Case Studies

Vox delivers impressive business benefits with the InfiniBox enterprise storage system from Infinidat

Posted on 8 January 202119 September 2024 by Diana Martins Prenner

Infinidat, a global leader in enterprise petabyte scale data storage solutions, has revolutionised both the storage platform and Customer Experience (CX) for Vox. The cost-effective, high performance, high capacity and 100% availability InfiniBox enterprise storage solution from Infinidat plays a central role in supporting the entire Vox offering. It has improved the performance of all services across the business.

The challenge

At the start of 2019, Vox faced two significant difficulties around its existing storage platform. Firstly, the five-year maintenance period was coming to an end, and secondly, the company was running out of capacity much faster than anticipated. Adding to these issues, Vox was unable to utilise the full capacity of its existing storage solution, as some 40TB needed to remain ‘unused’ for the system to function.

“We reached the capacity limit of the system faster than anticipated. Coupled with the prohibitively expensive maintenance extension option, we made the decision to perform a technology refresh and replace the platform with a completely new solution,” explained Keith Laaks, Executive Head for Technology, at Vox.

The solution

Vox needed a cost-effective, high-performance storage array for its hosting environment in order to assist the business to meet customer demands and rampant data growth. An agile partner, who would be able to deliver quickly, was also a necessity. After evaluating 12 different storage arrays on criteria such as performance, Inputs/Outputs Per Second (IOPS), storage efficiencies, compression, deduplication and redundancy, Vox selected the InfiniBox solution from Infinidat, supplied by local partner and solutions integrator, Datacentrix.

“Datacentrix prides itself on operating within the top three tiers for all its technology partners and provides Tier 1 partner services for Infinidat in the South African market. Our formal customer engagement approach is underpinned by our technical expertise and business advisory services, ensuring best-fit solutions for our clients. As the technical delivery partner throughout the InfiniBox implementation, we delivered all the pre-sales requirements, including workshop sessions with Vox and Infinidat representatives as well as ongoing support,” said Schalk Gouws, Account Manager at Datacentrix.

Two InfiniBox F4304 arrays were deployed, one at each of Vox’s data centres in Johannesburg within the production and Disaster Recovery (DR) environments respectively. For workloads with low Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Vox makes use of VMware’s vSphere replication feature.

“These arrays primarily service our virtual servers, database and voice infrastructure, and also play a key role in our data protection strategy. The solution allows seamless integration with our data protection vendor,” said Selby Maake, Cloud Storage and Virtualisation Engineer at Vox Telecom.

“Each array delivers 1.7 Petabytes (PB) of virtual capacity with the actual available capacity variable depending on the compression ratio. This gives us far more storage for an extremely cost-effective rate per terabyte.”

The implementation

Implementation of the solution began in September 2019 and took one month to complete. Local Infinidat partner, Datacentrix, worked closely with Vox on the installation, helping Vox take the project from racking, stacking and initialisation, through to switching, provisioning, testing, and finally into the production environment. Infinidat also provided certified administration training through Datacentrix, flying in experts from its head office in Israel to South Africa. This was to ensure the data migration was seamless.

“Thanks to excellent relationships, solid teams and effective planning from the outset, the implementation went smoothly and no challenges were experienced. The training and support provided by Infinidat throughout the journey ensured we got it right the first time. The proof of our success came from our customers’ users, who noticed performance improvements without being aware that a storage upgrade had been performed,” said Laaks.

The benefits

As a hosting provider, Vox must meet customer demand for capacity. The InfiniBox arrays were ideal due to their flexibility when it comes to scale and ease-of-use for critical workloads. Also, they deliver superior performance with a low total cost of ownership (TCO) without compromising the CX. The InfiniBox ultimately empowered Vox with a data-driven competitive advantage at petabyte scale.

