Johannesburg, 31 Mar 2014
Jasco Electronics Holdings (The Jasco Group), through its Converged Solutions Division, has refreshed its entire IT infrastructure in a move to consolidate its IT communications and harness the latest technology to better serve its customers.
Says Paul McKibbin, MD of Jasco Networks: "We started off with a complete audit of the group's IT infrastructure, which allowed us to identify where the pain points were and what their current strengths and weaknesses are.
"We soon realised that there were a lot of disparate systems in different divisions and branches, mostly legacy systems which were acquired through acquisitions and mergers. This made the infrastructure difficult to administrate and maintain. Additionally, with users using so many different devices to access the corporate network, we also identified certain security risks at various end-points of the infrastructure."
He says knowing that IT is an enabler for business to provide a better service to its customers, the group realised Converged Solutions provide the business with an edge over its competitors, adding that as businesses move to a more cloud-based environment, the demand for bandwidth dramatically increases, which needs to be carefully managed.
After presenting its findings and recommendations to the board, the division got the go-ahead to implement a robust communications infrastructure that allows for fast, secure access via fibre connectivity and wireless LAN to hosted e-mail and the Internet, as well as voice over IP (VOIP) at its head office.
"From a Jasco Converged Solutions perspective, the Jasco Group is a typical customer that we serve, as their strategy, like ours, is to move to a more managed services and applications in a data environment," he adds.
Jasco Converged Solutions assisted the group to simplify and reduce the costs of its inter-branch communications with one invoice from one service provider. With this converged communication environment, the number of disparate services have been reduced and consolidated under one technology umbrella, managed by Jasco Converged Solutions. This not only simplified the communications environment, but also drastically reduced costs as well.
Since the implementation of the VOIP platform at the Jasco head office in April 2013, the group has realised savings of 31% on previous costs over a six-month period from April to September. Communications represent a significant cost centre for the business. The savings realised from the new solution will continue to pay off over the long term.
"This was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate our capabilities to the group, and by providing the services in-house, it also provided a case study for us to showcase to our current and potential customers. Overall, we have reduced the group's technology complexity. The network is now easier to manage and troubleshoot if there are problems. Furthermore, there is one point of accountability and a better level of support via a single support centre," he concludes.
Share