Masana Technologies has signed a multimillion-rand agreement with CA, whereby Masana will use CA`s IT management software to grow its outsourced contract base.
CA will enable Masana to optimally manage services and improve service levels, ensure alignment of IT investments with business objectives, and reduce risks and costs for its clients.
According to a report released by Gartner* in 2006, the global outsourcing market will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5%. However, Hugo Knoetze, chief operating officer for Masana Technologies, believes that as South Africa gears up for 2010 and government continues to bolster service delivery, the market for outsourcing in South Africa far surpasses Gartner`s outlook.
Masana seeks to build its shared services business, making the shift from outsourcing to full business process outsourcing (BPO). "We will achieve this by leveraging CA`s Integration Platform to differentiate our services beyond local government, targeting provincial and national government," says Knoetze.
Given that the primary business of outsourcers is to provide their clients with infrastructure services - typically at higher service levels and at a lower cost - Knoetze explains that it was essential that Masana optimise its technology platform.
Outsourcers are typically asked to integrate existing hardware/software assets for new contracts and the ability to add value on top of complex infrastructures becomes a differentiator. Gary Lawrence, country manager for CA Africa, says: "By unifying and simplifying the management of its own IT, Masana creates an environment that allows its customers to focus on their core business."
"CA allows us to look at the big picture" comments Knoetze. "By not being tied down to specific hardware or software platforms, CA allows us to unify and simplify complex IT environments and to manage IT resources across multiple platforms."
Integration is a key component in addressing the complexity and cost of bringing disparate IT solutions together. Over and above providing scalable, multi-platform and open solutions, the key differentiator which CA enables for Masana is integration," says Knoetze.
CA`s Integration Platform enables Masana to provide its customers with a common view of all their IT management data, from across the enterprise, facilitating resource planning and decision-making across the IT environment.
Knoetze adds: "It provides complete visibility into the IT landscape - all the assets you own or lease, their locations, who is using them, their utilisation, their cost, their risk, the exposure, whether they are under maintenance, and the number of incidents associated with each.
Importantly, CA`s products cater for multi-tenancy - the ability to service various clients from the same technology platform - which means Masana can pass on cost savings to clients and ultimately be more competitive. "Masana will be able to offer a catalogue of services to its client base, while still being able to provide a unique dashboard view of each business unit/department, thus allowing for personalised management and reporting, based on service level agreements (SLA) or customer requirements.
"By introducing efficiencies into our business processes, we will be able to increase our customer base and our time to market, all while offering a better service, off a lower cost base," says Knoetze.
Knoetze explains that the public sector is largely focused on two key areas at the moment: the lack of processes and adequate systems; capacity building ahead of the World Cup in 2010.
"This extends from simple tasks like the effective provisioning of IT services that support basic utilities, to the streamlining of call centres and the vast array of physical security services. In leveraging CA`s integration platform, Masana will be able to introduce efficiencies, automating processes and ensuring that the government can improve service delivery.
"For example, Masana will have the ability to offer a centralised service desk and service catalogue, with increasing efficiencies and governance. Masana will now be able to offer rapid deployment of security updates and patch management. Network performance management ensures Masana can plan and anticipate for network downtime, ensuring adequate provisioning is made to ensure service level agreements are not compromised.
"Within the public sector, CA`s project and portfolio management functionality will ensure government departments can now adequately manage and proportion budgets to projects, ensuring the correct paper trail, e-mail records are backed up and secure.
"In this age of regulatory compliance and security risk management, certainty into IT asset usage, ownership and financials is an absolute mandatory requirement. Automating processes like patch management to ensure compliance is both efficient and judicially compliant," says Knoetze.
The agreement spans across most of CA`s management solutions, including enterprise systems management (ESM), security, business service optimisation (BSO) and storage. "CA`s technology offering allows to us to close the circle on our go-to-market strategy in terms of our vendor mix - namely, IBM, SAP, CA," he concludes.
* Gartner Africa: The Future of Outsourcing - What the Numbers Tell Us - Kurt S Potter, Robert H Brown, May 2006.
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