“One of the key benefits we have realised results from the low-touch configuration and administration of the InfiniBox arrays. This has allowed us to provision new services and solutions seamlessly and with minimum manual interaction. Our previous solution was laborious to configure, taking up to an hour with multiple steps, increased complexity and room for error. The Infinidat solution takes less than a minute, improving our customer service, whilst freeing up time for our teams to attend to other business needs,” Maake added.

Redundancy is another critical feature of Vox’s operations. Previously, the company experienced some issues with failures so a robust solution was required. InfiniBox’s triple redundancy controllers guarantee uptime, ensuring Vox can always deliver uninterrupted service to both internal and external customers.

Hayden Sadler, Infinidat Country Manager for South Africa added, “With the InfiniBox arrays, Vox currently experiences below one millisecond latencies across the infrastructure and a minimum cache hit ratio of 95%. Vox now benefits from an array capable of significant IOPS and throughput, whereas the previous solution delivered just 40,000 IOPS between 10 and 20 milliseconds. Both of these aspects are extremely valuable for providing superior performance.”

“Aside from our connectivity, broadband access and voice solutions, our cloud offering is a growing element of our business, with impressive market penetration figures. We needed the right platform to support our growth goals and storage is the key ingredient. The InfiniBox solution supports our requirements by delivering the right blend of cost-effective storage and high performance, coupled with the ability to slot seamlessly into our existing infrastructure,” said Laaks.

“Infinidat also provides excellent proactive monitoring and local support through Datacentrix to ensure constant uptime and availability. This is critical to Vox from an operations perspective. Based on our forecasts, we will require additional capacity by the end of 2021. We are extremely happy with the platform and will likely expand our storage with additional InfiniBox arrays, when the time comes,” he concluded.

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Vox Business Fibre, Managed IT, Voice & HaaS – STK Advisory Connect Case Study

Posted on 24 August 202026 September 2024 by admin

About the Company

STK Advisory Connect was launched in 2016, “I started my career in financial planning forty years ago,” says company director, Nevathee Moodley. “That is when I realised that the idea of starting my own business would be a captivating concept.”

The Cape Town based business provides technology support services to portfolio managers and financial planning businesses. It first opened its doors at Regus co-working space in the city, before moving to its own premises at Century City in 2017.

“We have the distinct edge in that we recruit young graduates offering training to groom them for the real world. Our vision is to employ graduates who intend on entering the financial service industry or considering it as a career, ideally become suited to this environment.

“This forms a platform to apply and extend their knowledge base from tertiary level to that of the real world. Our team of 10 individuals who are driven and passionate about making a change to the lives of the people we interact with, says Nevathee “Including myself, Tisha (Head of Operations) and Keagan Moodley (Head of IT).”

About the Industry

Conventional consulting has been fundamentally changed by technology-driven disruption, according to Research and Markets. This has prompted advisory firms to incorporate digital tools to remain competitive. However, technological advances also present various opportunities to the sector.

“We have to embrace this age of technology and use it to our fullest advantage, especially in terms of understanding trends and competing with global markets,” says Nevathee.

The Business Challenge

“Our biggest concern was securing client data, and we needed a holistic service for all our needs,”

Upon launching in 2016, STK Advisory immediately chose to partner with Vox as its infrastructure provider. “The nature of our business requires us to have systems that can protect the sensitive client information that we deal with daily,” says Nevathee.

“Fibre, networking, managed IT, voice and hardware are all critical elements in our business, and we needed to ensure that we had one vendor we could rely on for all the services and infrastructure required to run a company like ours.”

The Business Solution

STK Advisory’s corporate clients require risk assessments they can rely on, the confidence that their information is secure and the assurance that they’re getting the best service. Vox has ensured that STK Advisory’s software is always running at 100% and continuously online, says Nevathee. “We’ve been able to onboard so many new clients even during COVID-19!”

Vox WiFi for guests and clients takes our business to the next level, she adds. “They’re impressed by the security around our password protection.”

In addition to making their clients’ lives easier, the company’s staff have been able to successfully conduct business from anywhere using Vox Vobi and Cloud PBX.

