change the structure slightly, and it is with great pleasure that Tony Walt takes on the COO role within IS. Tony will continue to look after his current team, but will now also look after the Client Services team. This Client Services team will now be led by Costa Koutakis, the new Client Services Director.
"Costa becomes an IS Divisional Director, and will have the Escalations Team report to him. Costa's promotion comes after eight years of exceptional performance at IS, and we are very proud to have him as a fellow divisional director. We congratulate him, and wish him all the best of luck in his new role."
MacRobert told the IS staff: "I am very excited about the year ahead of us. We sold more hosting real estate last year than the previous seven years combined. And we are currently rolling out two of the biggest networks we have managed to date - SARS and TENET.
"We have entered a voice market of R80 billion and we sell voice at 17 cents / minute; whereas our competitors sell it in a range of 44c to 280cents / minute. We need to focus on the interconnect regime to lower these tariffs, so that all South Africans can enjoy affordable communication costs."
Concluding, MacRobert congratulated the entire IS staff on their continued commitment. "Don't stop creating the magic within IS, and don't ever stop enjoying the magic within IS and this beautiful country of ours."
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Internet Solutions (IS) is Africa's leading new age telco, offering end-to-end converged communication solutions to clients. The people at IS are passionate about constantly innovating and delivering solutions and services that are relevant and critical to their customers. These services are built on a world-class, secure, resilient infrastructure, delivered according to global best practices and effected in partnership with the world's leading technology vendors. It is through these services and solutions that IS creates a competitive edge for customers' communication needs, and promote sustainable business growth.
The business was founded in 1992 on the principle of developing a robust infrastructure in order for corporates and other organisations to communicate. Since then, IS has established itself as a leader in this space, attracting over 80% of South Africa's top businesses as clients. From listed companies to non-governmental organisations, local and national government and smaller companies, IS is enabling and evolving communications to meet the business needs of thousands of customers.
The company enjoys partnerships with major global players such as Cisco and Microsoft and holds Microsoft Gold Certification in the Hosting specialisation for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (Hosted Exchange and SharePoint) and Managed Hosting Solutions - the first South African company to achieve this accreditation and was the first company outside of the US to be certified as a Cisco Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP).
Today the company enjoys a leadership position as it delivers services including hosting, access, security solutions, virtual private network (VPN), mobile solutions, VOIS, African solutions, broadband, and application services (ASP). Recent growth in the African economy has resulted in IS spreading its services across all parts of the continent as clients demand reliable and robust networking connectivity in the African market.
For more, visit us on www.is.co.za.
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