Johannesburg, 03 Oct 2019
Established in 1984, Silicone & Technical Products (S&TP) has become an integral part of the silicone market in South and southern Africa, with its range of silicone-based sealants, fluids, antifoams and release emulsions.
The company is a supplier of products to and for construction, chemical processing, wholesale and retail trading, hardware and DIY, and is also a specialist supplier of process aids for the manufacture of food and non-food applications.
Main product lines include sealants, adhesives, antifoams, release emulsions, and a suite of cleaning products that range from cleaners to disinfectants in liquids and powders.
The company’s quality and food safety management systems are ISO 9001, FSSC22000 certified and its food products are kosher, Halaal approved and FDA complaint. Selected cleaning products carry the SABS mark.
The business problem
Because S&TP constantly strives for innovation, the company required a rapid solution to solve the problems it was experiencing with poor and unreliable servers. Its IT infrastructure was lagging behind the times.
Issues with the performance of business-critical applications can cause deterioration of an organisation’s business performance. Slow or not readily available applications that support key business processes can cause revenue loss, affect employee productivity, and ultimately have an impact on customer satisfaction and brand reputation.
“The challenges we faced were caused by the instability and insecurity of our existing servers,” says S&TP. “We had to restart the servers numerous times outside of maintenance windows, which was starting to have an impact on business performance. That was in 2018, when we decided to call on Netsurit.”
The solution
After an evaluation of the problems that were being experienced, the Netsurit team replaced the onsite server environment with three virtual machines (VMs), a family of VMs that protect the confidentiality and integrity of S&TP’s business data and code, while it's processed in Vodacom’s cloud computing service through the use of secure enclaves.
Example use cases include confidential querying in databases, creation of scalable confidential consortium networks and secure multiparty machine learning algorithms.
“The company has enhanced operational performance and secured its data centres by moving them to Vodacom data centres,” says Alistair Kirkwood, Account Executive at Netsurit. “Its digital transformation included moving to cloud computing to gain the infrastructure elasticity and resilience the company needs to run a national business and minimise the time its employees spent on data centre tasks.”
Impact on the business
Netsurit assisted in provisioning the new server environment and increased the security of the servers. The company’s servers, as well as its Internet breakout, are monitored proactively, along with all workstations. “The impact on the business has been massive,” says S&TP. “We no longer have to restart servers outside maintenance windows, which has reduced downtime. The proactive monitoring of our servers and workstations helps S&TP and Netsurit better manage potential hardware faults and provides greater visibility over all IT assets.” The great performance, on-demand capacity and level of security that come with Vodacom data centres are all important in supporting the company’s vision for the future.
Looking to the future
S&TP says it is impressed with the expertise and commitment to client satisfaction that the Netsurit team has demonstrated.
“From here, we look forward to growing our relationship further as we continue to Iook for ways to use technology to transform our operations. It’s great working with Netsurit’s people. The relationship is built on trust and teamwork, and the way that the team quickly grasps what we want.”
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