Overall experience with Vox

“Partnering with a trusted name in the IT industry like Vox inspires confidence from our clients,” says Keagan. “We didn’t do a vendor search when we started the business, because Keagan felt Vox was at the forefront and we didn’t need to compare providers.”

Keagan adds that partnering with Vox, like all relationships, has had its ups and downs, but his business has never considered switching because, “It just works for us. They’re the best for us and the commitment is still there because they understand the infrastructure we need in our business and we on this journey together as we grow.

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Vox Managed IT, FTTB & Voice: Jacana Media Case Study

Posted on 30 June 202026 September 2024 by admin

About the Company
A local publishing house, launched in 2002, Jacana Media publishes a wide range of trade books and manages custom publishing projects for companies and clients.

The Joburg-based independent publisher’s list includes political biographies, current affairs, memoirs, natural history, cookery, business, local literary fiction and children’s illustrated books in all South African languages.

Jacana was the Sunday Independent’s publisher of the year in 2006.

Jacana Media employs 12 full-time staff and a host of freelancers for the production of their books.

The Business Challenge
Connectivity, telephone down time and bandwidth were some of the issues Jacana Media faced in the past, making it difficult to run smooth daily operations like communicating with customers and stakeholders.

The production department struggled with down time for large file downloads, posing a challenge for productivity. “We had issues sending print-ready files to print and receiving files from freelancers and other co-publishers,” says Jonathan Dhlomo, of Jacana’s accounts department.

The publishing house also needed remote and managed IT support to provide seamless communication across the business.

The Business Solution
When seeking out a suitable service provider to check all the boxes on their list of challenges, Dhlomo says they wanted a reliable service, but affordability was a key factor as well. Enter Vox.

Vox is like our outsourced IT guy. They handle everything, from our Internet connection, to all our communication and digital needs

In 2017 Jacana Media enlisted the services of Vox to speed up business processes across all departments.

“Vox Verto Supreme is very reliable and worth every penny. It has been value for money. Telephone downtime is a thing of the past. We have control over our communications bill, and we have offsite and onsite support all the time,” says Dhlomo. “And thanks to Vox Fibre, we can now send and receive large files quickly without hiccups!”

During COVID-19 and the necessary move to implement working from home, Vox has benefited the business immensely, says Bridget Impey, managing director at Jacana Media.

“The superior equipment and telephony provided by Vox has facilitated ease of working from home as calls can be answered directly on cell phones from Vox dedicated lines,” says Impey.

“Support Desk have attended to all queries and fixes timeously allowing for minimal interruption and offsite access to our server as arranged by Vox has been a blessing especially in these COVID-19 times.”

Overall experience with Vox
Impressed by the impact of Vox’s services on Jacana Media’s operations, the company has also implemented more Vox products including, Everlytic digital marketing services, desktop and server support, and Vobi voice service over the last few years.

“All our departments have been positively impacted by Vox services,” concludes Jacana Media co-owner Maggie Davey.

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Vox Offer Coopers ES Pest-free Connections

Posted on 26 March 2020 by admin

About Cooper Environmental Science

Coopers Environmental Science (Coopers ES) is a pest control company which offers a range of products for the professional pest control industry, the grain storage industry, and is a reseller of pesticides for the home owner. Their approach in designing products is to think of the environment first – which means all their technologies are innovative and fresh introductions to the market; but most importantly, their products are ahead of the game, create healthier environments, and ensure food security.

Industry

Pest control is essential to the protection of the environment as well as public health. According to a story reported by Times Live, the Chinese Pest Control Association believes that a rapidly warming planet‚ increasing pace of urbanisation and booming trade and tourism have led to an increase in disease-carrying organisms. This supports the point that effective pest control is needed to improve the quality of life for people in Southern Africa and the world over.

