The Open Society Foundation for South Africa (OSF-SA) is a “not for profit” organisation committed to promoting the values, institutions and practices of an open, no-racial and non-sexist, democratic, civil society. We are based in Pinelands, Cape Town and have approximately 20 staff.

OSF-SA invited Netsurit in early 2016 to make a proposal as we were searching for a new I.T service provider. Based on their proposal and our interaction with members of their team we signed a 12month SLA with them effective 1 May 2016.

With their Senior Technology Advisor, Darren, Jacobs, we agreed on a short-term IT Roadmap which would address upgrading, modernising, improving out IT infrastructure. This impacted both software and hardware areas. I found Darren well informed, extremely responsive and eager to find ways to make our lives easier from an IT perspective.

The Key objectives of the Roadmap included amongst others:

1. Highlighted current technology risks and challenges and provide effective remediation options.
2. Assist with high-level technology costing for expected projects.
3. Facilitate the prioritisation of Technology remediation.
4. Identify areas of cost savings/simplification in technology/telecommunucations and allied services
5. To keep OSF-SA and Netsurit “on the same page” to manage expectations and timelines.

To date Netsurit have facilitated the following projects:

1. Migration to Office 365 with end-user adoption training by a professional facilitator
2. Mimecast email hygiene and archiving
3. Installation of sonicwall firewalls with content filtering and weekly/monthly usage reports
4. New ruckus WiFi access points
5. Setup new dell server
6. Security assessment to identify vulnerabilities
7. Implement cloud based back up system
8. Present to OSF-SA staff the risks and dangers of poor IT security and advise best practice
9. Upgraded all existing laptops to ensure more efficient and reliable performance

Netsurit through interactions with the team have proven in a very short time to be a responsive, caring, professional technology partner and we look forward to a long and mutually beneficial partnership

Saleem Mukuddem
Finance and Operations Director.