“We want to play a part in addressing the digital divide that separates rich and poor countries and people.”

Michael Jacobus, CEO

AL Indigo is stepping up its plans to expand into the rest of Africa and improve its broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) profile. Now, AL Indigo is positioned to expand its business locally and throughout the continent by building on a strong base of clients, a track record of financial stability, and a stable shareholder.

AL Indigo is a profitable and growing business that has been self-funding since December 2006. With an annual turnover of more than R500 million and a workforce comprising of more than 200 highly skilled and experienced ICT professionals, the company is in a strong position to address Africa’s growing hunger for rare IT skills.

The company currently supports clients through offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Lagos (Nigeria). It works closely with partners in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Mauritius, Swaziland, Kenya, Uganda and Namibia to deliver high-quality solutions to clients in those countries.

“Now that we have such a strong base in South Africa, we are going to be increasing our focus on the rest of the continent,” says Michael Jacobus, CEO of AL Indigo. “We want to play a part in addressing the digital divide that separates rich and poor countries and people. AL Indigo wants to share its skills with the rest of the continent.”

Partnerships are key

AL Indigo’s solutions – which encompass managed services, business service management, enterprise mobility, enterprise 2.0 and infrastructure solutions – help clients to better align IT with their business, drive profitability and revenue growth, reduce operating costs and enhance enterprise agility, says Jacobus. Patricia Horn, GM of sales and marketing adds to this: “Although we are starting to see economic conditions looking to turn the corner, our focus on delivering value to our customers’ business remains relevant into an upturn. Companies are no longer interested in transactional buying – they are looking for partners who will add to and empower the business, while at the same time protecting their investments. It is this that we do exceptionally well.”

The company’s solutions are built on hardware and software from a range of the world’s largest enterprise technology vendors. AL Indigo works with a range of leading ICT vendors to provide clients with world-class enterprises systems and solutions.

“Our relationships with these key vendors are not mere reseller agreements – they are strategic partnerships that date back several years,” says Jacobus. The company’s partners include BMC Software, Oracle/BEA, Sun Microsystems, NetApp, IBM, Storwize, Symantec, VMware and Optec.

The companies that once served as the master distributors for BEA and BMC Software now form part of the AL Indigo fold, meaning that the group has a depth of skills in those product ranges that few of its rivals can compete with. It has professional consultants certified to the highest levels with each of its key vendor partners.

“This is another advantage that AL Indigo brings to its client base: skills. The skills scarcity is an ongoing problem within the ICT sector and our clients are commonly unable to attract and retain the professionals required to deliver on a project or short-term basis. The depth of skills within AL Indigo is deployed to the

best use of our customers, bringing the knowledge to customers as and when it is required,” comments Horn.

AL Indigo is one of Oracle’s largest partners in South Africa – particularly for its middleware product range, acquired from BEA Systems. It is also one of the largest resellers for Sun Microsystems in Africa, measured both by the number of qualified Sun technicians it boasts and the revenues it generates from its Sun business.

That means that AL Indigo will be positioned as one of the largest partners for Oracle in South Africa once the multinational group completes its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. “It’s a fantastic position for us to be in since many of our clients have welcomed this merger,” says Jacobus. “They like the idea of being able to work with one vendor in the form of Oracle and one solutions provider in the form of AL Indigo for most of their data centre needs.”

 Jacobus points out that AL Indigo’s Oracle business unit – which provides and implements Oracle’s BPM, enterprise 2.0 and service oriented architecture solutions – will continue to operate independently of the Infrastructure Systems business unit that houses the Sun business.

“Some customers have environments comprised of solutions from multiple vendors, and we are able to support them and their heterogeneous environments as an independent solutions provider,” he adds. “But others will welcome our combined skills sets across the Sun and corporate profile Oracle product ranges. We have many customers in the telecom and financial services industry who are already running Oracle solutions on Sun platforms.”

 Taking BEE to the grassroots

BBBEE forms another important focus area for AL Indigo for the future. The group is currently accredited as a Level 4 contributor to BEE and is a 100% blackowned company.

AL Indigo has also made significant progress in areas of BBBEE such as the demographic make-up of its management team, corporate social investment and preferential procurement. But Jacobus says that the industry’s relentless focus on chasing BEE accreditation has meant that it has not paid enough attention to grassroots empowerment.

“Many ICT groups have targeted areas of the BEE scorecard that are easier to address – such as corporate social investment, preferential procurement, and equity shareholding – and have neglected employment equity and skills development,” says Jacobus.

“Looking to the future, we want to step up our investments into training and skills development to create a sustainable pool of technology skills for the future as well as to help bring more people from previously disadvantaged communities into the ICT industry.”

To that end, AL Indigo is embarking on a range of training and development programmes that address ICT skills at every level – from entry-level qualifications through to high-level technical training and management skills. These include bursary programmes for students, on the-job-training for new entrants into the ICT job market, learnership programmes and support from staff that want to build their skills through formal educational programmes.

