Microsoft has awarded Nebula Gold Certified Partner status with the Application Development Competency for its Enterprise Mobile Management Services (EMMS). The cloud-based mobile monitoring and lifecycle management platform provides companies, for the first time, the ability to have accurate insight into their mobile contracts and spend, devices, SIM cards, in real time and across all service providers. It has already saved customers on average up to 27% in direct costs, and a further astonishing 65% reduction in data usage costs, with an average ROI of 134%.

Nebula is a South African leading independent telecoms professional services firm. It originally developed EMMS as an internal system to help support its customers, but the company soon realised the potential and business need of the platform and commercialised it in 2013. EMMS is currently being used by more than 20 top enterprises including Deloitte South Africa and Capitec Bank, with an interest from international companies who are also keen to control their telecoms spending. This South African-developed technology competes with the best platforms in the world and is one of the first to achieve this Microsoft accreditation.

“I have never seen any other partner platform like this, with its unique approach to mobile management. EMMS is well positioned for supporting cloud adoption and the drive to toward the internet of things in this space,” said Johannes Kanis, partner business & development lead, Microsoft South Africa.

Enterprise mobility is a game changer, giving companies the opportunity to increase productivity and flexibility through better connectivity and communication. But, unless mobility is managed effectively and in real-time, these benefits can be wiped out by the direct and indirect costs associated with the complexity of procurement, support and management of mobility. This applies equally to a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) scenario and to where the company issues mobile phones, SIMs and dongles to its employees

“The mobility pressure points for South African companies are maintaining visibility and control over unpredictable data and international roaming costs,” said Daniel Nel, Nebula founder and chief executive officer. “EMMS now gives enterprises the peace of mind that they won’t be hit with unexpected bill shock at the end of the month thanks to real-time alerts and notifications when thresholds are reached.

“Organisations are also overlooking the indirect costs of a poorly managed mobile environment. The employee-hour and expertise costs of trying to efficiently manage company mobility without putting the right systems and methodologies in place are very high.”

EMMS not only gives organisations true visibility of their mobile environment, it flags overspend, proactively monitors usage, and speeds up internal cost recovery time from two weeks to two minutes. Administrators can now also effectively manage operational functions via EMMS. These include: SIM swaps, adding ad hoc data bundles, locking and unlocking devices, down- or upgrading contracts and even buying out their contracts in favour of a better deal elsewhere.

Bearing in mind that large companies might have several thousand SIMs deployed, it’s not surprising that Deloitte South Africa, for instance, has seen direct savings of more than R5.2 million in a year. It has also been able to double the number of SIMs each administrator can effectively manage, improved the HR on- and off-boarding process and achieved compliance with legislation such as RICA and prepared itself for POPI implementation.

Nebula had standardised on Microsoft technology back in 2011 believing it to be the most sustainable and supported resource available. When it came to commercialising EMMS in 2013, Microsoft technology was the obvious choice. The company also benefitted from the support of the Microsoft Developer Network and Microsoft Action Pack. Now, the Microsoft Gold Partner Certification — Microsoft’s highest accreditation for independent service providers — gives Nebula the tools to accelerate the development and support of the platform. Currently, the EMMS platform handles 1.4 million calls a day and controls recharges worth R90 million every month.