Azure Case Studies
Trusted By
Netsurit Case Study: Komati Fruit
Komati Fruit slashes costs, improves processes and secures data by moving workloads to Microsoft’s cloud with Netsurit
Komati Fruit, the leading private producer and exporter of sub-tropical fruit in South Africa, has moved to the Microsoft Azure cloud with Netsurit, optimising costs and freeing up its own IT team to focus on business improvement instead of IT operations.
The family business exports over 5.5 million cartons of citrus annually to more than 30 countries worldwide. As a leader in the industry, Komati Fruit has always turned to technology to maximise outputs.
The purchase drivers
Komati Fruit had been with its previous technology service provider for many years, in a hosted data centre environment. The company exco realised that an IT revamp could reduce cost and complexity as well as make it easier to interact with the business on the whole.
While exploring service providers, the business contacted Netsurit to discuss the value offering. The company first met with the Netsurit team in July 2021, when its exco wanted to explore different cloud technologies to de-risk the business from an uptime perspective.
Although Komati was using Microsoft 365 for Business at the time, they believed more could be done to improve processes. They also use many bespoke applications for production, a factor that was always their excuse for not turning to Microsoft Azure.
Komati was also comparing monthly and annual return on investment in tandem with service levels. Importantly, they wanted a more scalable technology platform that could accommodate rapid growth as they acquire new farms and offer potential per-head cost savings as Komati grows. Because their sites are in rural areas, they have significant connectivity limitations so Komati needed a solution that could meet their connectivity requirements.
Business objectives
Komati is unaware of other local fruit growers who are running the bulk of their workloads in Azure. They wanted to take the lead. Security was a key driver and having Microsoft 365 Business Premium – one solution to run the business securely from anywhere – gives them an enormous level of comfort. It comes with threat protection, data protection, and device management features that safeguard their systems and information.
Azure’s renowned scalability is a key benefit for the organisation, as the business scales during peak packing seasons and then slows down in off-peak times. In addition, Azure Autoscaling lets the business set up automated processes that scale its virtual machines (VMs) up or down to optimise deployment costs. As a result, production is never impacted when additional resources are needed.
The fact that Komati could place all their workloads into Azure and not be limited to just one data centre has made all the difference. Netsurit also upgraded all Komati’s end users to Microsoft Business Premium and still showed significant savings. For a business accustomed to a traditional terminal server environment, Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop has delivered significant speed and latency improvements and a better overall end-user experience.
The solution
Komati Fruit shortlisted three providers, but Netsurit provided the most convincing business case. The company did not want on-premises data centre solutions; instead, the team wanted a fundamental change. Having already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, Azure was also less expensive for the organisation.
The Netsurit team was able to demonstrate in-depth knowledge of the solution and show real-world examples of projects for other businesses across multiple industries. Netsurit also has multiple Microsoft Gold Competencies and Advanced Certifications, which added to its credibility as a provider.
As much as Komati Fruit was seeking to cut costs, the company placed greater value on credibility and knowledge. Netsurit proved to be the most expensive service provider but was chosen because the two businesses shared similar values. Technical ability aside, Komati felt that they could walk this journey with Netsurit. There was more to the team than just the solution we needed in the short term. Netsurit certainly portrayed the depth of skills to assist with other technology requirements in Komati’s business. Netsurit provided a dedicated project manager who not only focused on the implementation but also coordinated all our third parties who were involved.
Challenges overcome
There were significant challenges with the local Microsoft Azure Data Centre as there were few resources available. Netsurit went back to the drawing board and chose to provision services in Azure North Europe and implement Azure Virtual Desktop to enable Komati Fruit’s users to access their applications faster.
Printing proved to be a challenge too. The print vendor’s testing during the proof of concept
(POC) period was inadequate and resulted in delayed printing, which had a significant impact on the production process.
If printing doesn’t happen timeously, trucks cannot leave the premises, creating a ripple effect down the line. Transport companies have penalties in place for trucks that are delayed to the port – every day incurs a $30 000 penalty for Komati Fruit and is increasing as the rand devalues.
Working closely with the Microsoft team Netsurit succeeded in securing the relevant resources allocated to Azure South Africa North and then migrated the workloads back to South Africa. This essentially resulted in a double project for Netsurit, but there was no additional cost to the customer.
The solution components in detail
- Netsurit migrated Komati Fruit’s systems from an on-premises data centre to Azure North Europe. The team worked closely with third-party vendors and all work was completed after hours and after 14:00 on Saturdays when production slowed down.
