As the global economy shifts, more people than ever are choosing to live in cities, where vital resources and quality-of-life amenities tend to be more concentrated and accessible. Cape Town has likewise become an increasingly popular destination to live, work and play, making it one of the fastest-growing cities in South Africa in terms of rates of urbanisation.
Located at the southernmost tip of Africa, the City of Cape Town (CCT) is a world-class municipality that strives to provide all of its citizens with the services, facilities, governance and transparency that they deserve.
“We want them to feel empowered to make things happen for themselves because they live in Cape Town. We don’t want to be the obstacle to their success, we want to be the facilitator. We want to save them time. And in return, we want them to care—give us feedback, report faults, use our services and become an active citizen,” says Omeshnee Naidoo, CIO at CCT.
The CCT is a localised but highly distributed organisation that consists of a total of 632 sites spread across Cape Town. Of these sites, only 140 had print servers, leaving hundreds of sites with unmanaged printing. When the CCT removed all remote servers as part of its strategy to consolidate its infrastructure within two data centres, the situation was exacerbated. For the sites that did retain locally managed print servers, the IT teams began to experience hardware failures in older equipment. This ageing server hardware was not replaced, which resulted in more unmanaged sites.
It also resulted in frustrated end users and exasperated support staff. When these servers failed, they occasionally left entire sites unable to print for days on end. In the Cape Town Civic Centre, the primary site that houses over 3,000 users, the IT team experienced regular problems with the server. This was further complicated by the virtually managed environment.
The IT team consulted with Microsoft and several other vendors to assist with the problems they were experiencing, which ranged from hardware issues to application crashes. But expiring warranties limited the amount of support they were able to receive. This meant the relatively lean IT team was investing valuable time in routine print management and infrastructure maintenance, creating a drain on resources that had a negative impact on other, more critical projects.
“Within a short period, where print-server hardware began to fall out of warranty, we sought a solution that would give the same management as print servers but would eliminate the risk of downtime of a print server,” Naidoo explains.
“When the need was identified in CCT for better print management, we evaluated options and were able to quickly turn to PrinterLogic as an easy to deploy solution that would effectively meet and exceed their tender requirements.”
“We considered many options but few could offer a solution that we were seeking. We went out on tender for a product that could meet all our requirements, and PrinterLogic proved to be the successful bidder with their solution.”
Naidoo adds: “The implementation was one of the quickest and most seamless that we have ever done!”
PrinterLogic is represented in South Africa by Blue Label Technology Solutions (BLTS). BLTS is an established value-added distributor to many leading southern African IT channel partners.
“When the need was identified in CCT for better print management, we evaluated options and were able to quickly turn to PrinterLogic as an easy to deploy solution that would effectively meet and exceed their tender requirements. We’re delighted that the implementation was successful and look forward to further similar implementations in the future,” states CEO, Tito Pereira.
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