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According to Riedwaan Bassadien, Azure
Open Source Lead at Microsoft SA, cloud
migrations are becoming popular with many
organisations as they look to downsize their
data centre footprint.
“This is an opportunity for IT solution
providers in the local ecosystem to help
customers move to the cloud and for
This partnership
between these four
experts in their field
will provide the comfort
levels needed when it
comes to running SAP
in the cloud.
software vendors and start-ups to deliver
cloud native solutions to Africa and the
world stage,” said Bassadien.
“With the advent of Azure data centre
regions in SA, it is seen as a big enabler.”
Tinus Brink, Director of Consulting at
SAB&T feels part of this migration entails
putting the skills in place to deliver an
integrated offering to customers that have
decided to enhance their SAP environments
for a digital world.
“The cloud offers numerous
opportunities to deliver enhanced business
value. This joint venture is designed to
provide a comprehensive and professional
offering that removes the challenges of
migrating to the cloud, so businesses can
remain focused on delivering their strategic
objectives,” said Brink.
Given the infrastructure challenges
that still exist in Africa, the cloud provides
30
a viable alternative that addresses many
business continuity concerns. Lee believes
that leveraging the respective skills of the
four organisations will create an enabling
environment for companies to easily and
cost-effectively move to the Azure-based
data centres.
“With mission-critical systems such as
those delivered through SAP environments,
companies do not have the luxury of down-
time or losing data,” he said.
This joint venture is designed to deliver
the best value possible and make the cloud
journey an empowering one for business.”
According to du Toit, a successful SAP
on Azure cloud migration requires a solid
partner in terms of the cloud infrastructure,
an expert on deploying and configuring
SAP, and a reliable and cost-effective
operating system to use as a platform
between these worlds.
“By combining the efforts of Mint (as
a Microsoft Cloud Gold Partner), SAB&T
(as one of the de facto names in SAP
knowledge and training in the South
African market), and SUSE’s cost effective,
performant, resilient, specially-tailored
SAP workloads - we give customers a no-
compromise value proposition which covers
all the bases,” he said.
Bassadien from Microsoft agrees.
“I believe that each party in the joint
venture brings something special to the
market,” he said. “It speaks of depth of
expertise and high levels of trust between
each party as well as trust that our joint
customers can rely on. Experienced CIOs and
business decision-makers know that there
is no one organisation that can give you
everything. What we have tried to do here is
to bring together a dream team of sorts, for
the benefit of our joint customers.”