In line with growing market demands, Telkom Business Connexion in partnership with SAP Africa has launched its SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (SAP HEC) service out of its carrier-neutral, Tier IV certified data centre. Enabled by SAP’s groundbreaking in-memory platform, SAP HANA, the service offers enterprises real-time technology capabilities on a cloud-based consumption model.

In the words of Vish Rajpal, Chief of Business Solutions at Telkom Business Connexion: “We have been taking our clients on a journey to, through and beyond the cloud for some time now. Following the integration of Telkom Business and Business Connexion, we are now a truly end-to-end digital provider, which allows us to give clients the best connectivity, access to the best data centres and the best skills for the best cloud solutions.”

Time-to-market still crucial

SAP HEC is the latest addition to Telkom Business Connexion’s suite of cloud solutions. “By deploying SAP HEC, our client can speed up business execution and reduce time-to-value. It provides the flexibility to support businesses as they grow, without the investment associated with transitioning capital expenditures to operational expenditures, resulting in cost savings for the client,” says Rajpal.

Business applications are available from the SAP store and can be deployed immediately via the cloud. “This is a big step in driving agility and innovation, as our clients can now build their own business applications or bundle them with cloud applications that the company and their business partners need to collaborate in an open and standards-based cloud environment,” he adds.

Cloud – no longer just a discussion

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), conversations are already moving solely to the cloud, with data centre infrastructure spend being utilised to create, adopt and optimise 3rd platform technologies, such as cloud, mobility, social business and big data analytics. IDC further states that in the Middle East and Africa, 7.3 percent of total IT infrastructure investments are going into cloud build outs, with this reaching double-digit growth in the short term and this growth is expected to continue until at least 2020.

“This, along with the need for businesses to adopt new technologies at a much faster rate, creates the perfect opportunity for them to consider SAP HEC. The simplicity of deploying the solution and the capability to adopt real-time analytics will enable our clients to boost business execution while reducing their risks and costs,” says Rajpal. He further indicates that “As an out-of-the-box end-to-end service, SAP HEC allows us to remove the complexity for our clients, enabling them to focus on their core business activities while knowing that their IT is safely in the hands of the experts.”

According to Brett Parker, Managing Director of SAP Africa, the move towards cloud just makes sense for businesses across the board. In his words: “Local enterprises are already seeing the inherent benefits of cloud, such as cost-efficiency and flexibility. Through SAP HEC, businesses can leverage the power of SAP HANA and gain access to the benefit of software subscription, which in turn guarantees agility, speed, scalability and security.”

According to Jacques Loubser, Chief of Infrastructure Solutions at Telkom Business Connexion, the cloud is the only route to go if organisations are to survive this digital era. “In the past lengthy IT deployments were acceptable, but not anymore. The speed of deployment is crucial to the success of organisations today and cloud-enable this. It eliminates the risk associated with outdated technologies as it is much easier and more cost-effective to modernise the organisation’s technology,” he says.

Unlocking the continent’s potential

Telkom Business Connexion’s cloud value proposition and its reach across the African continent make it the perfect partner to SAP for deploying SAP HEC in Africa. Rajpal makes mention that “We have the only commercial tier IV data centres on the continent and with our existing capabilities which include a Digital Readiness Assessment, our connectivity footprint, security solutions and world-class redundancy capability enable us to take both our public and private sector clients on a properly mapped out journey to, through and beyond the cloud,” he concludes.