Novell SA has announced Novell Consulting, a newly added division to the Novell team of experts. Novell Consulting is made up of a team of highly trained professionals who are masters of their particular area of expertise. They work closely with the Novell technical services and product development groups to offer the highest standards of technical knowledge, experience, and insight to Novell customers. This kind of consulting is very important to all users of Novell products in order to maximise the customer`s investment in Novell technologies.
Novell Consulting offers consulting and education services to the local market. The consulting services focus on accelerating the adoption of new products in the market and also provide design and planning services that will generate more implementation projects for the channel.
According to Novell Consulting branch manager, Christo van Rensburg, "Some of the channel partners have the misconception that we are taking away channel business. Novell Consulting`s primary aim is to increase the acceptance of the very latest Novell technologies into the market. The reality is that this will generate more service opportunities for Novell`s partners."
According to Novell SA managing director Richard Beytagh, Novell Consulting will enable Novell and its resellers to provide an extremely high level of professional consulting services to fulfil the demands of the local customer base. "The worldwide demand for Novell Consulting has increased dramatically and this is a strong growth area for Novell. In the past, Novell South Africa could only provide professional services through our US or European operations, typically proving to be very expensive for our customers. With the introduction of Novell Consulting in South Africa we can now provide this service locally and far more cost effectively. Standard training and consulting methodologies will ensure the high standard of Novell`s consultants are maintained and we can provide the same set of services in-line with our worldwide operations."
According to Van Rensburg, "It is very important to remember that Novell Consulting is not focussed on the implementation or roll-out of the products. Novell Consulting prefers working closely with the channel in the design and project management of the system. We offer assistance where required, with a strong skills transfer focus. It would be advised to have one of Novell`s experienced consultants involved during the planning phase to ensure the smooth implementation of the new technology on your network."
Novell is releasing new products every quarter and it is almost impossible for most IT professionals such as Certified Novell Engineers (CNE`s) and Master Certified Novell Engineers (MCNE`s) to keep up-to-date. Knowing these new products well enough to do designs and implementations without a hitch, while being tasked with the daily maintenance and troubleshooting of existing systems is becoming more and more difficult for even the most skilled engineer. "The newer generation of products are also becoming more and more complex as they evolve from the traditional `file and print` arena into fully-fledged Internet and e-business solutions."
Of course, this is what Novell Consulting concentrates on. Van Rensburg believes that companies are more likely to spend money on brand new technologies when the vendor will be directly involved in assisting the reseller with the implementation of the solution.
"The best-practices approach we follow is initiated by the product` developers, fine-tuned by consultants in the field and then verified by our technical support teams. Our methodologies are the result of many hard lessons learnt whilst doing designs for large product implementations all over the world."
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