Smart Idea Group launched One Office suits into the market, powered by Huawei Cloud

The Smart Idea Group, established in 1999 previously known as Panasonic Business Systems, is a technology driven company that supplies a wide range of Interactive and Office Automation products and solutions. It is dedicated to placing IT and software solutions among small and medium enterprises to enhance their core product offering. The company has had a credible history spanning many years as a business leader, serving the needs of many 1000’s of SME’s and some of South Africa’s top JSE Listed Companies.

Why HUAWEI CLOUD?

  • The Smart Idea Group has created a niche market for itself by testing ideas for clients, before bringing these to market. A trusted advisor in the interactive, education and office solution space, and meeting the needs of business as well as education. Offering a quick turnaround with 24/7/365 service delivery from their branches and having responsive service in all regions in the economy is their imperative.

  • They enlisted the services of Huawei Cloud to brainstorm a solution for their new flagship office suite application, One Office which has been recently launched into the market. One Office now hosts Android and IOS Mobile Apps, as well as a Cloud App for PC and MAC. The Suite includes on premises server options, ERP options, video conferencing, remote working collaboration, document storage and sharing as well as a company intranet.

  • It has been development for over three years with the launch taking place this year. Offering a very competitive alternative to other office packages on the market, One Office needed an innovative and succinct cloud storage solution to meet the high demands of their business, as well as the One Office users to ensure a smooth user experience.

Previously, while running on other Cloud Services, The Smart Idea Group experienced a lapse in time as they logged issues on the system, and these were placed in a queue which took time to resolve. “We've worked with other large Cloud providers. The problem is that we're a relatively small fish in a really big pond so if we wanted to call them to say we need more power, we just couldn't get hold of a human being to help. We had email boxes that were between 80 and 100 Gigs. Other large providers would not have bothered, they just give you a ticket and you wait and hope”

——Steve Tetluk

Managing director

Customer testimony

Previously, while running on other Cloud Services, The Smart Idea Group experienced a lapse in time as they logged issues on the system, and these were placed in a queue which took time to resolve. “We've worked with other large Cloud providers. The problem is that we're a relatively small fish in a really big pond so if we wanted to call them to say we need more power, we just couldn't get hold of a human being to help. We had email boxes that were between 80 and 100 Gigs. Other large providers would not have bothered, they just give you a ticket and you wait and hope” said managing director, Steve Tetluk.

Challenges

Not being able to access cloud power as and when they required it.

Finding a cloud strategy which could support instant sharing, eliminating different versions of products during collaborations.

Slow processing speed due to 5000 machines accessing the system daily at the company.

Solution

Cloud computing, security, availability, performance, and scalability requirements are high. After comparing different cloud platforms, The Smart idea Group opted to select the Huawei CLOUD platform. The Huawei CLOUD team sat down with The Smart Idea Group to understand their challenges and requirements. The team identified a solution which would enable them to host their application on the cloud. “We had direct connection to Huawei in South Africa. We needed significant processing power to migrate our servers to the Cloud over a weekend. We didn't have enough processing power initially, but when we contacted the team at Huawei CLOUD, they made a plan and provisioned their biggest cloud server for our team and we got it done in time,” said Tetluk.

Benefits

Impressed with the quicker response time, having access to higher quality storage and processing speed, Tetluk expanded on how Huawei CLOUD had boosted his enterprise’s technological operations. “Huawei CLOUD is a local Cloud which means it's in our region, right here in Cape Town. It allows us to be POPI compliant making and we're not sending information out of the country. We're finding it very fast. We have our One Office clients requiring their platform communication 24/7 and our 5 000 machines communicating with us simultaneously, and the servers are operating well above spec. It's efficient and effective – simply put it works,” said Tetluk.