Altron Systems Integration has significantly beefed up its cloud offering by partnering with Huawei Cloud to boost its ability to support customers on their cloud journeys with robust, world-leading cloud solutions. In addition, Altron Systems Integration as a company, migrated its Service Desk and Bustel Development environments to the cloud, enjoying cost savings and uptime that exceeded our expectations, in turn bolstering Altron Systems Integration’s ability to service its customers more effectively.
Altron Systems Integration, is a specialist provider leveraging world-class technology and leading practices to design, implement and support sustainable ICT-based business solutions which are strategically aligned, fit for purpose, cost effective and optimised for performance. An expert in the South African market, Altron Systems Integration’s solutions span across all industries.
Hardus Steyn, Chief Information Officer at Altron Systems Integration says that Huawei Cloud, and Huawei more broadly, bring a massive set of expertise and problem-solving capabilities to business problems. “Huawei is world class. They align to our requirements and co-innovate. There is no obstacle too big, and they deploy senior engineers to ensure that they understand the business problem, and then build solutions that are a perfect fit for the business. Seen in that light, they’re more in the business of real value creation as opposed to selling solutions exclusively.”
Turning the lens inwards at Altron Systems Integration, the Altron Remedy Service Desk and Bustel Development environments were hosted in Teraco’s Isando and Cape Town Offices respectively. The hardware infrastructure supporting these servers were no longer supported and out of maintenance. Running customer facing-application workloads on legacy hardware resulted in system instability.
A massive capex investment would have been required to stabilise the system through hardware upgrades. Beyond the excessive Capex demands, the type of agility in workload required could simply not be achieved on the hardware. Most concerning was that the system instability meant that the service desk was severely impacted, which had a direct impact on Altron Systems Integration’s ability to service its customers efficiently.
The team conducted due diligence, just as it would for its own customers, and considered various hyperscaler options. Huawei Cloud featured prominently, both for its outstanding technology and significantly lower costs, made even more attractive due to the business’s ongoing partnership with Huawei.
Steyn said: “We upskilled internally on the Huawei Cloud portfolio and in that process, we looked at our own workloads. In a process similar to one we go through with customers, we identified workloads and whether Huawei Cloud was the right fit, and then looked at the cost-saving benefits. Rather than to procure new hardware, a business case was made to move into a hyperscaler environment, and specifically the Huawei Cloud environment. The cost-savings outcome – having shifted the burden into an Opex budget which surpassed the business case expectations of 35%, resulting up to a 45% cost optimisation in comparison to purchasing a new environment”. Lori Zhou, Director of Ecosystem Partner Development at Huawei Cloud highlighted that “due to Altron Systems Integration’s clear digital transformation strategy, international vision, forward-looking senior management team, and professional technical team, the project was hugely successful.”
“The Bustel services, data centre and hardware in Cape Town were decommissioned and the servers were migrated to Huawei Cloud’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering, with high availability zones, back-up and recovery included. The move resulted in immediate stability and operational efficiency” says Khan Shiek, Director for Pre-Sales at Huawei Cloud.
In terms of stability, there was 0% downtime since deployment in May 2022 for Bustel and September 2022 for Remedy Service Desk. Altron Systems Integration clients immediately noticed a performance increase on the Remedy and integration platforms, and the business enjoyed massive cost savings.
“The experience was amazing from day one. Huawei treats us as a partner and no problem is too big or small, with the company prepared to involve its most senior engineers locally and in China to ensure that not only are all problems pre-empted and understood, but solved. Overall, Huawei Cloud offers world-leading technology at a reasonable cost which has had a significantly positive impact on our business and our ability to service our clients more effectively,” says Steyn.
"*" indicates required fields
By providing your information to Altron you are providing consent for the processing of your personal information. Refer to the Altron Privacy Policy for details on how Altron collects and uses your personal information.
By ticking the box, you provide consent to receive electronic marketing communication on Altron Solutions and Services and the solutions of our key strategic partners. You may personalize your subscriptions based on your interests.
You can manage your communication preferences or opt-out via the Altron website.
