Datacentrix wins significant AFGRI Managed Services opportunity

From left: Josua Taljaard, business unit manager: Commercial 2 at Datacentrix; Pierre Durand, head of IT and innovation, AFGRI Agri Services; and Rudie Raath, chief digital officer at Datacentrix

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Datacentrix, a high performing and secure ICT solutions provider, has won a three-year managed services contract with AFGRI Agri Services (AFGRI), with the aim of assisting the agricultural services company with driving its digital transformation strategy.

The new project will incorporate the migration of AFGRI’s traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution as well as its hosted e-mail system to a cloud-based platform, says Rudie Raath, Chief Digital Officer at Datacentrix. “In addition, it will see us assisting AFGRI with the provision of remote worker applications – from desktop support to distributed call centre software – enabling a secure, truly remote office set-up,” he adds.

The full contract encompasses the outsource of several service ‘towers’ by AFGRI to Datacentrix, including:

• Application support – such as productivity solutions and Web site applications;
• Data protection, continuity and recovery – including cloud-based backup and restore management, media management and database backup and restore;
• Desktop support – the holistic, cloud-based management of endpoints, business applications-specific software image build and deployment services, as well as installs, moves, additions, changes and deletions (IMACDs);
• Hosting services – utilising capabilities that stretch across typical data centre hosted co-location services as well as multiple dedicated, private and public cloud options, together with associated managed, support, advisory, implementation and migration services;
• Monitoring services – incorporating the components required to provide a true digital experience monitoring (DEM) environment for the total infrastructure, end-user and application monitoring focusing on the interaction of people with the enterprise at a digital level;
• Network services – from unified communications to the implementation of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) technology and connectivity, voice, hosting and cloud solutions, as well as network visibility and segmentation;
• Server support services – this includes directory, data centre and collaboration/messaging support; and
• Service desk support – here, Datacentrix will roll-out a fully functional service management suite.

“Datacentrix’s ability to establish trust and position ourselves as a real strategic partner to AFGRI played a critical role in the company’s appointment as an outsourcing partner,” explains Josua Taljaard, Commercial Business Unit Manager at Datacentrix. “In our ongoing partnership with AFGRI, which spans close to 20 years, Datacentrix has proven its role as a trusted advisor time and again, by being flexible and agile and willing to walk the extra mile.

“We have already kicked off the due diligence process and are busy with transitioning their environment onto the Datacentrix Managed Service capability,” he states.