- Once resources were available in Azure South Africa North, Netsurit migrated these workloads across. A significant amount of manual intervention was required around the bespoke third-party applications and, in some instances, Netsurit had to set them up from scratch instead of being able to use the standard migration tools.
- The project was managed from end to end for the customer in an attempt to make the transition from one provider to the next as seamless as possible. The heart of Komati Fruit’s applications works on Microsoft SQL, so Netsurit had to work very closely with the company’s third-party database administrator to make sure everything was set up correctly before scheduling each of the other third parties to do their work. Regular meetings were held to touch base.
- Azure Virtual Desktop worked surprisingly well. Although Netsurit has rolled it out for several other customers, it was interesting to see it operate in an agricultural environment across multiple regions, giving the customer significantly better speeds than its end users had experienced before.
The benefits for Komati Fruit
- The company is using some of the best technology the market has to offer.
- It has de-risked its business by removing it from a traditional data centre environment
- Certain historical complexities from a routing perspective were simplified during the migration process.
- The business is getting much better service levels from Netsurit and is spending much less.
- There has been zero downtime since the migration.
Komati was skeptical about going this route because they know there are many pitfalls with some of their legacy applications. Not only did everything work post-migration, but it all worked much better. They used to have endless challenges with their backup success rates and since the move to Azure Backups, they have better auditing and a level of comfort that their data is available offsite in case of fire, theft, or other business disruption.
Looking to the future
Netsurit is proactive in its approach and has developed a three-year technology roadmap for Komati Fruit.
Strategically they would like Netsurit to be more involved in all their applications and to see where Netsurit can optimise and continuously improve their overall IT ROI. This has been the biggest IT project Komati has ever undertaken, and they have stood by their decision to work with Netsurit all the way. The team gave 150% on this project, working extensively after hours to ensure Komati did not experience a moment of downtime. Everything was done timeously, and the knowledge that Inobits, Netsurit’s professional services team, brought to the table was phenomenal. It is only when you are faced with serious challenges that a relationship is tested, and Netsurit certainly passed with flying colours.
– June 2022
Standard Bank
Customer Challenge: Standard Bank is undertaking a massive move of on-premises workloads into Azure. A major challenge is to enable efficient operations around Azure services that will reduce operational effort, improve efficiency, reduce costs, improve security and reduce the time to delivery of new solutions. The Azure operational processes and tools were not integrated into those used to manage the existing on-premises infrastructure which made it difficult to achieve the goals of the Azure implementation.
Partner response/solution: Netsurit / Inobits staffed a Azure cloud engineering team which implemented solutions for operational management of the Azure estate. Some of the changes implemented included a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) for Azure resources which integrated into the existing CMDB for on-premises. Fully automated provisioning of new resources via Azure DevOps was implemented. The process to create new resources was integrated into the existing Remedy ITSM system; this will allow administrators and developers to initiate the provisioning of Azure workloads and environments through self-service, with approval workflows and updating of the CMDB. Netsurit / Inobits resources also implemented Azure security services to better detect the workloads and data in Azure, as well as governance controls such as Blueprints, policies, roles, monitoring and cost-management to ensure the Azure environment complied with operational requirements.
Key benefits: The automation, security and governance solutions implemented by Netsurit / Inobits consultants greatly improved the operational efficiency of Azure solutions in Standard Bank; this reduced operational effort, reduced costs, improved security and allowed faster solution delivery, while integrating better with the existing IT management processes and tools. All of the above increased the confidence of Standard Bank in Azure technologies which helped drive a massive increase in Azure adoption in 2020-2021.
– June, 2022
Select PPE
Customer Challenge: Select PPE had a server infrastructure at a third-party hosting provider. The selected infrastructure was not cost-effective, scalable or flexible enough to meet the changing needs of a growing business. The core business of the company is e-commerce so the infrastructure needs to be extremely reliable, secure and able to adjust to sudden increases in transactions
Partner response/solution: Netsurit / Inobits created a business case to show that Azure would offer the best solution to the requirements. A migration plan was developed and executed to move the workloads from the hosted environment to an Azure IaaS solution. Care was taken to minimize business disruption. Azure networking and security resources were implemented to provide reliable and secure access to applications. Once the workloads were in Azure a process was started to optimize the environment using Azure capabilities to provide high-availability and scaling. Azure workloads implemented included Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), Azure Front Door, Azure Application Gateway and SQL Server.
