Ubuntu Technologies is an independent black economic empowerment company which boasts nearly 20 years of experience within the ICT industry in South Africa, with an excellent track record of successfully awarded and managed contracts across the Government, State Owned Enterprises and Corporate sectors.
Attaining the objectives at the heart of a successful business is at the core of everything that Ubuntu does, which it achieves through a policy of consulting, designing, implementing, managing and supporting IT infrastructures services and solutions best suited to the requirements. Since its inception, Ubuntu Technologies has set out to fulfil its company mission of providing customers with the expertise and assistance they need in order to render their organisations efficient, reliable, predictable and, perhaps most crucially, flexible within markets whose forcesare constantly changing.
Originally formed in the late-90s to address what was a severe shortage of truly empowered companies operating in the South African technology space, Ubuntu today is placed to offer the full range of business services. Ubuntu’s competences range all the way from initial strategic infrastructure needs-analyses, through the accurate specification of exactly the infrastructure required to satisfy these requirements, to the configuration and rollout of the requisite solutions to the customers’ premises. Its after-care work is also noteworthy, and comprises support and ongoing maintenance services as well as the retirement, disposal and replacement technology with more current solutions – a vital component in such a fast-moving sector.
Doubtlessly in large part due to work of companies such as Ubuntu comes the news that Public Sector ICT spending in South Africa has never been higher than at present, and is forecast to riseyet further to $707.6m by 2019. New research by Frost and Sullivan on this expenditure in South Africa predicts this vast rise from the $615.9m spent on ICT platforms in 2014, 73.1% of which was accounted for by investments in what it labelled, “managed services, combined with fixed and non-cellular connectivity,” according to the research. Naila Govan-Vassen, the ICT industry analyst at Frost and Sullivan, said the projected increase in public sector spending in ICT will “centre around updating IT hardware and data centres and on supporting systems integration, especially within the health, education and administrative departments.
“South Africa’s National Development Plan, the National Integrated ICT Policy Green Paper, and the Broadband Policy are expected to drive the development and uptake of e-government services,” Govan-Vassenadded. This will be reliant on some significant infrastructure investment, however, as well as the tackling of legacy issues and security concerns around cloud computing, in order to ensure its successful implementation. The research report highlighted that, currently, the majority of public sector expenditure on ICT is limited to covering day to day requirements, and that, “defining clear roles for ICT agencies and building partnerships with the private sector will be crucial to this endeavour. The breadth of knowledge and expertise that the private sector can bring on board will complement the government’s commitment to strengthen ICT integration and accelerate digitisation in the South African public sector,” the report concluded.
Ubuntu’s own growth over a relatively short lifetime has been remarkable, from a small technology consultancy supplying hardware to the provincial and local government of the Free State, to where it stands today as a powerful group of companies with a national footprint possessing the ability to span networking, communications, client, server, storage and audio visual environments. Its remaining at the pinnacle of such a drastically ever-developing industry has been dependent on the formation of important, influential partnerships over its lifetime. Perhaps most historic among these has been its teaming up in 2014 with leading global telecoms company, Aviat Networks, bringing together two companies with a combined revenue of over R6 billion.
The forming of Aviat-Ubuntu Telecommunications sought to bringUbuntu’s 17 years of local experience together with the technological edge atAviat’s disposal, given its 50 years of providing microwave network solutions the world over, and thus provide best-of-breed products and a full range of service options to both public and private telecommunications operators. “Aviat-Ubuntu intends to be a force to be reckoned with in the telecommunications sector,” said Ubuntu CEO, Wandile Bereng at the time. “By joining forces, our two companies will be able to compete aggressively in the telecommunication sector, and will be able to expand our client base significantly.”
The new company has continued to be headed up by CEO Allen Tshabangu, whose more than 20 years of business experience has taken in the acquisitions of Sandton City, the V&A Waterfront and Canal Walk. “Aviat-Ubuntu aims to support the development of the country’s economic potential by leveraging off the unique expertise of the two partners,” he described. “We’re the new players on the telecommunications block, and we aim to make our presence felt in a way that will benefit all operators and the South African people as a whole.”