Gray Security Services expands collaboration capabilities

As part of a move into the knowledge protection and electronic commerce arena, African corporate security solutions provider, Gray Security Services, has expanded its IT infrastructure with the workflow, messaging and document management capabilities of Lotus Notes.

With more than 18 years experience in the SA market, the ISO 9001 and 9002 quality certified company operates in the whole of South Africa, many parts of Africa and the UK, and provides its clients with a broad range of solutions that include traditional guarding activities, managed security, profit protection, security system design, consulting and loss control services.

Before installing its wide-area network (WAN), Nick Toozs-Hobson, IT executive at Gray Security Services, says the company used dial-up Internet accounts in 24 offices and 15 remote sites on the African continent.

"In the past few years Gray Security Services has grown tremendously and we had a need for a more effective and inexpensive internal and external communication system to keep up our level of customer service. Before our WAN roll-out, we looked at various systems that can offer us messaging, document management and expandable database capabilities and would integrate and grow with our existing and future applications. What we got from Lotus Notes was a lot more," he says.

Toozs-Hobson adds that the Notes system allows them to share the best practices. In the future, to place stock orders directly and refine and distribute the best standard operating procedures. "With more than 200 Notes users, the new system will allow us to share intellectual capital and intercompany knowledge in a cost-effective way."

Tony Abrahall, business development manager at Lotus Development, says Gray Security is already looking at electronic commerce with the installation of Oracle databases that can be easily integrated into the Lotus Domino infrastructure. "The value of Notes/Domino is more that just mere messaging. The native integration of Domino into Oracle offers rapid development and deployment of secure Internet applications to support Gray Security`s business strategy."