CASE STUDY
T
rustco Holdings is a dual listed
diversified Namibian financial
services group that invests and
operates in sustainable high growth
assets in emerging markets. Employing
900 people, the company operates from
three business segments – insurance
and investments; resources; and banking
and finance. However, Christo Du Raan,
COO IT Hardware and Infrastructure at
Trustco, says that the company got to
the point where it needed to change its
whole business model when it came to
infrastructure, so started to look at what
was available in the market.
“Hyperconvergence was the new thing on
the block and we found that Nutanix seemed
to be the most mature in that department,”
said Du Raan. for product b, c or d until we find the one
that works for us.
“We did a community edition testing first and
it’s been pretty much smooth all the way
from inception to running our VMs and VDIs.” “There is no tendering process because these
are the things that make us slow. We have
a trial server just to test new technologies
until we say, ‘right this fits the criteria and
we want to stay with the system’. Make no
mistake, we’ve implemented systems having
spent a few million on it and quit it a week or
two later, because that is what the company
is. You win some, you lose some.”
Du Raan said that Trustco do not follow the
strict rules that large corporates follow when
it comes to its tender process.
“We like to do things quickly and fail quickly,”
said Du Raan.
Solution
“I’ve been with the company for 13 years
and we look at what we want and what there
is in the market and say ‘let’s go for product
a’. We then test it and if we don’t like it, go
Trustco’s aim over the first two years was to
get its infrastructure consolidated and get
the new Nutanix solutions in operation.
Then earlier this year, the company
explored the Nutanix software stack a little
further and elected to license Prism Pro and
implement Leap.
“We’re still in the baby stages, but we’ve
seen with the Leap product that we can
actually bring the stack closer to one
solution,” said Du Raan.
“Our next big planning would be to get Prism
Pro up and running and get Leap for all our
clusters, and then we’ll take it from there
“The next step is to move away slowly and
maturely from the remote desktop services
into Nutanix Frame and push applications to
the desktop.
“Africa is not there yet in terms of hybrid-
cloud services, especially in Namibia. The
WE’RE STILL IN THE BABY STAGES, BUT
WE’VE SEEN WITH THE LEAP PRODUCT
THAT WE CAN ACTUALLY BRING THE
STACK CLOSER TO ONE SOLUTION.
Internet is not reliable enough and our ISPs
are not mature enough to handle cloud.
“There are a few players in the market that
seem to be able to stretch from coast-to-coast,
so we’ll see where we’re at in the future, but
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