South African National Parks (SANParks) has awarded Datacentrix, a provider of high performing and secure ICT solutions, a five-year contract for the full outsource of its network and infrastructure services across more than 100 sites nationwide, in a deal worth over R298 million.
Recognised as a world- leading conservation authority, SANParks is a public entity under the jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Affairs. The organisation manages a system of 19 functional national parks in seven of South Africa’s nine provinces, with a total area of just over four million hectares (comprising 67% of the protected areas under state management). In the past two decades, seven new national parks have been established, totalling over 700,000 hectares, with much of this being in under-conserved ecological areas such as the Succulent Karoo and Fynbos Biomes.
SANParks’ requirement for a single service aggregator will see Datacentrix manage multiple suppliers of both ICT and business services, providing a single business-facing ICT organisation. This approach aims to seamlessly integrate interdependent services from various internal and external service providers into an end-to-end service, meeting SANParks’ business requirements of service optimisation, maturity and innovation.
In this role, Datacentrix will also deliver the following services:
Network services: The network and connectivity services will be delivered by eNetworks, a wholly-owned Datacentrix company. SANParks needs a robust network to pave the way for its future technology plans. This necessitates a complete reengineering of the network.
Infrastructure services: The full outsource solution involves having a team on site to deliver day-to-day infrastructure support, managing their servers, desktops and Exchange, including 24×7 helpdesk services, environment monitoring services, as well as third party aggregation services.
“Our appointment as the SANParks outsource partner is a significant accolade to Datacentrix, proving that, as a company, we are executing our vision of becoming the ICT partner of choice to both corporate and public sector South Africa,” Savan Marimuthu, Senior Account Manager at Datacentrix.
“The tender was awarded to us based on the strength of our managed services track record of more than 15 years, as well as our solid understanding of SANParks’ business environment, cost effectiveness and Level One empowerment rating.
“Our dedication to enterprise development – through our network of SMMEs that will assist in the delivery of this project – and the level of innovation that was applied to architecting the solution put forward to SANParks, were also key criteria in Datacentrix clinching this deal.
“We look forward to partnering with our client once again, helping the organisation to improve its ICT environment, and taking it to the next level in terms of connectivity, monitoring and support.”
