The Integr8 Group, together with its partners Microsoft Corporation and Penquin, has led the charge among South Africa’s most formidable managed IT service providers and their quest to keep delegates at the UN Climate Change Conference connected.

Delegates who attended the UN Climate Change Conference 2011 (COP17), held recently in Durban, had access to fully connected communications stands called SkypeOut kiosks, facilitated through the services of Integr8 and its partners Microsoft Corporation and Penquin.

Integr8 is South Africa’s largest privately owned managed service provider. Its client, Penquin, is a full-service marketing solutions company that provides a range of services including marketing, advertising and event management.

Penquin played an instrumental role in the SkypeOut project, including setting up and managing the kiosks. The company contracted its managed services partner Integr8 to manage the connectivity and telecommunications infrastructure – both of which were central to the overall success of the project.

Management from Microsoft acknowledged the contribution of Team Penquin SA, including the role played by Integr8, in ensuring effective showcasing of Microsoft solutions and the provision of Skype communications and services at the Conference.

Members of the Integr8 team received commendation for their proactive response in dealing with practical connectivity issues and daily maintenance of equipment and infrastructure.

Integr8 has been a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner for 11 years and has years of experience in the integration and support of Microsoft-based infrastructure & solution implementation across various industry and sectors.

Robert Sussman, joint CEO at Integr8, is proud of the company’s contribution to the SkypeOut Project and Skype connectivity at this global event, adding that the Integr8 team relished the opportunity to not only assist in presenting the finest in Microsoft infrastructure, but also in demonstrating local managed ICT skill sets.

“Unified communications and the continued convergence of social networks and social media platforms is a major global driver of business,” says Sussman. “South Africa has upped its game in terms of telecommunications and technology innovation. The Climate Conference was a meaningful international event that relied upon services like Skype and we were delighted to be a part of the team that helped keep everyone connected through realtime communication.”

It takes guts, tenacity, commitment and focus to run any services company in today’s market. Most Chief Executive Officers would agree with the notion, but for those at the helm of a global ICT services enterprise, the words are gospel.

Robert Sussman is the co-founder and joint-CEO of the Integr8 Group, South Africa’s largest privately owned managed service provider.

The company’s journey of growth and development began with a modest PC services operation based in Cape Town manned by a small group of like-minded individuals.

Acquiring the very best minds in the technology and telecommunications industry, determination to remain ahead of innovation and consistent service delivery has helped shape the organisation into what it is today.

Integr8 has grown from a national IT services company into an established global ICT managed services enterprise employing over 500 people.

Its service portfolio is designed to support clients who understand that business growth and technology integration are inextricably linked. This portfolio covers every aspect of managed ICT service delivery, with attention to existing and emerging trends – from cloud computing, social networking and virtualisation through to unified communications and advanced mature networks.

Sussman’s daily responsibility is to ensure that all silos of the business operate effectively – in their own right and also collectively for the good of the Group.

These silos include sales & marketing, finance & administration, HR & legal, as well as Technical & Operations.

Sussman’s background is in electric engineering. Over time, he has drawn on his experience and knowledge of the technology terrain to expand his influence and entrepreneurial skills. His aptitude for commerce and industry helped him gain early success.

He sold his first technology company at the age of 25 and has been the recipient of the Top CIO of the Year in SA Award on two occasions. Sussman has used his experience to add strategic ICT direction to all the company’s clients and has also contributed significantly towards the company’s win of the Most Innovative ICT Company in SA on more than one occasion.

The combination has ensured that Integr8 is able to add much-needed innovation and experience to client’s IT environments.

He has strategically used his predisposition to identify where and when technology can benefit industry and has maintained a sense of vigilance within an ever-competitive sector.

It is an approach that has served him well and continues to do so he says.

