As a technology enablement company that provides the business and education sectors with voice, data, print and video conference solutions, the Smart Idea Group understands the enormous value of the cloud as a delivery mechanism for its solutions.
Aware that most educational institutions require optimal efficiency that enables them to save both time and money, the company has developed ClassroomAPP, a learner management system designed to help them achieve this.
According to Steve Tetluk, CEO at Smart Ideas Group, the company refers to its cutting-edge software as the ‘COVID Generation Innovation for Education’. In essence, he suggests, it offers ‘for purpose’ developed learner management systems and faculty software for schools, universities and FET colleges – all housed in the cloud.
“While we had utilised large cloud providers in the past, we found that by and large, the support provided by these entities was rather underwhelming. Their sheer size and global scale made it difficult to deal with these providers in a way that obtained the action from them that we required. We expected no different from Huawei when we switched to their cloud, but were pleasantly surprised to learn how closely they work with their partners,” he says.
“When we first spoke to Huawei, it was like a breath of fresh air, as they were actually interested in what we did and how they could add value to our products on the cloud. They had their experts deal with our technical people and were available at all hours to finalise the migration of all our software into the cloud.”
He adds the support delivered by Huawei was especially noticeable when his company had some changes that needed to be made in order to optimise product speed. Tetluk notes the Huawei crew jumped in and even roped in experts from across the globe within hours. “We have never experienced such a level of genuinely hands-on service from a global cloud provider before.”
“The move to the cloud has made us significantly more effective, efficient and productive, thanks to its speed, ease of use and collaborative ability. Moreover, the legislative environment around the cloud needs to be handled carefully. Therefore, having a partner that not only understands the compliance issues here, but also has a locally-sited data centre, thereby avoiding data sovereignty challenges, is absolutely vital to us.”
According to Andre Engelbrecht, Enterprise Channel Manager in the Western Cape for Huawei Cloud, the business believes strongly in SA’s potential and understands the need to support its partners in all ways that position them to more successfully service their end-customers.
“Huawei is an organisation that is fiercely committed to its partners, as we understand that the only way to make our company’s cloud platform even stronger is through deeper and more meaningful relationships with our customers,” notes Engelbrecht.
Tetluk points out that continued cloud adoption will be driven by the availability of useful cloud applications, so it is imperative that developers ensure their solutions add value to the lives of people and provide what they need.
“After 18 months of COVID-inspired digital transformation, I believe we will never go back to the way things were. And pressing forward in a digital world means that schools will need a software product that caters for students, parents, teachers, HODs and regions.”
In other words, he continues, the software needs to be able to assess student activities, predict pass and failure rates to identify struggling students, provide reports for parents, teachers and schools and ‘see’ what the students are doing on their devices. Furthermore, it should be able to push them to sites or tests instantly, enable a video call, store all lessons and identify potential issues by analysing website use – all with strong security and a single login from any device, anywhere. This is exactly what the company’s ClassroomAPP is designed to do.
“We are thrilled with our partnership with Huawei, because despite being a massive organisation, they treat us as more than just a number, to the point where they offer us training, along with competitive price advantages, based on how much training we do.”
“The speeds we are able to obtain here are exceptionally quick – in fact, I can safely say I have never experienced anything as blazingly fast as Huawei Cloud right here in Cape Town,” he concludes.
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