Glenn McLean Wilson

Cais

What has the deployment of Vulani meant for your organization?

We have been able to satisfy customer requirements for improved management of their gateway and allowed management of the environment to some extent through the graphic interface.

Why did you not deploy commercial alternatives?

Price is the main reason for not deploying commercial alternatives. CISCO and other hardware alternatives are just to expensive for businesses in the SMB market in KZN.

Why did you not deploy open source alternatives or build your own solution from the open source components out there?

This would have meant I would have had to retain and pay for highly skilled extremely costly and scarce Linux resources. A business our size servicing the KZN market cannot sustain such an ongoing expense.

Describe your relationship with THUSA and provide an opinion on their service levels?

The relationship is friendly but professional. The service levels are definitely according to SLA and they have when required gone the extra mile to provide support outside of the SLA in order to assist us in a bind.

How was your choice of Vulani influenced by the fact that the developers, THUSA, are a South African business?  Do you consider this a risk?

Not at all, them being a South African locally based in KZN I feel is a major advantage, it allows person contact and relationship building. At to this being a risk, Any business is a risk, however we have discussed the Thusa business model and their future and find them to be one of the most stable IT development companies in KZN if not SA.

What would you like Vulani to do for you that it doesn’t already?

Provide more extensive monitoring of the environment (something like Nagios integrated into the package) and improved collaboration on their Mail offering (here a big point with our customers is Calendar sharing and Assistant manager mail management)

Robynne Erwin

SmartXchange

What has the deployment of Vulani meant for your organization?

For the first time we have a reliable server that provides us with the functionality we need and this includes automated backups.  This has increased our productivity and improved data integrity.

Why did you not deploy commercial alternatives?

As a not for profit company costs are always a major issue.  So, when Thusa offered to sponsor the software and the setup, it was heaven sent.

Why did you not deploy open source alternatives or build your own solution from the open source components out there?

Ignorance in terms of what was available.  We do not have the skills to develop our own solutions nor the funds to pay someone to do it for us.

Describe your relationship with THUSA and provide an opinion on their service levels?

We have an excellent relationship.  Furthermore, the work that they have done for us has been of the highest standard.  Their team is very knowledgeable and always willing to share information.  A huge benefit for us is their ability to solve problems quickly and efficiently.

How was your choice of Vulani influenced by the fact that the developers, THUSA, are a South African business?  Do you consider this a risk?

Not at all.  We always try to support local firms.  This choice is definitely made easier by their professional approach to business and their obvious expertise in their areas of speciality.

Roland Sageantes

Xact

What has the deployment of Vulani meant for your organization?

It has provided us with a solution that enables us to support our networks using in-house resources with the backing of Thusa’s well organised support system.

Why did you not deploy commercial alternatives?

After searching the market we found that alternative solutions always have had some fundamental flaws which didn’t make them viable, these flaws ranged from cost of solution to reliable support channels to crucial features required. All of these we found in Vulani and more.

Why did you not deploy open source alternatives or build your own solution from the open source components out there?

We spent time researching this and the amount of time that was spent on getting our solution to what we were requiring at the end of day would have involved at least a further 8 to 12 months of research, in our business time is money and Vulani attracted us in that what it offered was exactly what we were looking for. Having Thusa provide and support the product made our decision easier also.

Describe your relationship with THUSA and provide an opinion on their service levels?

We have dealt with Thusa in the past and worked together with a mutual customer. We always found their knowledge and expertise to be of the highest standard, starting to use them as a supplier meant no real difference in our relationship. They are open to discussion on any matter and that is fundamental in building solid business relationships, on top of this they provide efficient and professional service regardless of requests.    

How was your choice of Vulani influenced by the fact that the developers, THUSA, are a South African business?  Do you consider this a risk?

Absolutely no risk, we wouldn’t have taken on the product if we felt there was any risk. Having a South African product backed by South African developers ensures that the understanding of system requirements are always bought to the table and understood by all parties.

What would you like Vulani to do for you that it doesn’t already?

Currently there isn’t much more that we could ask for from Vulani, there are small additions which would make network administration even simpler, but these are being addressed. On the whole Vulani provides a complete solution for easy and fun network administration.  

Colin Alston

Lead Developer on Vulani for THUSA

What is it about Vulani which fuels the significant investment you have made over the past 3 years?

Vulani has been a fascinating product to develop in many respects. As a person who is passionate about technology it has offered the chance to work with new ideas and try to make those ideas better, everything from developing our custom traffic accounting system to providing ways of visualising how networks are configured. It has also provided many opportunities to interact with the open-source world and become involved in making all the tools we use better.

What do you think Vulani offers that other solutions don't already?

All of the features in Vulani can be found in numerous other solutions, however saying just that would be missing the point of Vulani. The point of Vulani was never to provide features and ideas that did not exist, it was to package them in such a way that those features and ideas would be accessible to the average business but also scalable to the largest corporates.

Vulani has demonstrated in many organisations and environments that it offers a significant cost advantage over other per-user licensed systems. It has also shown the ability to vastly simplify peoples physical networks by assuming the role of many other devices which greatly reduces maintenance costs and the potential for network failure and long periods of troubleshooting.

A Vulani server is also at the end of the day a Linux one, allowing people at any stage to add their own programs or services if they know how and also not placing them in a vendor lock-in situation.

Explain your general technical approach to developing Vulani.

Vulani was not initially developed from any perspective of network engineers or IT technicians, it started as a way to relieve considerable phone time by allowing users to try and manage themselves with respect to their personal server settings such as passwords and email forwarding. It grew from this perspective with a focus on analysing what the end user needs from their server and trying to allow them to do more.

What do you see for Vulani beyond 2009?

I hope that more and more people are able to see the benefits to Vulani and ask the question "Is my network under my control?"