“I keep a close eye on all these pillars of operation and communicate with the heads of these departments daily.  This is critical as it allows us to achieve our objectives, by making continuous small corrective decisions to keep us firmly on the right path.  Apart from having direct and live access, on the nine screens on my desk, to all the data I need to make informed decisions, I spend time with the very reason why we exist, the clients.”

The thirty-something year old says the technology part of the business is straightforward – people are the most significant challenge.

“We really know our game very well in that we have been involved in this industry well before the turn of the century.  When you work with very smart, but very young people, you are dealt a challenging but exciting day.  Keeping a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, balanced with a healthy mix of corporatisation can be difficult,” he continues.

According to Sussman to be a CEO one needs to work hard – harder than anyone else. His advice to those eager to climb to the top of the ladder is to constantly reinforce ones knowledge and understanding of the industry, to be susceptible to change and to embrace the new norm of blurring the lines between ones private and business life.

“There are rewards – like profits and like watching people win by participating in a learning organisation where knowledge is shared and retained,” he continues

I can only praise the I8 team for helping Value IT to the extent we have experienced over the last year and a bit. Just one word – AWESOMENESS

By Therese van Wyk
23 Jan 2012

Saying hello and asking a busy colleague a question can be easier at the water cooler: both of you are there and visible, and smartphone distractions aside, can talk to each other.

No cheap talk

To get two UC systems to talk, you can spend a lot of time on middleware and APIs, but cost may outweigh business benefit.

Away from the cooler, trying to get a decision or information from someone can be far more difficult. These days, one can play tag over SMS, Skype, instant messaging, e-mail, and several telephone numbers, losing time and one’s temper in short order.

But easily finding people on the channel they prefer, at the time you reach out, asking something and getting a response fairly quickly, whatever devices they’re using, is one of the major attractions of unified communications and collaboration (UC and C). One example of this is VOIP calling an international colleague, just by clicking on an e-mail, with UC presence information telling you he is available.

With consumer-grade UC tools colonising the workplace, and competing IT priorities, there are a few things to consider before migrating to corporate UC tools.

People-centric design

Businesses need to ensure their multiple communication channels are secure, says Dimension Data’s Bradley Bunch.

Corporate UC tools used to be affordable only to large enterprises. Predictably, smaller businesses and many corporates dived into a myriad of consumer tools such as Skype, Dropbox and Yammer, a Facebook equivalent for companies.

Lately, large UC solution providers have customised programs for SMEs, giving them access to the same corporate tools, including collaboration. There are some limitations on how big the product can scale for SMEs. For corporates, the price points have stayed the same.

In another UC shift, people don’t expect fixed-line call quality to be fantastic anymore, now that most are used to mobile calls. This creates an immediate cost saving in UC solution design, says Bradley Bunch, GM of Microsoft solutions for the Middle East and Africa at Dimension Data.

UC technology has also matured to the stage where the solution is not so dependent on design around infrastructure, which adds another cost saving, says Bunch.

The next big UC design consideration is company culture – how the company believes employees need to work, and how employees actually want to work. Far too few companies have a people-centric, rather than a tool-centric view of UC, but profiling users’ preferences helps for that.

Culture dictates whether people may work from home, whether the company virtualises the desktop, what operating systems are used, and what device brands (Apple for example) are included, as well as separating home and work data on personal devices. A call centre probably does require carrier-class voice quality for interaction with clients.

In addition, companies will need to ensure that connectivity to employees’ homes is improved beyond what 3G and shaped ADSL can offer: when talking to customers from home, employees still need a consistently acceptable connection. Or, they can use a consumer-level solution built on adaptive codecs, which can adjust itself to variable quality bandwidth during a call, for that last mile.

All this, says Bunch, determines how to make the UC solution enterprise-ready. There is also security to consider. “One needs to ensure that the multiple ways of working are secure.”

Not always so unified

As with any technology, some UC wrinkles still need ironing out. Most fundamental are the emerging standards.

Just say yes

If you don’t allow everything, employees will go work somewhere else.