Challenge

Tienie Jordaan, the Financial Director of Coopers ES, says that the company needed to upgrade and streamline the systems in order to give their client base better service. Their priorities were creating an integrated system, improving service levels and reducing costs, connecting all business units on an online live platform, ensuring system high availability, and IT security to safeguard against cyber-attacks and cyber-insecurities.

Business Solution

The Wide Area Network deployment with dual last mile connectivity, in conjunction with integrated voice services, managed firewall and backups have helped Coopers ES to achieve their cost savings and upgraded ICT requirements. “We have also been able to streamline business practices,” Jordaan says.

Overall experience with Vox

“Vox has impressive service levels –the quality of network performance and after sale backup. From the project management to the relationship with your project manager,” says Jordaan, “We have a one-on-one relationship with Vox, and the relationship manager is efficient – on a monthly basis he contacts us to monitor feedback and reports on our improvements.” This personalised account management made a difference in ensuring that things ran smoothly and that any challenges were dealt with efficiently.

Vox Advanced SLA – In2Food Case Study

Posted on 21 January 2020 by admin

About Company

In2Food is an award-winning food manufacturing company that supplies food products to carefully selected high-end grocery retailers and wholesalers, globally. They make everything from cakes to sauces and are known for being the largest fresh and prepared food supplier for high-end grocery store, Woolworths. In2Food have over 7000 people in their employ working in various office branches and food production facilities around the country.

About Industry

The food manufacturing industry in South Africa is concerned with the production and sale of food in the country. This includes farming, packaging, distribution, marketing and retail of food products.

The Business Challenge

With so many offices and factories in the country, In2Food were working with multiple Internet connections across their branches. Multiple Internet connections meant dealing with multiple service providers.

As a company that relies heavily on outsourcing their services, dealing with so many providers started becoming a headache. “When you have more than one service provider, it becomes a full-time job to manage them all,” says Danie Steyn, In2Food Group IT Manager, “This is not ideal when you have only two internal staff members in your IT team,” he adds.

The need to consolidate their internal Internet network was an apparent one, but so was the need to deal with one provider who the company could rely on for quick responses and turnaround times.

The Business Solution

To consolidate their internal network, In2Food adopted Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) from Vox. This allowed for one Internet connection across all their branches, but also provided the convenience of working with one service provider.

Having only one service provider took a lot of the burden away from the IT team, but it was still not enough for Steyn, who wanted to have a service provider he did not have to manage in any way.

“We decided to take advantage of Vox’s Advanced Service Level Agreement (SLA),” says Steyn. “It was exactly the type of service we were looking for. Vox’s premium SLA team is amazing. They are jacked up in every way and so supportive,” he adds.

Thanks to advanced SLA, Steyn and his team have been able to fully rely on Vox to keep their systems up and running and have enjoyed quick responses whenever the occasional problem has arisen.

Overall experience with Vox

In2Food brag about the service they have received from the Vox Advanced SLA team. “It’s great to have a team we can rely on,” says Steyn. “We always have uptime and can depend on Vox for fast answers to any questions we have about the systems we use,” he adds.

Steyn goes on to note the vast and helpful knowledge of the Vox team and their continual support despite internal change in the company. “Vox’s service is seamless, even when they have had staff turnover, we have never had any balls dropped by them,” says Steyn.

Vox Cloud Migration, Veeam Backup & Private APN – King Price Insurance Case Study

Posted on 2 October 2019 by admin

About King Price

King Price Insurance specialises in short term insurance. They have won numerous awards including Fastest Growing Insurance Company in South Africa in 2019 and are known as the only short-term insurer that lowers their insurance premium monthly.

Insurance Industry

Insurance companies hold personal details, financial details and the like, in their care. They deal with a lot of sensitive and private information. It is therefore imperative that these companies have a way to have all this information stored, archived and secured.

The Business Challenge

“Our company has grown by an average of 47% yearly over the last seven years and we are currently the front leader of growth in our industry,” says Sebastian Erasmus, Network and Security Engineer at King Price Insurance. “We wanted a vendor that would grow with us, a company that would help us adopt new products as and when we need them,” he adds.

