The telco’s state-of-the-art new Bellville data centre offers 1600 square metres of preprovisioned, purpose-built customer hosting capacity. Built on Cisco 3.0 architectural principles, it lays the basis for full IT outsourcing, to compete with South and Pan-African IT powerhouses and network operators.

 

THE NEXT LEVEL

 

Three years after being blocked from acquiring Business Connexion for an overnight entry into the IT services game, Telkom has re-grouped, having built a formidable capability in this sphere from the ground up.

 

Towards the end of 2009 the company will launch a state-of-the-art new data centre, spanning 1600 square metres on a whole new level of its existing Bellville facility. Pre-provisioned with enough capacity to serve its customers years into the future, irrespective of their location, it brought a whole new face to data centres at Telkom and the industry.

 

To oversee Telkom’s growing customer hosting capability, the company launched Cybernest. Pierre Marais, until then Telkom SA’s managing executive responsible for network infrastructure provision, was appointed the acting MD, bringing a wealth of experience including core network design, build-out and management.

 

VIRTUAL, PRE-PROVISIONED ICT

 

Says Althon Beukes, Cybernest executive: Operations: “Being on a virtualised architecture, data centre like a new server, storage capacity or connectivity can be provisioned quickly and easily, as a service. With a fully virtualised, pre-designed fabric and integrated components, the data centre capability is fast, nimble and responsive to changing customer needs for more or less capacity, new services and so forth.

 

“It is a purpose-built, multi-customer, end-to-end virtualised data centre that frees our customers from the shackles of dedicated infrastructure and the long build-out and scaling timelines associated with it.”

 

Beukes explains that existing data centres have operated mainly as enterprise infrastructure support for Telkom Group operations. “Normal or legacy data centres have to be built from scratch to every new customer requirement. But notwithstanding their ‘legacy’ nature, we will evolve them too, to re-purposed hosting facilities. This will mean upgrading them, but we believe we can extract some spare hosting capacity in the meantime.”

 

CYBERNEST’S DATA CENTRE ECOSYSTEM

 

With the addition of Bellville 2, as the new data centre is called, Cybernest has a total of six hosting facilities – four in Gauteng (one each in Pretoria and Hartebeesthoek and two in Centurion) and two in Bellville. At the time of writing, Hartebeesthoek and Bellville 2 were near complete.

 

ROADMAP

 

The vision with Cybernest’s entry into the Telkom mix is for the group to attain a leading hosting and IT services competency in the South and pan-African markets, he adds. “Our multinational clients expect us to continue to serve them in their expansion drives, with network services as well as data centre services.” What will these services entail? Initially, Cybernest will deliver infrastructural services at the bottom of the IT service stack, as defined by Gartner.

 

Thembinkosi Nzimande, acting executive Cybernest: Marketing & Reputation, characterises these services as being closely associated with Telkom’s core network infrastructure. “If we encounter a need for services beyond that, Cybernest will partner to meet that need,” he says.

 

Nzimande says services start off as ‘sandboxed’ offerings within Telkom’s walls and are only commercialised once Telkom has learnt its lessons with them. The following range will evolve over time domestically – in partnership or on the back of Telkom’s native skill sets. (In other regions, specific capabilities will determine the portfolio of services offered.)

 

• Near-term: Infrastructure hosting (server, database and application infrastructure hosting). This is already being offered to a number of external customers.

 

• Medium-term: Desktop outsourcing and on-demand services (already offering desktop outsourcing to 32 000 Telkom SA users, Cybernest will commercialise this by 2011)

 

• Long-term: Full IT outsourcing (including systems integration).

 

TECHNOLOGIES AND PARTNERSHIPS

 

Althon Beukes, Cybernest executive: Operations, says a number of key technologies, offered or managed by key partners, underpin the services it is going to market with.

 

Most importantly, Telkom has a set of original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners, whose technologies make up the Cybernest technology stack. Cybernest has considerable expertise in supporting these technologies.

 

• Cisco – local-area networking within the data centre, wide-area shared connectivity into it and storage area networking infrastructure

 

• EMC – physical disk storage

 

• Symantec – storage management (through the vendor’s VERITAS acquisition)

 

• Sun (the vendor’s StorageTek acquisition) – backup

 

• HP, IBM and Sun – Cybernest’s extensive RISC-based server footprint

 

• IBM, HP and Cisco UCS – Intel- and AMD-based servers (blade and rackmount)

 

• Microsoft, HP-UX, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, SuSE and Red Hat Linux forms a significant part of Telkom’s skills base, including making up the entire basis of TelkomInternet, Beukes says.

 

• Oracle and Microsoft SQL – database

 

• Symantec – enterprise security management

 

• Trend Micro – desktop antivirus • VMWare – virtualisation

 

• ITIL – service management

 

• SAP and MS Exchange – commercial off-the-shelf applications

 

• Microsoft and Citrix – access technologies.

 

In keeping with the fledgling unit’s vision, it has further embarked on a cost-efficient way of extending its reach with the aid of capability partners, in which it may take an equity stake. Telkom’s wish to outsource these skills may stem from a reluctance to own them, for example when there are no economies of scale to be had in doing so. In other cases, it may acquire skills later on, as it grows in the value chain. In Sub-Saharan Africa, Cybernest’s capability partners include Multi-Links, M-Web Africa and Africa Online. In Europe, Asia and the US, it leverages noequity partnerships, such as the one with AT&T announced in March 2009.

 

CLARITY OF VISION

 

Undeniably, Telkom has reacted with clarity of vision and resilience in establishing its IT services competency, offering credible competition to IT firms and other network operators. The right partnerships will see this capability accelerate.

 

“The converging of telco and IT services business models is the next battleground, and the data centre will play a significant role in determining the future leaders that will provide end-to-end converged ICT solutions,” says Johann Digue, Executive: Strategy, Innovation and Development. Owning both IT infrastructure and the network is an advantage that Telkom will utilise to its fullest in supporting the attainment of this objective. Telkom’s challenge will be to grow its formidable network presence in South Africa beyond our borders, while steadily building its IT service value stack.

 

C O N T A C T

 

Johann Digue

 

Executive, strategy, Innovation and development: Telkom sa
Tel: 012 311 2174
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: www.telkom.co.za

 

Althon Beukes

 

Executive, cybernest operations: Telkom sa
Tel: 012 680 6804
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: www.telkom.co.za

 

Thembinkosi Nzimande

 

Acting Executive cybernest: Marketing & reputation: Telkom sa
Tel: +27 12 680 8268
cell: +27 79 876 8798
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

BUSINESS CONTINUITY

 

Cybernest offers the following business continuity and disaster recovery measures:

 

1. High availability between Centurion 1 and 2 – separate connectivity coming into each data centre for failover, leaving each independent on the other for service. The plan is to have the same for the Bellville data centres.

 

2. Extended high availability in Centurion in the form of failover to Hartebeesthoek

 

3. ‘Cross-over’ failover from any data centre in Gauteng to Bellville, and vice versa

 

4. A synchronous data replication between Centurion and Bellville for backup and restore.