Key benefits: The new Azure solution provided additional performance and scalability that resolved serious capacity problems that had previously plagued the e-commerce application. Users could easily access applications over Azure Virtual Desktop which was invaluable during the COVID-19 lockdown. The high-availability and reliability components made the solution more resilient against failures. The company is now set up for further business expansion using the Azure solution that is now in place.
– 11 June, 2021
The State Security Agency (SSA)
Customer Challenge: As a key component of the security cluster in the South African National Government, the State Security Agency (SSA) needs to be extremely vigilant and careful about security and information protection. Consequently the SSA had been conservative about adopting cloud solutions, preferring strict on-premises infrastructure. This caused challenges as the available on-premises infrastructure had finite capacity and important parts of it was becoming obsolescent. The organization also perceived it was falling behind in technology with limited practical knowledge of cloud solutions in practice. This impeded the function of SSA as a body who needed to provide guidance to other parts of government on how to securely implement technology. SSA needed a way to securely start exploring cloud solutions and modernize its IT infrastructure in such a way that critical assets would remain compliant with the stringent security and information protection requirements. SSA also needed solutions to enable secure access to applications and data on their on-premises infrastructure from outside their secure network, specifically to enable employees to remain productive during COVID-19 lockdown.
Partner response/solution: Netsurit / Inobits engaged with SSA to plan a set of cloud solutions that would resolve challenges with the IT infrastructure and allow the organization to get real cloud experience while maintaining security and information protection requirements. The goal was set to demonstrate that a modern solution incorporating Azure and Microsoft 365 cloud elements could be even more secure than the equivalent on-premises services. A training program was started to educate SSA IT Professionals and management on cloud services concepts to ensure adequate understanding of the products, features and considerations. Azure workloads that were implemented included IaaS, Azure SQL, Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure Storage, Sentinel, Arc, Azure Monitor and others. Work has started on implementing Microsoft 365 hybrid workloads specifically incorporating security and information protection features.
Key benefits: SSA went from zero to over $5000 per month Azure utilization. SSA IT and security personnel have had opportunity to start engaging with cloud services and build their confidence. This solution will now be expanded to start providing greater benefits to the organization. Possibly the biggest impact of this project is the case study this provides for other government entities who have been conservative about cloud services adoption while the SSA as a key entity had not adopted cloud services. The SSA implementation should provide confidence to SSA to allow them to confidently guide other government entities in the adoption of Microsoft cloud services which should enable larger scale adoption of Azure and Microsoft 365 in the rest of the South African public sector.
– 24 June, 2021
Nal’ibali Trust
National reading campaign for children gets Pastel in the cloud powered by Netsurit and Windows Virtual Desktop.
Business finances. Cloud accounting software lets you do that from any device or location.
“Netsurit has been Nal’ibali Trust’s IT support partner and managed services provider since September 2019,” says Saleem Mukuddem, CFO of Nal’ibali Trust. “By understanding our needs, Netsurit has been able to demonstrate innovation by building a bespoke solution that has transformed the way our finance team access Pastel remotely, a business-critical function.”
Netsurit moved the organisation’s Pastel solution to Windows Virtual Desktop, a Microsoft Azure-based system for virtualising Windows operating systems and providing virtualised desktops and applications in the cloud.
The need for this solution was a direct requirement from the business to support a work from home (WFH) culture prior to the lockdown. This decision and the required investment were vindicated when lockdown was implemented and is still paying dividends as remote working becomes the norm.
While the immediate requirement was to enable staff to access business-critical systems securely from home, the business has also been able to achieve the following from this innovative solution:
- Deliver the service via a remote desktop services (RDS) multi-session Windows 10 experience.
- Allows for managing and provisioning access to data across devices easily and securely, while ensuring adherence to security and compliance regulations.
- Faster access to the applications than before.
- Business continuity due to the business application running 24×7 in the cloud.
- Increased staff productivity as people are accessing business-critical systems securely from home.
- Automated backups mean data is safe and recoverable.
- Reduction in hardware on-premises, therefore reducing capex spend going forward.
- No reliance on onsite systems requiring power and support.
- Remote support is cheaper than onsite support, which is better for the client.
“We have been very impressed with the solutions, mindset and responsiveness of Netsurit’s highly qualified team,” Mukuddem says. “Their knowledge and guidance about setting up and migrating Pastel to the Microsoft Azure Cloud environment made the transition a successful one. It was delivered on time and within budget. We would highly recommend Netsurit as your managed services and cloud solutions provider. The only thing you need is a Pastel licence and a desire to move away from on-premises hardware.”