Not only did King Price Insurance need to store their files safely and securely, and ensure their network is prepared for disaster recovery or network failure, they also needed to keep up with the pace of the insurance industry. Measures to increase efficiency and speed were a necessity.

“We used to back up our documents with hard drives and with another company that stores physical documents,” says Erasmus. “The problem with this method was that our documents would go through a lot of hands, not only posing a security risk, but allowing for many points of failure,” he adds, highlighting that this was not a seamless process.

Along with this, two of King Price’s core IT goals were to migrate to the Cloud and keep their core network at Teraco, building a hybrid cloud. They were looking for a service provider to help them meet these goals.

Aside from this, King Price had another issue they were dealing with. This was with regards to their company mobile SIMs, “We have had some employees abusing the company’s mobile data, but we were unable to control this or create accountability for it,” says Erasmus.

The Business Solution

King Price Insurance was introduced to Vox through Knekt Telecoms, a Vox Business Partner, so they already had Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) lines with Vox.

Vox was also the first company to offer King Price Fortinet, a leading firewall brand, of which Vox are platinum partners.

“The relationship we have with Vox has been nothing short of amazing,” says Erasmus. It’s because of this relationship that King Price found a company that could provide the scalability they were looking for. “Vox has a plethora of products to assist with Cloud migration and their presence at Teraco is also helpful,” says Erasmus.

He adds that migrating to the Cloud has given King Price the control they need to store their data on premise. “We are also set up for disaster recovery thanks to the network redundancy Vox helped us build,” says Erasmus.

Migrating to the Cloud has opened the doors of Veeam Backup, a backup software sold and supported by Vox, to King Price. “Veeam Backup has solved a lot of problems for us, it is safe, fast, reliable and efficient,” says Erasmus. “Vox also manages our backup, not only do we have peace of mind knowing who is control of our backup at all times, but we have saved time and money when we compare Veeam Backup and Vox Managed Backup Services to our previous traditional way of backing up,” he adds.

In addition to this, Vox’s private APN (Access Point Name) enabled King Price to monitor abuse on all their SIM cards, “We can now hold staff accountable for their use of company mobile data,” says Erasmus.

Overall experience with Vox

“Vox have gone above and beyond,” says Erasmus. “We get amazing products from them and their service delivery is proactive and always on point. They always take our budget into consideration,” he adds.

Erasmus adds that he has found Vox to have a great knowledge of technology, which is always helpful to their company, “Vox goes to extreme lengths to demo products,” he says and adds that Vox sitting in on monthly meetings for service reviews is valuable.

“Any issues we have had with Vox products have been on the fault of third-party vendors,” says Erasmus, “and Vox has been quick to help us with those issues and liaise with said vendors,” he adds.

Vox FTTH – Shelly van Heerden (Online Gamer) Case Study

Posted on 28 August 201929 November 2022 by infantry

About Shelly van Heerden

Shelly van Heerden and her husband are both gamers. They use Internet connectivity for a host of reasons which range from gaming online, gaming downloads, general browsing, streaming services and researching their hobbies in the tech industry.

Online Gaming

According to Business Live, the online gaming industry in South Africa is exploding. With online gaming, everybody gets to play regardless of age, gender and nationality. Since Internet latency can cost players their game, online gamers rely on a fast Internet speed to compete. Some gaming enthusiasts are also social media marketers and influencers, posting online video tutorials, vlogs, and videos of themselves playing live.

The Challenge

As a gaming enthusiast, van Heerden wanted to start live streaming her playing. At the time van Heerden’s Internet was powered by ADSL. “I experienced packet loss when I tried to live stream my playing. Essentially, the stream I was broadcasting would freeze at points, and my game graphics would largely stutter. Our ADSL connectivity was just not strong enough to live stream,” says van Heerden.

Van Heerden recalls how downloading anything with a large amount of data, especially games, would take a very long time while on their ADSL connection. “Some downloads could take a whole night to complete,” says van Heerden.