Says Jacobus: “The major challenge that we face as we roll out our skills development and employment equity programme is retaining the skills because previously disadvantaged candidates with rare, high-level technology skills are in such high demand. But we have put a strategy in place to attract, develop and retain the people that we need to grow our business into the future.”

Whichever way you look at it, AL Indigo is looking to step out and step up. “As a company we have always kept a low profile. We have reached a new phase in the business however – one where we are looking to expand our operations, geographic spread, social influence and even brand awareness. It is time to position ourselves to take advantage of the strengths within our business so that the market can do the same,” concludes Patricia Horn.

Structured divisions for technology value

“The different functions of AL Indigo’s divisions are all unified in its approach to its clients’ requirements.”

By Donovan Jackson

with a number of divisions providing products and services, which support world-class data centre and related infrastructure, AL Indigo has one of the strongest portfolios for complete high performance solutions. The real value from its divisions comes from their ability to act in concert, resulting in a multiplier effect for its clients.

Dione Le Roux, AL Indigo General manager: Infrastructure Solutions, says his division deals with the enterprise systems required to power telecoms, manufacturing, the financial services sector and other IT-intensive industries.

“In this regard, we deliver turnkey data centre solutions as a single point of contact across server, storage and network systems,” he says. “We’re here to help simplify the IT environment while delivering sound and predictable returns on investment by helping clients to become more efficient.”

Le Roux says virtualisation, standardization and consolidation are important concepts for clients today. “Establishing a sound base with the hardware is the essential first step, providing a foundation on which applications can be optimally configured and run.”

Maintaining an enterprise data centre environment is a demanding task, and critical to uninterrupted business success. A further challenge is attracting and retaining highly trained engineers with advanced skills. Since these are areas in which AL Indigo is singularly successful, clients can safely leave the support of their mission critical platforms in the hands of the company’s certified professionals. Moreover, this leaves the client free to focus on their core business. That foundation is especially significant to the Oracle and BSM divisions within AL Indigo, since it is Oracle middleware software that provides the integration and database layers, while BMC delivers the business services necessary for optimal performance of hardware and applications.

“As an Oracle partner, we focus on the technology and database rather than applications,” confirms Barry De Waal, AL Indigo General Manager: Oracle. This includes middleware, which encompass business intelligence, enterprise content management, business process and identity management, SOA and database options. “AL Indigo also offers complementary solutions such as hardware management and monitoring.”

De Waal says the contribution of the Oracle division to the company coffers is substantial, at around a quarter of the total income. “While the market downturn has affected everyone, the trend is strongly towards doing more with less. That puts our division in a unique position, since our solutions drive efficiency and productivity. That plays into the economic drivers that clients want.” With 42 technical consultants, De Waal says the business unit is recognised by the market as a repository of highly competent engineers.

Managing technology for Business Service

Managing technology for advantage depends on a clear view of all the elements which comprise complex environments and which must come together to form consumable services and which underpin the ability for any business to execute on its mandates. That’s where BMC software comes into play, says Ryan Lawlor, AL Indigo General Manager: BSM.

“Simply put, we add value to managing the data centre. We ensure that IT is prioritised according to business impact in everything that it does. This enables IT to address business requirements by delivering the services required, to drive revenue, lower costs and mitigate risk.

“Business Service Management (BSM) is not a buzzword but an ongoing focus. It relates back to an old problem and tension associated with IT and business – that of misalignment and the inability for IT to respond with flexibility and speed to the pace of business,” he says.

A reflection of the growing acknowledgement of the importance of IT as a strategic business enabler can be seen in the elevation of the CIO towards board level, Lawlor continues. “If we look at the business challenges faced by IT organisations, these include gaining control of resources to support increased regulatory oversight, reducing cost and increasing flexibility, simplifying processes and integrating resources.”

It is against these goals that BSM, powered by BMC software, delivers. “What we do is to help manage the business of IT across resources, functions and infrastructure in support of the enterprise. Through the tools that AL Indigo provides, the CIO is further empowered to deliver predictable value to the business.” With 48 dedicated BSM staff focused on BSM, Lawlor says AL Indigo is the country’s biggest and most experienced provider of BMC’s products and technologies.

On the Move

Mobility is rapidly climbing in priority for CIO’s seeking to extend business processes into the field and benefit from improved automation and control. Addressing this need from within the AL Indigo stable is RangeGate, with a specific focus on delivering mobility in the supply chain environment.  “Given the competencies within AL Indigo, when we talk mobility, we deliver every aspect required. RangeGate handles all components for a true ‘solution’ delivery,” says Nicole Trevisan, AL Indigo General Manager: RangeGate.

The ability to call on other divisions within AL Indigo is invaluable, she continues. “As we deliver operational business solutions, the contribution of divisions such as the infrastructure people, the middleware capability and the systems management competencies frequently play a role in enabling a ‘single vendor’ solution,” Trevisan explains.

She says demand for mobility is increasing on the back of proven business benefits in the transport and logistics, distribution and warehousing environments. “We see field engineering and the financial services industries – for the gathering of information relating to FICA, for example – as key future focus areas.”

