SITA ‘cloudifying’ government departments

Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
By Simnikiwe Mzekandaba
Durban, 29 Oct 2019
SITA acting CEO Ntutule Tshenye.
SITA acting CEO Ntutule Tshenye.

The Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) has become another government department to migrate its cloud workload onto the State IT Agency’s (SITA’s) government cloud platform.

This is according to acting SITA CEO Ntutule Tshenye, saying the government private cloud ecosystem (GPCE) is something that SITA prides itself on.  

Tshenye, who has been SITA acting CEO following the departure of Dr Setumo Mohapi, delivered the keynote to kick-start the GovTech 2019 conference on Monday.

This week, the agency is staging the 13 instalment of its annual government technology conference at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban, running until Wednesday.

According to Tshenye, the agency believes the cloud is the only way to enable the move from traditional IT systems into digital transformation.

He told the audience that the GPCE is a single-cloud suite that is interconnecting, adding that SITA sees itself sitting at the core as the provider of cloud brokerage services.

“We are very excited that we’ve got some live workloads, one being with Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA). This September, we were able to have infrastructure-as-a-service with COGTA.    

“We are also very excited to be going live now in October with the DAC; we’ve moved that workload as well.”

He added that SITA has planned other workload projects with organisations like the Film and Publications Board and Statistics SA by December.   

“In March next year, we will be ‘cloudifying’ the e-government portal and an excess of 100 e-government services that SITA provides. All of this will then be out there for access to the departments and citizens.”  

In November last year, SITA partnered with IT services company Gijima, which brought in original equipment manufacturers, IBM and Huawei, to launch the "first government cloud".

The agency’s cloud computing programme gave rise to the GPCE, a connected and fully orchestrated cloud computing platform. Also known as the cloud foundation infrastructure, it allows the management of cloud resources and workload, irrespective of their location in the ecosystem.

Earlier this year, SITA revealed the Department of Higher Education and Training was its first cloud client that accepted a proposal for infrastructure-as-a-service, and signed off the completed project last year.