African Alliance, a leading investment banking group operating in Africa, recently underwent a major IT overhaul with the help of Velocity Group. The company, which consists of between 75 and 100 companies and employs more than 3 000 people across the continent, was in need of a solution to “right-size” its IT hardware, software and licensing to match its needs.

As the new head of IT for African Alliance, Jonathan du Plessis was tasked with getting a sense of the IT resources he was working with, as the previous incumbent had not left him much to go on. He needed hard data with which to make any adjustments needed to match the company’s IT infrastructure with its use case.

Velocity Group, through account executive Vincent Beket, engaged with Du Plessis at African Alliance at exactly the right time. The proposed solution was to deploy Block 64, an agentless asset management tool, on African Alliance’s IT environment. Block 64 specialises in gathering information on, and generating insight about, on-premises and cloud-based IT infrastructure, with particular focus on server licensing.

The implementation was successful and provided African Alliance with detailed analysis of its Microsoft licensing, infrastructure and network. This helped Du Plessis ensure that the company was licensed correctly, but also to do an internal audit of all of African Alliance’s IT resources, so that he could establish exactly what resources he was working with.

Along the way there was only one small speed bump: the server chosen to run Block 64 on was initially underpowered for the job, but after a quick virtual upgrade it was running smoothly less than half a day later.

Du Plessis was surprised that the software was able to supply warranty information on his laptops by finding their service keys, and that African Alliance was actually “wholly over-licensed” for their needs. Block 64 also confirmed just how outdated the company’s laptops and servers were, something Du Plessis had only suspected up to that point.

Confidence

“Block 64 showed me that our youngest server is eight years old. That’s just ridiculous!” Du Plessis noted when that information surfaced.

At the end of the project, he said: “We have adjusted our licensing according to the number of servers and users we have, and we are well on our way to fully achieving the ‘right-sizing’ I was after when I initiated the project. What I really appreciate about Velocity Group’s solution is that it has given me confidence that my approach is on the right track.”

Beket adds: “At Velocity Group, we pride ourselves on our customer centricity. We care about our customers’ objectives and want to help them achieve those as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible. And because we’re agile, we’re able to give our customers the personal attention they need and solve problems quickly.

“With the results we’ve seen African Alliance achieve, we’re pleased to have been a part of their journey so far, and we look forward to seeing how else we can help them achieve their goals in the future,” Beket concludes.

For more information, please call Velocity Group on 011 018 1700 or visit www.velocitygroup.co.za.

About Velocity Group
Velocity Group is a Sandton-based specialist ICT reseller and systems integrator. We specialise in delivering hybrid cloud strategies to our customers to help them navigate the hybrid IT world and make the correct technology decisions. We listen closely to our clients’ needs so that we’re able to deliver the best solutions for their exact requirements.