CASE STUDY
The fact that its team is so diverse and inclusive indicates a culture that encourages success without limitations , and it is something they are proud of .
“ When we received the go-ahead to proceed with the VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure , there was a huge expectation from management . But the results were worth it , and we have shown that what used to take almost eight months to deploy from a physical hardware perspective can now be done almost in realtime ,” he added .
Enabling business growth
Morais added that while keeping costs as low as possible has been a massive advantage , delivering consistent reporting to assure the executive that the technology was growing at the designed rate now ensures that Vodacom Mozambique may remain focused on its core strategic objectives . This has enabled the company to deliver digitally superior voice and data solutions to its growing customer base .
The unified , consistent digital infrastructure , across both the IT and Telco clouds ( NFV ) production environments enables the company to accommodate the development of more products .
“ We can now experiment with additional innovative feature sets that contribute to the company ’ s core growth and future roadmap . It has also provided customers with space in our data centres to host their servers and manage them within our infrastructure . Remember , data is the future of Africa , and it places us firmly on the global stage as a competitive business , so the provision of data and cloud services to our clients is critical to Vodacom .”
According to Morais and his team , from a people and skills perspective , the rollout of its IT cloud was straightforward , but when work began on the telco cloud with NFV , a whole new skill set was required . “ The team is now virtualising networks ; it ’ s a big jump for a traditional infrastructure team . But such has been their commitment and willingness that the transition has been more seamless than anticipated . The team is also excited about the new skill sets they are adding to their portfolios . Yes , it wasdaunting at first – but I am exceptionally proud of how they have risen to the challenge and now own that domain too .”
Looking ahead
Vodacom Mozambique is using the virtualised environment to introduce more sophisticated technology , for example , Kubernetes , for more flexible and agile development . The orchestration layers can now also manage both the IT and telco clouds .
“ Looking ahead , we see opportunities to add public clouds to our virtualisation efforts if the need arises as we are continually examining our roadmap for the future and adding technology to it . Having this foundation in place means there is potential to accommodate future business growth and upgrade to where we see the most demand ,” he said .
Vodacom Mozambique embraced all the new VMware
technology and architectures , and the IT systems team has made a significant success of the implementation . The team has migrated multiple environments and have been managing them very successfully . The company has demonstrated that it is not afraid of using the latest technology and integrating it into mission-critical processes to provide a platform for future growth .
“ Because our IT systems team has been so successful with this implementation , we have become the go-to team for the company when it comes to all things VMware and virtualisation . And that for me is something we can be incredibly proud of ,” Morais said . p
REMEMBER , DATA IS THE FUTURE OF AFRICA , AND IT PLACES US FIRMLY ON THE GLOBAL STAGE AS A
COMPETITIVE BUSINESS , SO THE PROVISION OF DATA AND CLOUD SERVICES TO OUR CLIENTS IS CRITICAL
TO VODACOM .
www . intelligentcio . com INTELLIGENTCIO AFRICA 53