By EMEKA AGINAM

The Chief Executive Officer of  Venema Advies Nigeria Limited, Dick Venema weekend in Lagos said that  a professionally maintained information technology (IT) infrastructure could save organization operating costs (Opex) of between 20-30 per cent.

He said that the current practice where companies adopt what he described as ‘the break-fix model’ is costing companies a huge sum of money, adding that this is not the proper thing to do, adding that the lack of professional advice could also lead to this.

“This is not how it works, in most cases, equipment is not broken; it is just badly maintained. This is usually due to the absence technical knowledge of IT by consultants and bad advice from some of the IT companies. Very high IT cost results from this as companies just keep on spending.

Companies can optimise IT just by maintaining it well. That will reduce the cost that companies have by buying new equipment every time that something goes wrong. I think for most companies, they can save around 20 per cent to 30 per cent at least a year by just maintaining the environment right as in good service.

This however should not be limited to equipment but everything must be kept running smoothly. It all begins with the right advice and if the consultant who advises the company has no knowledge of what is happening in the IT world, he would not be able to advise the chief information officer (CIO) or CEO on the right solutions.’

Citing  internet connections as an example where many companies still run  on slow satellite connection while optic fibre cable (OFC) is available, running through the street, ge said that  though OFC connection may be expensive over satellite or aerial connection, it has the advantage of stability.

According to him,  “What we see in Nigeria is that most companies are spending a lot of money on IT and still it is not working. So what we would like to offer them is a free cloud assessment of the current environment and to see how we can upgrade to a private or public cloud without any or minimal capital cost. No public datacenter or rack space is needed. Your own private cloud in your company without high costs upfront. We deliver complete private clouds with subscription models for VMWare, Microsoft, Symantec, RES and Trend Micro.”

He said  that Venema  is partnering with a satellite firm, Immarsat, to bring capacities into the country at affordable prices to boost the economy, adding that connectivity is central to economic prosperity.  “The Global Express technology that Inmarsat presented at AfriCom in South Africa, promises to deliver a higher capacity for prices basically comparable to the fibre connections here in Nigeria.

So for companies which don’t have access to a fibre connection, they still can get this 50 megabytes (Mb) speed by satellite. We all know that we still have a long way to go in Nigeria for a complete fibre coverage and that a lot of companies are still on satellite, but reaching a 10-20Mb speed for really a comparable price, brings cloud computing closer for companies who do not have high capacity access now. Inmarsat even has a strategic alliance with Cisco to develop a platform for more advanced applications such as TV on demand, tele-presence and collaborative working.”, he explained.

He said the company is working towards delivering complete IT solutions together with its partners, adding that with current services and products, we deliver turnkey projects that are related to connectivity, to computing environments and to communication.

“We can build cloud or traditional ICT environments, we can transfer them, and we can maintain at any environment that is needed by a company. Together with our international partners, we all create the best possible IT solutions,” he said, urging companies to take advantage of the free assessment it is offering firms in the country to save cost and increase productivity.