“At the technical level, there is a quite lot to be done, for example, to improve UC between organisations,” says Stephen Davies, manager at Connection Telecom, a solution provider. “There is no agnostic standard that everyone can adhere to, so one gets a lowest-common-denominator effect when you work between organisations.”

“The collaboration on the front end might be there for a lot of the tools, but in the back-end it is disparate,” agrees Rob Sussman, joint CEO at managed services company Integr8. “Platforms with multiple tools don’t always plug together that well. To get two UC systems to talk, you can spend a lot of time on middleware and APIs, but cost may outweigh business benefit.”

It’s also useful to prune UC expectations, at least on Microsoft Lync, when an exec is reachable by mobile only and about to catch a flight.

“In reality, mobile is not as seamless as on the desktop, although the marketing says it is, notes Sussman. “That grey area where it’s not so smooth starts with the ability to cut a call over from fixed landline to GSM without dropping it. I think the telcos aren’t really ready for it yet, but network integrators and telcos will come together to enable those services at clients.”

Seamless UC does not necessarily mean impeccable voice calls either. Jitter due to latency is still part of the picture, says Sussman, but is completely acceptable these days.

Easy does it

Rob Sussman, Joint CEO, Integr8 Group

UC gives a return on investment in any sector and any industry, says Rob Sussman, Integr8.

For an SME, cost-effective UC means an Internet-accessible service. The business should not have to administer the solution on its own servers, says Davies. “It’s not much good to an SME if your communication is unified at your desk in the office, but becomes disjointed when you’re at a customer, out on the road, or at home.”

UC gives a return on investment (ROI) in any sector, any industry, maintains Sussman. “The ROI is not based on the number of users, it’s more about the size of the demand for applications, and the split between voice, video and data, whether it’s five or 5 000 users. Nowadays with not-perfect, but acceptable ADSL for small to medium businesses, with set monthly ADSL fees per month per site, UC is affordable to all business.”

Just rolling out wall-to-wall UC over a poor network infrastructure is the biggest mistake a business can make though, cautions Sussman. A phased infrastructure upgrade plan, based on the current network combined with the customer’s UC roadmap, allows a business evolve its network over time.

Affordable is still more money than letting employees use free consumer-grade UC. But persuading decision-makers to spend on UC can be done simply, says Bunch.

“Show them how it works – demonstrating a video conference is a slap in the face for most execs, because they all know how they lose 15 minutes of the hour they’ve booked, just trying to set up the call properly.”

What convinces people, says Bunch, is the ease of use, the intuition, the ‘it’s just so easy’, and that UC is not expensive. In the case of the Microsoft Lync UC solution, Bunch reckons it ‘comes in cheap’. Since it’s an integrated solution, one has to implement the full stack, which includes unified communication and collaboration as well as the Office business suite for each user.

‘Not expensive’ may still mean little when data centres and other IT priorities beckon, so Bunch was asked for a number. “For approximately R15 per day, the entire Microsoft Office suite as well as all the Microsoft Lync UC and C functionality, can be available to a user,” says Bunch. He calculates that rough cost estimate based on 264 workdays per year, excluding all other costs such as implementation, bandwidth, and UC-required upgrades to the network.

Whether such a UC solution is on-premise or in the cloud depends again on how people work. Local VOIP calls via the cloud may not be cost-effective. Using voice on a virtual desktop is a technical issue to address all on its own.

Because there are so many touch-points in a UC solution, a customer had better choose the solution provider carefully: a multitude of devices and work places have replaced the standard desktop PC and phone. The provider needs to understand your industry and business well, as well as UC technology.

To proceed with UC, a company needs to understand its employees first, design for their preferences and add some flexibility. For example, people often have distinct preferences for particular slate or tablet computers. “My view is, if you don’t allow everything, employees will go work somewhere else,” says Bunch. “A survey showed that a majority of graduates would not work in a company that doesn’t allow Facebook.”

