ITT Centre, one of South Africa`s leading IT educational institutions, has joined the growing trend of Global 2000 companies enhancing communications, by switching from standard Diginet communications to a Quality-of-Service (QoS) Virtual Private Network (VPN).
Richard Mulligan, MD of ITT Centre, said his company had chosen to go the OmniLink VPN route because ITT`s expansion nationwide had resulted in a weakening of intra-company communications and dial-up e-mail was no longer adequate for this purpose.
OmniLink, a subsidiary of Linx Holdings - the Dimension Data, Nedcor and Old Mutual joint venture - established and maintains SA`s largest ATM-based VPN. This infrastructure differs from other Internet-based VPNs because OmniLink owns the VPN`s backbone infrastructure, while the Internet is a public network.
ITT Centre currently has four offices countrywide. The head office is in Cape Town with branches in Bellville, Durban and Johannesburg. A further two centres are due to open shortly.
The company offers an extensive selection of IT industry-recognised and certified courses to both private and corporate students. Among the many courses on offer are Microsoft MCSE, MCSD and MOUS certificates, as well as the more technical A+ and N+.
"The location and nature of ITT Centre`s business makes strong administrative communication between the branches vital, to enable the company to operate effectively," Mulligan explains.
"The switch to the OmniLink QoS VPN offers ITT Centre several features that traditional Diginet systems cannot. It guarantees that there will be at least two lines out of any point at any given time, which in effect, ensures close to 100 percent communication availability between ITT Centre branches at all times.
"A further advantage of outsourcing to OmniLink is that it negates the need for the huge capital expenditure required to set-up and maintain a corporate Wide Area Network (WAN). It also allows the company to focus on its core competencies - training, not networking," he adds.
Chris Waddell, account manager, at OmniLink , says given ITT`s strategy to leverage technology to deliver training on-line, the VPN is ideally suited to meet their overall business objectives.
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