Advanced Systems Integration (ASI), a South African-based Computer Network specialist, was commissioned to perform a quality assurance review of the IT network of a major Nigerian Bank - the United Bank for Africa (UBA).
ASI was commissioned by the SAP R/3 project team, a team that comprises the client`s IT department, Deloittes Consulting (Nigeria) and LYKOS Consulting AG (a business partner of SAP South Africa).
According to Alan Yates, LYKOS Consulting regional director for Africa, "It is critical that SAP products, legacy systems and third party products work together as seamlessly as possible to ensure that SAP is implemented competently, cost-effectively and within time and budget. In order to offer our clients a full service IT solution, we need to partner with other companies like ASI."
Network specialist ASI was used to do a network quality assurance review and to make the necessary recommendations for improvement to the SAP project. Yates says he chose ASI because it has cutting edge network experience with similar sized organisations and a reputation for service. "Our major concern was that the client`s network performance and reliability was critical to the success of the SAP R/3 implementation".
An audit was done on the IT network infrastructure and recommendations were made to the new, young, dynamic management team of UBA.
The audit included an inspection of all sections within head office as well as remote facilities. Equipment, cabling and power environments were scrutinised and network security issues, network protocols and network cabling were reviewed. Special attention was given to the physical installation that included the network backbone, network equipment, power points and capacity for future expansion.
Carlos Mendes, director of ASI, says the security issues were very important. "We recommended enhanced use of network management tools to monitor network performance and perform early failure detection. In addition, the need for a strong and constantly updated firewall system was emphasised in order to maintain the client`s high network security levels. With the Internet age, one cannot be too careful when it comes to security measures. With the client`s strong IT infrastructurem, we found that these could easily be controlled on various levels."
Share