Employees should prefer using company UC to reach that colleague who never visits the same water cooler.

The Kelly Group is the parent company of a group of businesses in South Africa engaged in the provision of comprehensive staffing solutions, effective and efficient workforce management and productivity solutions and skills development services.

In a fast paced, dynamic and highly competitive employment market, the strategic objective of Kelly Group’s IT team was, and continues to be, ensuring that the IT infrastructure delivers high performance for users around the clock, providing a “work from anywhere” environment, as well as ultimately reducing IT maintenance costs. To help its various operating companies become even more efficient, The Kelly Group implemented a virtual computing solution underpinned by a number of Citrix® technologies, including Citrix XenDesktop®, XenServer®, XenApp® and Receiver™, enabling staff to work more flexibly – at home, work, or wherever they may be –with desktops and applications delivered to each user, whatever the device they’re using.

Transforming user experience with virtual desktops
André Gross, Kelly Group’s group infrastructure manager, outlined the strategic goal behind the company’s planning: “We knew virtual computing was the best way to deliver flexible working environments. It would also help us gain a better return on our existing investment in what was a very sound underlying IT infrastructure.”
With a nationwide network of 75 offices in South Africa and a substantial operation in the USA, the group needed a strategic approach to harness the full potential of flexible working. By adopting virtual computing technologies, including desktop virtualisation based on XenDesktop, Kelly Group was able to transform its IT into an on-demand service, offering desktops, applications and critical data to over 600 office-based staff and 200 mobile workers mainly using laptops – across different locations.

Using XenDesktop, Kelly Group now manages delivers operating systems (OS), applications and data securely and centrally from the group’s data centre, rather than updating staff devices individually. Instead of managing static desktop images as before, the Kelly Group IT team can manage and update the OS and applications while delivering customised desktops and applications to meet each user’s performance, security and mobility needs, all from one central location. Devices and environments can now be tailor-made to suit a range of user needs – from task workers to fully mobile workers.

Kelly Group chose the Citrix® platform on application performance and resilience grounds. Working with its technology integrator, Integr8 IT, André Gross’ team virtualised all staff desktops, using XenDesktop 5.0 and XenServer 4.5 service pack 2.0, backed by XenApp® for application delivery.

As part of the transformation programme, Integr8 IT and Kelly Group consolidated the server infrastructure from 40 servers to eight machines running Citrix XenApp® for on-demand application delivery to all staff. Integr8 IT’s expert team ensured that key business tools such as Microsoft®Exchange 2010 and all dependent applications were delivered to each user’s end device in high definition. In another breakthrough for Kelly Group, the implementation also used standard granular policies for centralised management and secure and fast data access from any point on the network.

To allow staff to work flexibly from anywhere, on any device, at any time, Kelly Group implemented Citrix Receiver™. Installed by each user on their chosen device, Receiver ensures they can access system data and applications easily and securely via any device, allowing mobile and home-based working.

As well as giving all Kelly Group users a better user experience and greater flexible working options, the Citrix virtual computing solution has greatly simplified system administration. IT staff can set up an administration console from anywhere to monitor the network or respond to any user support issues. Gross commented: “It’s all very simple now – we set up the IP connection and the user is in.”

Benefits – workplace transformation and cost savings
The programme has centralised users’ desktops and applications and transformed performance and reliability, whilst IT maintenance time and costs have been reduced by as much as R2.5million per year. The Kelly Group workforce is more flexible, collaborative and productive. Whether recruitment consultants, project managers or back office teams, staff can now work from any device, anywhere on the network. While many work teams had previously operated in ‘silos’ that were limited in their ability to share data, they can now swap information as inter-company collaborations or work deadlines demand.
Whereas different group offices had to go through a process when carrying out tasks like printing documents, this area is now totally streamlined. André Gross and his colleagues can standardise permissions on printers, boosting performance and reliability. Gross explained: “We print thousands of invoices and statements every year. We’ve had zero issues since XenDesktop went in, which is quite a feat.”

