CWG Ghana, a total IT products and services provider, and NetApp, a leading technology storage provider, have held a seminar to introduce the latest updates on products and services to customers.

One major product that was introduced to the participants was FlexPod, an integrated infrastructure designed and built by NetApp and Cisco, a networking giant.

Integrated infrastructure is basically a hardware system that contains server hardware, disk storage system, networking equipment and systems management software all integrated into a single platform. 

The seminar had participants come from the IT departments of Vodafone, UT Bank, GCB Bank, EB Accion, Societe Generale, and GNPC, had presentations on how FlexPod helps reduce cost, turnaround time and speed up IT operations of companies.

Speaking at the forum, Funmi Alamu, Technical Account Manager at NetApp, explained that, as a data management focused company, NetApp is always focused on helping organisation save money by storing their data efficiently, hence the introduction of FlexPod.

She added that FlexPod helps institutions manage their data storage, network equipment, and softwares from one point instead of acquiring separate servers for each of these critical functions.

“FlexPod pulls your resources together. So instead of buying a server separately for storage, network and data processing, the NetApp FlexPod converges infrastructure as one unit.”

She therefore called on chief information officers to change their thinking patterns from being the traditional builders of applications and data centres to become brokers of information services to meet their limited budgets.

“With our FlexPod architecture, a single click can help roll out services and give IT personnel faster time to deliver on their jobs and are therefore able to stay ahead of competition, reduce risk and more importantly, do more with less,” she said.

She added that, even though banks and leading industrial institutions are already running on other NetApp technology, FlexPod will make their storage and retrieval systems easier and faster.

The unique thing about FlexPod, according to her, is that the system has a guarantee of 99.99percent uptime, but aside that, “since every data is duplicated at a disaster recovery site, you can start up from the disaster recovery site easily.”

Olufemi Adeitan, Head of Finance and Operations at CWG Ghana, said one of the main policies of CWG is to make sure that as technology changes and more products and services are available, customers get the best of these latest products and service to help optimise their operations.

“Once these new technologies are available it is our duty to bring it to the attention of our clients, who stand to benefit from them,” he said.

He added that the seminar is one of the means through which CWG enlightens its customers on new technologies that can aid their work.

He added that FlexPod will reduce cost in operations by 50percent. “We believe that with this new innovation from NetApp there will be great changes with regards to cost since FlexPod has the capacity to reduce cost by half.”

Emmanuel Kehinde, Relationship Manager at Westcon Africa said as globalsoftware and hardware distribution company, Westcon is happy to partner with CWG and NetApp to educate customers on the benefits of using FlexPod and any other product and service from NetApp.

“NetApp is the number one storage device maker. They are very good with innovation from software to hardware and the services provided by CWG make CWG stand out among its peers. As a distributor, therefore, I am happy to liaise withCWG and NetApp to make IT clients happy. The new technologies introduced by NetApp can help businesses save cost and a lot of stress.”

Customers lauded the products of NetApp and the after sales services provided by CWG.

In the second quarter of 2014, Cisco announced that the joint sales of FlexPod had crossed US$3billion since its introduction four years ago. Moreover, FlexPod shipments grew by 81percent year-on-year in the quarter, translating to US$2billion in revenues on an annual run rate basis.

CWG Ghana is a member of CWG Plc, a leading provider of Information, and Communication Technology solutions services across West, Central, and East Africa. CWG is also a leading cloud services provider, enabling Africa’s SMEs to exploit cloud services for commerce and management.

As the foremost enabler of business in the countries of operation, CWG’s technology powers more than 80percent of businesses in the financial industry and more than 50percent of the telecoms industry in Nigeria –the largest economy in Africa. 

CWG Plc was named a World Economic Forum Global Growth Company (WEF-GGC) at the 2014 WEF Africa.