Triple4 launches new hosted offering for SMEs

The new offering, Hosted Business Resources, offers SMEs Microsoft Exchange, Lync and Sharepoint delivered as a service from Triple4's fully redundant data centre.

It's widely accepted that SMEs are any economy's prime engines of job creation and innovation. In South Africa, it is believed that SMEs employing fewer than 50 people provide around 68% of private sector jobs, and generate some 60% of gross domestic product.

"In a country like South Africa, SMEs are absolutely vital on a number of fronts, and ICT has a key role to play in making them more competitive," says Scott Orton, sales director at Triple4. "However, all too often ICT acts as a hindrance rather as an enabler for the busy entrepreneur; that's why we have developed this hosted option to reduce both the costs and the management burden."

SME can operate like a corporate

According to Orton, Triple4's Hosted Business Resources offering will enable SMEs to gain the agility they need to operate anywhere there is an Internet connection. For example, the Hosted Lync service means that an SME employee is always on the corporate telephone system wherever he or she happens to be, and can access documents and a collaboration platform via SharePoint.

"This offering allows an SME to operate like a corporate, but without the overheads in capital and management time that in-house ICT systems require," Orton says. "There are also huge administrative and cost advantages when it comes to the purchase of licences for Microsoft's server products."

Moving ICT offsite to the premises of a trusted service provider in this way does require good connectivity, but a good ADSL line is sufficient, Orton says. The monthly fee includes full support from Triple4's call centre. And because the applications and data are housed in Triple4's data centre at ContinuitySA, both are fully protected against disaster. ContinuitySA acquired 50% of Triple4 in 2011.