Users also enjoy a better experience when using core business tools. Group teams that depend on collaborative meetings or interviewing candidates via video have higher quality applications through their desktop environment, despite bandwidth being at a premium. Applications like K-log (Kelly Group’s powerful people resource planning tool) runs smoothly over virtualised desktops with real time updates, giving users greater reliability and flexibility.

André Gross said: “We’re also running YouTube and animated PowerPoint from anywhere and the quality is a sight to behold. We have fulfilled the goal of applications provided on a standard basis to different office-based and home workers working on any PC device.”

Group-wide system maintenance can now be carried out through automated sessions on Saturdays. The IT team finishes group-wide software updates in a single weekend, rather than phasing them over months as before. Monthly helpdesk calls have plummeted from between 7,000 and 8,000 to between 1,200 and 1,600 calls per month. This transformed system control has delivered operational cost savings of R2.5 million in the last 12 months, with R7.5 million cut over the last three years.

Gross says: “Our workforce is more productive and experiences a better work-life balance through desktop virtualisation. This, in turn, has enabled us to be far more attentive to our stakeholders’ needs.”

Years of intense discussion and high-level consultation between executive management at the Integr8 Group and its client, Gold Fields, has resulted in a vastly more effective ICT infrastructure and operation for the international gold producer.

The completion of several projects, spearheaded and managed by Integr8, has resulted in enhanced infrastructure throughout Gold Fields, an established global un-hedged producer of gold with attributable annualised production of 3.5 million gold equivalent ounces from eight operating mines in Australia, Ghana, Peru and South Africa.

Integr8 has also assisted in the formulation and application of a three-pillar strategy to maintain this level of operation for its client.

Extensive deliberation between executive leadership from Integr8 and Gold Fields Australia, Ghana, Peru and South Africa resulted in a priority list of short-term projects for completion.

These short-term projects included:

• The deployment of the Netherlands office network,
• Re-design and stabilisation of the Ghana Infrastructure and messaging platform,
• Integration of the South Deep operation after acquisition and providing goldfields.co.za e-mail addresses to the users,
• Establishment of a single Global address list and automated synchronization
• Mail synchronization to windows mobile devices
• Establishment of a small office network for exploration in the Democratic Republic of Congo

These projects and deliverables, along with several smaller projects within the South African market, have been completed.

“We are impressed with the quality of work that our partner Integr8 has provided. The company’s record of accomplishment and level of expertise is well established. They have played an important role in a number of projects and the formulation of our ongoing ICT growth strategy,” says Corrie van Niekerk, Group IT Operation Manager, Gold Fields.

Three-tier strategy to tackle challenges

In addition to the completion of these projects, Integr8 also assisted in the formulation of a long-term strategy to ensure alignment with the Gold Fields Group’s goals and business objectives – operational excellence, growth of the company and securing the future.

Integr8’s main purpose is to manage and support its client’s core infrastructure so that decision makers can focus on other key aspects of business management.

“A key part of the Gold Fields business growth strategy is commitment to the concept of a simple head office structure. This involves decentralisation to regional executive committees and mine management teams. In practice, as the Group expands globally, corporate functions are focused on the delivery of expertise and skill sets, as well as the communication of related policies, processes and controls. The strategy is about ownership and taking control of all facets of the entire operation so that they are aligned with the overall objectives of the company and the direction it is taking,” says Lance Fanaroff, joint CEO, Integr8.

According to Fanaroff the scale of the work completed to date is unique because of the complexity of the infrastructure, as well as the impact of having to deliver the solution within a specific deadline and within budget – all of which had to be done with minimal impact on the company’s global user base.

The Gold Fields environment consisted of seven forests, seven Exchange organisations with three of them sharing a single SMTP name space.

