Local Microsoft development powerhouse, 3fifteen, a Britehouse Company has announced a new partnership with Vodacom Business, which will see its customers able to – on a per seat basis – rent access to Microsoft’s enterprise software solutions for a cost-effective, predictable monthly fee.

Vodacom will be responsible for managing the multi-tenant back-end systems required to host instances of Microsoft Exchange, Dynamics CRM, SharePoint and Office Communications Server in its own data centre, while 3fifteen will focus on configuring, customising and building the functionality its customers require from their software solutions.

“Software as a service is growing in popularity,” says Andrew McPhail, Business Development Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM at 3fifteen. He adds: “Customers choosing this path for the running of their IT systems are finding that the flexibility it allows them in increasing or decreasing the number of seats their company makes use of as and when required, as well as some abdication of responsibility when it comes to ensuring the uptime, reliability and performance of their systems are concerned, to be of real benefit.

“It allows them to focus on the running of their business instead of the running of their IT systems – something that’s always been of massive importance to smaller, specialist companies and becoming increasingly important to medium-sized companies looking to reduce their IT spend.”

McPhail says even though the new partnership with Vodacom is a significant move, it will change very little when it comes to how 3fifteen executes.

“We still go through as detailed a process when it comes to assisting our customers in detailing their business requirements and architecting a solution. The only difference is, the work is carried out on a system that is hosted in Vodacom’s data centre and not on our customers’ premises,” he says.

“What this partnership does allow us to do,” he continues, “is afford our customers a more flexible, cost-effective overall solution that’s centred on operational expenditure as opposed to capital expenditure.

“This in turn means their appetite is likely to be stronger for the solutions we propose and they’re more likely to gain increased value, faster,” he adds.

McPhail says 3fifteen believes this new partnership presents a glimpse into how IT systems will be rolled out and managed in the future, and provides both itself and its customers with a solid stepping stone into the cloud computing era.

“We’re intrigued to see how the market responds over the coming months,” he concludes.

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Britehouse subsidiary 3Fifteen, has, for a second year running, achieved sixth place in the Small Company Category (50 – 300 employees) in the annual Deloitte ‘Best Company to Work For Survey’. Britehouse Specialist SAP Division, a leading South Africa SAP consultancy firm employing close to 300 people improved its ranking significantly from the previous year and was also included in the top ten companies.

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