ICA
FR
A
AL
I O N E L S
G
E
R ANN
CH
A F RIC
JOINT VENTURE
FORMED TO ENSURE
SOUTH AFRICAN
BUSINESSES
Cloud migration is proving to
be very popular, with many
organisations choosing to adopt
it. With this mind, four firms have
entered into a joint partnership
aimed at helping industry leaders
with their SAP workloads.
MIGRATE TO THE CLOUD
S
USE, Microsoft South Africa, Mint
and SAB&T have entered into a
joint venture designed to assist
organisations across industry
sectors in migrating their SAP workloads
to Azure given the imminent arrival of two
Microsoft data centres in Africa.
SUSE will be providing the SAP-optimised
Linux operating system tuned for Azure with
Microsoft as the cloud infrastructure provider.
Mint will deliver the required Azure expertise
and SAB&T will offer the SAP partner skills to
support companies with the transition.
“This joint venture is significant as it
shows companies that the local tools,
processes, programmes and skills are in
place for a successful SAP migration when
the local Microsoft data centres go live,” said
Matthew Lee, Cloud and Strategic Alliances
Manager at SUSE.
“This partnership between these four
experts in their field will provide the comfort
levels needed when it comes to running
SAP in the cloud – something South African
businesses are looking for.”
For Carel du Toit, CEO of the Mint
Group, this partnership reflects a growing
trend towards delivering customer value
propositions that transform computing,
28
The cloud offers
numerous opportunities
to deliver enhanced
business value.
storage and communications into utilities
that are easily available through cloud
resources on an as-needed basis.
“Opportunities exist for organisations
to look at operationalising their current
environments, driving down running costs
and aligning their operational cost model
with the actual utilisation requirement for
their solutions,” said du Toit.
“Azure is a compelling hosting option
for customers who are also making use
of Office365 – since their SAP and Office
environments would essentially be hosted
in the same Azure Regions – enabling
deep integration between the systems for
workflow and reporting.”