The Managed and Professional Services (M+PS) division of National Data Systems (NDS), a member of the JSE-listed Fintech group of companies, has been awarded a contract to monitor and maintain the IT environment of Sulzer South Africa Ltd. part of a worldwide engineering corporation.
Sulzer South Africa provides turnkey solutions in the fields of fluid handling, cooling, refrigeration and gas compression, turbo machinery, water powered drills and hydro power generation and complete upgrading and refurbishing of plant and equipment, backed by comprehensive customer service.
Through their strategic and exclusive key partnership with Computer Associates in South Africa, specifically for the Unicenter TNG product suite, NDS is able to deliver a world-class service across a broad spectrum of services to Sulzer. NDS is home to one of the largest and technologically most advanced Command Centre implementations of Unicenter TNG in the country. This command centre is an integral element of the branded service offering TOTAL-IT.
Not only will NDS be proactively monitoring the capacity and performance of the key components of Sulzer`s enterprise environment but they will also be monitoring and maintaining the Wide Area Network (WAN).
In addition, NDS will provide an advanced help desk service for the entire organisation`s servers and workstations. In conjunction with this, NDS will monitor performance on Sulzers operating systems and will be managing and interfacing with third party support groups e.g. other hardware and software vendors.
NDS will now become the single point of contact (SPOC) for Sulzer and will receive, log, route and manage issues of any nature and problems that arise within the IT environment, thus allowing the Sulzer`s IT department to support business and the business value chain. Input to the SPOC can be via telephone, Intra- or Internet or Email.
"Due to our process, skills and technological offerings we are presently implementing and transforming their network and servers into a steady state to enable monitoring," says project executive at NDS, Andre Coetzee
"Our aim at NDS is to give people effective control of IT - to put them in a position to change their business to obtain maximum competitive advantage. We believe that we will enable Sulzer to focus on their core business and not IT, often regarded as a potentially chaotic environment that has unacceptably constrained business growth," continues Coetzee.
Services at Sulzer will be physically delivered utilising the Unicenter TNG software that enables the Command Centre to monitor all SNMP enabled devices on a network thus proactively managing IT environments. All critical resources can be managed from a business perspective.
Typically, there is a cost model that applies to most IT organisations. This creates a balance between cost, complexity and performance. By using the management processes of M+PS, Sulzer will be able to achieve lowered complexity to their customers, increased performance and availability of IT services and constant cost of ownership that will reduce over time.
Comprehensive end-to-end management capabilities manage heterogeneous networks, systems, desktops, applications and extend to legacy systems. All major networks, platforms and/or protocols can be managed therefore incorporating any device that may impact business.
Non-IT devices such as manufacturing equipment, delivery trucks, etc. can also be monitored.
All elements in a chain of events that support business can be monitored in contrast with point products that perform each function discretely, delivering a complete business orientated management solution. Most resources in business are interdependent i.e. web server, distributed databases, applications, multiple networks, payment systems, distribution systems, failure of one component can halt the process.
Unicenter TNG proactively manages all these processes and responds to any potential problems before they impact business and therefore decrease indirect costs as well as increasing ongoing availability and productivity. The M+PS division has also set up a Customers Research & Development (R&D) Laboratory where various functions are performed. These include the pre-testing of solutions thereby ensuring minimal impact on the current environment. Also available, is the ongoing offering development e.g. new technology that could impact the customer`s environment and customer focused 4th generation R&D in which the customer gets to test his own applications and development strategies in the lab.
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