Nebula Logistics Africa extends hybrid IT journey with Datacentrix

Nebula Logistics Africa CIO, Moepi Matome (left) with Datacentrix Business Unit Manager, Francois Jacobs.

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Nebula Logistics Africa, which positions itself as a leading local supply chain solutions provider, has solidified its partnership with Datacentrix by extending their hybrid cloud and on-premises infrastructure agreement. This strategic alliance aims at continuous optimisation of the company’s IT environment.

Previously Barloworld Logistics, Nebula Logistics Africa is now part of the Nebula Group, which offers a comprehensive spectrum of integrated supply chain services and customised end-to-end solutions tailored to its clients’ specific needs.

Nebula Logistics Africa CIO Moepi Matome explains that the organisation’s journey with Datacentrix began prior to its acquisition in 2022. “At the time, the logistics business was making use of its parent company’s hyperconverged private cloud environment. However, we realised that our cloud environment needed to be decoupled with that of the greater organisation, as part of the move towards becoming a standalone entity.

“Recognising that our core competency lies in logistics, and that we are not IT infrastructure experts, we opted to engage Datacentrix, as a cloud and data centre specialist, to assist us with this. The collaboration, built on a decade-long relationship, allowed us to focus on our primary business.”

According to Matome, Datacentrix proposed an asset-light hosted hybrid solution, balancing cloud and on-premises assets. “Opting for a more conservative phased migration, we experienced a seamless transition, one that went largely unnoticed by our employees, thanks to Datacentrix's expertise in cloud technology, networking, servers and application support.

“As Nebula’s business has evolved, Datacentrix has helped to adapt its cloud environment, ensuring that the organisation, as one of our long-standing cloud clients, has remained agile and responsive to changes,” says Francois Jacobs, Business Unit Manager at Datacentrix. “This long-standing partnership has grown Nebula into a robust hosted hybrid environment, encompassing critical workloads and backups.”

“Since our migration 18 months ago, operations have been smooth, and we have now extended our agreement with Datacentrix for another 12 months,” Matome continues. “Our goal is to reach equilibrium, as there are a number of businesses under the Nebula umbrella, with new services consistently being added to the cloud. The agile hybrid environment provided by Datacentrix is perfectly aligned with our dynamic needs.”

Matome adds that, beyond technology, another major benefit experienced by Nebula is the opportunity to tap into Datacentrix’s vast skillset when needed. “Datacentrix recently conducted an audit and provided critical advice on our SQL environment. This level of support has been indispensable as we scale,” he says.

“Importantly, particularly as the organisation is growing, we haven’t had to pay upfront for capacity that may be needed in the future but would be unused right now, as we have a strictly ‘pay as you grow’ agreement with Datacentrix. In fact, as part of its efforts to continuously optimise our environment, Datacentrix had been quick to point out when capacity should be downgraded on a server, for example. This means that they’re essentially billing Nebula less, but it is these types of value-adds that have truly cemented our partnership, and which we really appreciate.

“There’s no ‘us’ and ‘them’ when it comes to our relationship with Datacentrix – the company is in essence an integral part of Nebula’s IT operations,” Matome concludes.