T-Systems South Africa announced at their InTouch 2017 event that they will be partnering with Microsoft to offer Azure services to enterprise customers across the South African market. T-Systems is already a global partner of Microsoft and, with this new step, will be focusing on complementing their existing solutions with Microsoft Azure cloud services to create additional value for customers.
Rajan Padayachee, Head of Solutions, Projects and Portfolio at T-Systems South Africa says, “Shortly after we announced our intention to bring our Open Telekom Cloud (OTC) to South Africa, Microsoft announced that they will be offering Azure from local data centres in South Africa. Considering our strong partnership with them, coupled with the substantial investments that many of our customers have already made in Microsoft services, T-Systems made the decision to invest in Microsoft’s local Azure cloud, with the intention to maximise our customers’ investments and build on our partnership with Microsoft.”
According to Padayachee, T-Systems plans to invest extensively in their Microsoft’s Azure capabilities and offerings, a significant sum which underpins their determination to become an important Azure Partner in South Africa. T-Systems’ is already a global data trustee for Microsoft, so this partnership plays easily into both T-Systems and Microsoft’s alliance strategy. The investment is certainly set to benefit Microsoft too, as well as any customers who are currently or intend on becoming Microsoft service users.
Gert Schoonbee, Managing Director of T-Systems South Africa, says: “T-Systems has extensive experience in cloud solution deployments and cloud migrations. Despite the considerable investments most customers have made in Microsoft and other T-Systems solutions, many have been reluctant to move their critical infrastructure to the cloud. However, Azure’s functionality makes it incredibly feasible to do so, for any corporation, large or otherwise. Our goal is to leverage our experience and Azure partnership to simplify the process of digitisation and cloud migration, while offering a choice of cutting edge solutions backed by unsurpassed SLAs.”
T-Systems has a strong market reputation, in particular, for their SAP cloud migrations, and the introduction of the possibility to host SAP services on the vastly superior hyperscale Azure cloud makes for promising times.
“Azure opens up the door for a new era of innovation. We will be able to leverage the sheer computing power of hyperscale to offer customers critical business systems, such as SAP, on a consume-as-you-need basis. Overlaid with T-Systems’ cloud solutions, such as Cloudifier, Azure migration Factory etc., customers can benefit from fast, simple and seamless migrations, enabling and accelerating their innovation cycles,” adds Padayachee.
Zoaib Hoosen, Managing Director of Microsoft South Africa supports T-Systems’ investment, stating, “T-Systems South Africa has been a longstanding partner of Microsoft for many years. We view this agreement as a reaffirmation of both our global and local partnership, and we give credit to the value that T-Systems’ brings, with both their extensive cloud experience and their existing partnerships with other entrenched business critical solution vendors.”
On T-Systems’ intentions with OTC, Schoonbee adds, “At this point we are focused firmly on establishing Azure as our primary hyperscale cloud partner. A main driver for our original OTC decision was the association with a hyperscale cloud hosted in South Africa. Microsoft Azure will address this need. Our plan to be the cloud broker of choice in South Africa means that we will take the steps necessary to provide our customers with the best possible choices and solutions. To this end, we shall continue to innovate and drive the digital transformation of South Africa, and if this includes scope for OTC alongside Azure in the future, we shall certainly not dismiss it.”
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