Van Heerden also comments on other limits she faced with an ADSL connection. “Sometimes when both my husband and I were connected at the same time, the Internet would lag,” she adds.

The Solution

Van Heerden and her husband adopted Fibre to the Home in 2017. “Vox was in our area at the time we wanted to get Fibre. We compared prices and packages with a couple of providers and found Vox to have the best price for what we wanted,” says van Heerden.

Van Heerden says it was Vox’s salesman who kept checking in on them that helped them settle on choosing Fibre from Vox. “We’re on a 100Mbps/50Mbps Openserve line with 600Gb of Fibre,” says van Heerden. “What used to take us a night to download on ADSL now takes us 10 minutes,” she adds.

Van Heerden loves the stability she gets from Vox Fibre. “I’m always around for practices and matches, and my team can rely on me. I love that my line speed is sufficient for me to always be updated first in the team, and I’m grateful for this opportunity,” she says.

Fibre has created a greater experience for streaming and gaming in the Van Heerden household “My husband and I can both be online and have absolutely no connectivity issues,” says van Heerden. “When watching Netflix, we wait about three seconds and then watch the whole show in high definition,” she says. “We stream YouTube like a dream,” she adds.

Overall experience with Vox

“Vox is awesome,” says van Heerden. She adds that the only time they have had issues with connectivity is when someone in their complex is installing a Fibre line. “We have had a few hiccups here and there but not nearly as many as when we had ADSL,” she says. “Plus, Vox representatives always come to check up on us to make sure our Fibre line is looking good. They rock,” she adds.

The van Heerden household have also added an IP phone from Vox in place of their landline, “What’s great about our IP phone is that we don’t have to rent a landline anymore,” says van Heerden.

Vox HaaS – Mastercare Case Study

Posted on 19 August 201929 November 2022 by infantry

About Mastercare

Mastercare specialises in appliance and electronic repair. Their services include installation, repairs to home appliances, servicing the retail trade in and out of warranty period, and end-user maintenance care plans. They also include value-added products to leading brands and retail chains of home appliances.

Industry

Businesses like Mastercare have a large part of their staff either behind the phone, working on a computer doing operational tasks, or in a warehouse doing manual labour. Companies in this industry need to have the infrastructure required to make and receive a large volume of calls daily. They also own a number of warehouses where security is a major concern. Since most desk jobs in these kinds of businesses are administrative and operational, electronic hardware does not have to be at the top end of the market, but due to time sensitive SLAs and multiple deadlines, very little IT downtime can be afforded.

The Business Challenge

“Our CEO, Wesley Rabie, cares a lot about being cost-efficient,” says Nico Oosthuizen, Director of IT at Mastercare. He adds that Mastercare have roughly 70 staff in their company. Oosthuizen says the company not only has a large need for communication, but also needs IT hardware as most companies do. “This is a huge cost to the company,” he says.

“Additionally, maintaining all our laptops, making sure they all have the required software they need along with the updates they require is crucial, but can take a lot of time,” says Oosthuizen.

The nature of Mastercare’s business is to deliver quality services in a timely manner. For this reason, very little downtime can be afforded in the business. “If any of our laptops give us trouble, we cannot waste time resolving these issues. We need our computers up and running quickly,” he adds.

The Business Solution

Mastercare already had Internet and voice over data from Vox, along with Guardian Eye security cameras. “Since we are nationwide, our company needs a great voice solution. We also have to have security cameras for our warehouses as security is a large concern for our business,” says Oosthuizen.

Vox prides itself in having holistic solutions for all businesses, so it was only natural for Mastercare to add another service from Vox. Mastercare found a cost and time saving solution with Vox’s hardware rental service, HaaS (Hardware as a Service). “Renting our hardware from Vox was a natural step. Not only is renting hardware cost efficient – pleasing to my CEOs ears -but having the added services of HaaS saves us on downtime,” he adds.

