Vision Solutions, a global provider of disaster recovery and data management solutions, said it plans to grow its business into emerging markets such as SA, using IBM's P and I-series server platforms.
Vision Solutions executives visited SA to meet with its South African distributor of 10 years, Edge Tec, to discuss business strategies for the year. The company said businesses could lose millions of rands because of system downtime.
Until two years ago, Vision Solutions used to be a South African company. It is now headquartered in California, with offices all over the world.
At the end of last year, Vision Solutions signed a distribution agreement with IBM to distribute IBM's Vision Cluster 1, an enterprise cluster management solution for the IBM I operating system.
According to the company, Vision Solutions has one of the largest IBM power systems support infrastructures in the world that services more than 7 000 customers. Vision Solutions and local IT solutions company, Edge Tec, can now sell this disaster protection technology to South African businesses.
High risk
In light of the economic crisis, Vision Solutions and Edge Tec said companies would be looking to disaster recovery and data management solutions as the risks for a business experiencing IT downtime is too high.
“Every industry requires their systems to be up and running 24/7 so they can serve their customers effectively. When we deploy our solutions, we are concerned about return on investment. We have customers where downtime could cost them $7 million at a time,” said Alexander Trekin, Vision Solutions' sales director for the UK sales office.
He said 95% of server crashes are due to a lack of server maintenance, and governments all over the world are tightening their grip on IT governance and risk management legislation. This forces companies to comply and make sure they have the right systems in place.
“From a sales and support perspective, we believe we have the right mix of partners and solutions, and our business strategy will be to grow our business partners and customer base.”
Essential
Mike Khattab, Vision Solutions VP for sales, said: “IT disaster recovery and availability is no longer a luxury. It's a must-have technology to sustain a business's IT environment and give them a competitive edge.”
The risk of going down today is too costly, especially in the current economic crisis, he added.
“We have strong roots in SA. With the help and local experience of our business partner, Edge Tec, we are finding that we are growing in the South African market and building channel relationships.”
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