PUBLICATION: BIZCOMMUNITY RETAIL

DATE: 10 APRIL 2008

e-Skills Academy boosts technical capability

Robert Sussman,joint
managing director at Integr8
IT, together with
communications minister Ivy
Matsepe-Casaburri

The e-Skills Academy of South Africa (Pty) Ltd., an independent training organization that provides internationally accredited ICT courses and professional qualifications, has completed the installation of advanced ICT infrastructure to keep up with an increase in demand from the market. The institution partnered with Integr8 IT to successfully roll out the technology.

The education institution was officially opened recently by president Thabo Mbeki and communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.

Integr8 IT is South Africa's largest privately owned national BEE ICT network integration and infrastructure management specialist. The company was approached by representatives of the e-Skills Academy of South Africa to enhance the institution's infrastructure and its ability to meet an increasing demand for e-learning.

This large scale project involved one of the most advanced and sophisticated IT infrastructures of its type in the country, including server and security hardware and software, LAN and WAN.

The company was also tasked with the delivery of general IT support that encompassed installation, configuration and trouble shooting on routers, servers, desktops, laptops, firewalls and Microsoft operating systems, databases and applications to support more than 250 students at a time.

"In addition to high levels of reliability and redundancy in order to avoid any down time during student training, the Academy also required a high performance data storage and backup infrastructure," explains Dan Ellappa, CEO at The e-Skills Academy of South Africa (Pty) Ltd.

According to Ellappa the Academy's core business requirements combined with the level of skills necessary for the project made this installation unique.