Oosthuizen explains how just the other day, his CEO’s PA started having issues with her computer. “She has important work to do and can’t afford not having a computer. We logged a ticket with Vox and in five to 10 minutes, we had a response saying a technician would be sent out to look at it,” adds Oosthuizen.

Mastercare has also added Office 365 to their package so that their software stays synced and up-to-date across the business.

Oosthuizen comments that having HaaS and the added insurance that comes with the service, gives him great peace of mind. “If all our hardware had to be suddenly be stolen, our business would not be affected. The hardware will be replaced the next day,” he says. “We can’t go on without our laptops, they help us with the daily running of our business,” he adds.

Overall experience with Vox

Oosthuizen says their company has benefited from the great service they have received from Vox, “At Mastercare, we’re completely satisfied with Vox. Their turnaround time is great. Not just with HaaS, but they’re also quick to respond when our Internet or phone lines happen to go down,” says Oosthuizen.

Commenting specifically on the HaaS service, Nico says that when their computers have died due to normal wear and tear, Vox has been quick to replace them and have been great with following up on all their queries.

“All of Vox’s products and services are scalable to our business,” says Oosthuizen. “As we’ve grown, Vox has grown with us,” he adds.

Vox FTTB and Firewall – Kloof Senior Primary School Case Study

Posted on 19 July 201929 November 2022 by infantry

About Kloof Senior Primary School

Kloof Senior Primary School is a co-educational public school in the heart of Kloof, a suburb of greater Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal. The school offers quality tuition from Grade 4 to Grade 7. They run a variety of academic, cultural and sporting programs and are made up of 45 staff members and 435 learners.

Industry

Schools are learning environments with numerous administrative functions. Internet connectivity is an essential resource for both learning and necessary admin tasks. Since schools embody a host of young learners they are responsible for, security is imperative. Public schools also need to be conscious of spend and should employ high quality cost-effective solutions.

The Business Challenge

Before getting Vox Fibre to the Business, Bernice Love, Principal of Kloof Senior Primary says the school always had connection issues. “Our connection was never stable and staff members often complained about the Internet outages,” she says.

Internet connectivity is a necessary resource in any learning environment. Bernice Love explains how extended downtime in the classroom as well as in the administrative departments of the school started becoming a problem.

Then there was the issue of security. “When it comes to technology, some of our learners are smarter than us. They know our tech vulnerabilities and how to get onto our systems,” says Principal Love. The learners are also at risk when it comes to cyber security on the school premises. “You’ll always get a few learners who will test the boundaries and google inappropriate words. This has been done a few times,” says Love.

Kloof Senior Primary knew they needed to take action and protect their staff and learners from cyber security vulnerabilities and risks.

The Business Solution

Kloof Senior Primary School got 3 different quotes for Fibre to the Business. They settled on the one that came highly recommended, Vox. “A person from our area here in Kloof told us Vox had great service, they were locally based and had a quick turnaround time, so we went with their recommendation,” says Love.

“Ever since we’ve gotten fibre from Vox we’ve never been down for more than an hour except for one time when rats got hold of cabling in the area and everyone was down for the day,” she adds.

Principal Love says that she hardly gets any more complaints from her staff about Internet outages and adds that the minimal complaints she has received of late have had to do with internal issues and not Vox.

Having a stable Internet connection has allowed the school to become more efficient as well. “When it comes to communication, we’re almost paperless. Having fibre has helped us better communicate with our community of learners and parents,” says Love.

To keep the local network safe, and the school information and resources private and secure, Kloof Senior Primary School, employed a managed firewall service from Vox. “Having a firewall has helped us secure our network. We haven’t had any issues with learners searching for inappropriate words in the last three years. They may search, but they won’t find what they’re looking for,” says Love.

Overall experience with Vox

“The service we’ve received from Vox has been prompt. Any issues we’ve had has been quickly resolved. Our account manager, Thobelani, is extremely efficient and we can count on him when we need action,” says Principal Love.