These were a mixture of Active Directory 2000, 2003 and Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007. Most of these environments were upgraded over the past couple of years from Novell, WinNT 4.0, Active Directory 2000 and Groupwise, Exchange 5.5, Visnetic, Mail Daemon and Exchange 2000 without re-designing any architecture, or topologies.

“However, they required never ending reactive administration and support,” adds Fanaroff.

The involvement of Integr8 and application of the company’s skills sets has resulted in several key benefits to Gold Fields.

These include a single Active Directory and Exchange system to offer calendar sharing and free/busy information globally; new site/ environment, accessibility, cost reduction across software & hardware, functionality and conformity across global sites in terms of information.

“These are essential aspects of our operation and all impact on output. A more streamlined, functional infrastructure ensures that we are strategically networked, that our user base benefits from reliable connectivity and accessibility. This is essential to any global operation,” adds Van Niekerk.

This award, presented by the JSE, is given to the best of the finalist contenders, assessed on their ability to manage the portfolios of TIPS (Technology, Innovation, People and Systems).

TIPS is the acronym applied to a business model devised and prescribed by organisers of the Technology Top 100 Companies program. It outlines the core principles, criteria and relationship between all dynamics of the modern business paradigm.

The model specifies the inter-connectivity between key aspects of management, including that which governs technology, people, innovation and systems. It also details the processes and procedures that should be followed to ensure smooth operation whilst balancing internal and external influences.

Alignment, agility and engagement are at the heart of this model. These terms refer to the development of the organisation through the careful integration of people and technology management, measurement of total upskilling cost and the evaluation of the commitment and motivation of people at the workplace.

Excellence in Portfolio Management is a status given to companies that prove an unwavering commitment to improvement, that are steadfast in measuring key performance areas, and have an intimate knowledge of their external and internal environments.

The criteria includes management understanding of business drivers, dedication to innovation, and the projection of year-on-year growth.

“Awareness of core competencies and the role of partnerships and alliances are also important aspects of the criteria,” says Bennie Strydom, Sales Director, Integr8.

“Integr8 continues to advance within an ultra competitive marketplace. Since inception the company has adopted and instilled the principle of applying balance and strategy in the integration of technology and application of key resources, including people,” he adds.

The Integr8 Group, South Africa’s largest privately owned managed service provider, has entrenched its position as a frontrunner in the country’s managed ICT services space, having again been formally acknowledged as a Technology Top 100 Company for 2011.
The TT100 programme, established by industry in conjunction with the Department of Science and Technology, acknowledges companies and individuals for being role models in the use or development of technology.
Integr8 first acquired this status soon after inception in 2001. It has continued to meet criteria and, as a result, has remained amongst the country’s leading technology firms.
An annual award ceremony forms part of the programme and over the years Integr8 has received numerous awards for its level of management, innovative solutions and managed IT services.
Last year the company won the award for Excellence in the Management of Systems, and was named as a finalist in three categories including Excellence in the Management of People, Excellence in the Management of Technology, Innovation and People, and Excellence in the Management of Technology.
One of the chief criteria and key elements of the programme is agility or linking technology and innovation. It is within the arena of managed ICT service provision, application of technology in all levels of core business operation and support of essential services that the company has distinguished itself.
Cloud computing and services, consumerisation of IT, unified communications, social networking, outsourcing and mobility are key areas of focus for Integr8. The sophistication of networks and the integration of related security infrastructure, along with cost reduction and improved efficiencies, are priorities.
Organisers of the TT100 programme have invited representatives from Integr8 to attend the 2011 Technology Top Awards to be held in November.
“We are proud of our association and affiliation to this programme. South Africa is emerging as a force to be reckoned with across Africa in the application and integration of ICT services and infrastructure. We will endeavour to remain at the forefront of technology convergence in commerce and the Technology Top 100 Programme,” says Robert Sussman, joint CEO, Integr8.

Posted by IT Online on Dec 1, 2011