Managed Services

Rob Kimmings, Business Operations Manager, says to deliver an effective managed service it is important to ensure that we have high standards, methologies, policies and procedures within our organisation. Companies are looking for greater value and lower cost in key areas including IT audits, needs assessments, planning and design, project management and administrative services.

“Performing these tasks in-house incurs substantial overhead in terms of head count, and our outsourced model makes more sense,” he says. Kimmings explains that “Together our divisions can construct a sound value proposition with a degree of flexibility to meet specific needs.”

South African enterprises, coming under increasing pressure to do more with their ICT infrastructure while spending less money on technology, are increasingly turning towards external service providers from help.

That’s according to Dione le Roux, Infrastructure Services Manager at African Legend (AL) Indigo. He says that managing ICT infrastructure is turning into a major headache for many CIOs because of a shortage of ICT skills as well as the squeeze that the economic downturn is putting on their operational and capital expenditure budgets.

“What’s more, reduced budgets for ICT infrastructure come at a time when most companies are struggling with a range of infrastructure-related challenges because of the growing complexity of their heterogeneous environments and an increasing regularity burden, says Le Roux. The amount of servers, storage devices and applications continues to spiral, yet the skills and resources to bring it all under control are in short supply.

 "During these difficult economic times, companies around the world need to drive more value from their ICT infrastructure without compromising on business service levels," he adds.

"Affordable and reliable ICT infrastructure is central to any enterprise’s competitiveness, yet infrastructure management has become a headache for most organisations."

Le Roux notes that the challenges of infrastructure management are not limited to South Africa, but faced by enterprises across the world. Software vendor, Symantec, found in a study (entitled ‘State of the Data Centre 2008′) that 75% of the data centres it surveyed around the world were seeing user expectations rise while 34% reported that reducing costs was a strategic priority for the future.

"This is the central paradox that most companies face: they must do more with their technology but spend less on their ICT infrastructure. As a result, data centres are aggressively adopting tools such as server and storage virtualisation and tools that allow them to automate common data centre tasks to drive efficiencies across their infrastructures," Le Roux says.

Outsourcing infrastructure management to a service provider that can provide turnkey solutions that span all of the typical enterprise’s basic ICT infrastructure needs is an increasingly popular approach to keeping infrastructure costs down without compromising on service levels.

"Service providers that focus on the infrastructure space have the skills and economies of scale to help their customers to simplify management of their IT environments, drive down their operating costs and increase their return on investment;" says Le Roux. "They have the expertise to help clients to not only keep the lights on, but to also start optimising and improving their ICT infrastructures so that they can achieve more on their limited budgets."

“Companies increasingly want to partner with service providers that can offer them a single point of contact for all their infrastructure needs, he adds. This provides them with a single point of accountability and simplifies the management of their infrastructures.”

South African companies that are committed to broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) need to step up their efforts around skills development and employment equity.

That’s the word from Michael Jacobus, chief executive officer at AL Indigo.

He says that most ICT companies have focused on the low hanging fruit of BBBEE in the form of corporate social investment and shareholding, neglecting equally important areas that need more concerted, longer term effort in the process.

"Many ICT groups have targeted areas of the BEE scorecard that are easier to address – such as corporate social investment, preferential procurement, and equity shareholding – and have neglected employment equity and skills development," Jacobus says.

"The reason for this is that we have all focused on chasing BEE accreditation and have not paid enough attention to grassroots empowerment. But transformation at the lower levels of the industry is critical to sustainability and long-term growth."

AL Indigo is currently accredited as a Level 4 contributor to BEE and is a 100%-black-owned company. The company has made significant progress on areas of BBBEE such as the demographic make-up of its management team, corporate social investment and preferential procurement.

But Jacobus says that it recognises that employment equity and skills development now need to take centre stage in its BBBEE strategy, especially as the company aims to increase its accredited rating in the years to come.

"Looking to the future, we want to step up our investments into training and skills development to create a sustainable pool of technology skills for the future as well as to help bring more people from previously disadvantaged communities into the ICT industry," Jacobus adds.

In addition, government is getting impatient with slow progress in employment equity across most sectors. To avoid further regulation, the industry needs to accelerate transformation of the workplace; AL Indigo is embarking on a range of training and development programmes that address ICT skills at every level – from entry-level qualifications through to high-level technical training and management skills.

These programmes include bursary programmes for students, Learnership programmes, on-the-job-training for new entrants into the ICT job market, and support from staff that want to build their skills through formal educational programmes. The goal is to develop a strong base of entry- and mid-level skills, and grow them into the top managers and technicians of tomorrow.

"The major challenge that we face as we roll out our skills development and employment equity programme is retaining the skills because previously disadvantaged candidates with rare, high-level technology skills are in such high demand.

"But we have put a strategy in place to attract, develop and retain the people that we need to grow our business into the future. South Africa’s ICT industry as a whole needs a larger skills base to grow, so it is in the entire industry’s interest to grow the pool of professionals through skills development programmes" , Jacobus concludes.