Kloof Senior Primary School has added an LTE failover connection, a switchboard and are currently installing uncapped voice from Vox. “VoIP calls will save us money and we’re always looking for cost effective solutions for our school,” says Love.

Vox Managed IT – Daly Morris Fuller Case Study

Posted on 20 June 201929 November 2022 by infantry

About Daly Morris Fuller Inc

Daly Morris Fuller Inc is an established attorneys firm based in Westville, Durban. The practice advises in all areas of the law and aims to provide clients with a personal, prompt and cost-effective service. They are made up of 38 staff whose roles range from support to professional.

Industry

It is critical for companies in the law industry to have an IT environment that is up-to-date, compliant and secure. Law firms deal with time-sensitive and confidential information and are expected to deliver a highly professional service.

The Business Challenge

For Daly Morris Fuller Inc, the problem started with the switchboards. “They were so old we couldn’t even re-record our voicemail without paying exorbitant amounts. This was especially problematic when our company changed its name,” says Chantele Schutzler, a Director at Daly Morris Fuller Inc.

Daly Morris Fuller Inc began sourcing quotes for a new PBX. During this time, they began a full introspection of their company’s IT environment and decided to upgrade from ADSL to fibre connectivity. Unfortunately, their ADSL provider (their IT company) was unable to lay fibre cabling down and they had to look elsewhere.

Around the same time, the company’s 5 year-old-computers were tired and had outdated software. Daly Morris Fuller Inc spoke to their IT company about renting computers, but they only had a rent to buy option and since the cost structure would change, they needed to source more quotes.

Schutzler didn’t want to deal with multiple service providers for each solution. Her concern was that they would most likely lay blame on each other when something happened to go wrong. They wanted to deal with one service provider only.

Vox was able to provide all the solutions Daly Morris Fuller Inc were looking for.

The Business Solution

Daly Morris Fuller Inc decided to take an audit of their IT environment and everything their practice needed to function. They got quotes from their IT company as well as from other service providers.

Candice Piché from Bluedoors, a Vox Business Partner, introduced Schutzler to the solutions Vox offered. Vox was the provider Daly Morris Fuller Inc were looking for. Working with Vox meant the company could deal with one service provider with various solutions to meet all their requirements.

They signed up with Vox for a 50Mbps uncapped broadband line and an uncapped voice bundle. From there they inquired about hardware rental from Vox and signed up for Vox’s Hardware as a Service (HaaS). “Renting makes sense. At first, I was skeptical about renting second hand hardware, but after some investigating, I realised it was not so much the quality of the hardware, but of the software. You don’t need a brand new laptop to have a state-of-the-art computer,” says Schutzler.

To keep their software up-to-date and their IT environment secure, they signed up for a fully managed IT service from Vox, which includes migration to Office 365, server support, network support, desktop support, email security, managed firewall and cabling.

“Half of our staff now have laptops and with everyone having access to OneDrive through Office 365, they have the ability to work from home,” says Schutzler. “We have the latest versions of everything along with Mimecast which we never had before. Mimecast has blocked emails and saved us from cyber-attacks. We have been hacked before, but with Mimecast we now have peace of mind,” she adds.

Renting makes sense. You don’t need a brand new laptop to have a state-of-the-art computer.

Overall experience with Vox

“Switching everything over to Vox took about 9 months in total. This included laying fibre down, installing switchboards, migrating everything over to Office 365, taking over the entire IT environment and providing rented hardware to the company. During this time, we would always receive status updates. It was great to be kept in the loop,” says Schutzler.

Schutzler says that dealing with one person makes the service experience easy and enjoyable. “Candice from Bluedoors has been amazing to work with,” says Schutzler. Daly Morris Fuller Inc are satisfied that they can call whenever they have any queries. Having someone on-site once a week to help with their on-site requests is also helpful.

Schutzler adds that everything else like server support, firewall management, network support and cabling is dealt with in the background and runs seamlessly.

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