The Coega Development Corporation (CDC), operators of the leading Industrial Development Zone (IDZ) in the country, provides current and potential investors with strategic solutions that include a world class suite of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as well as Research Unit (RU) services.
The CDC’s attractive ICT and RU units have proven to be resilient in meeting the needs of an ever-changing business environment.
“Since the establishment of the Research Unit in 2008 it has maintained its dual mandate of assisting investment promotion activities in the IDZ and at the same time offering superior quality services to CDC’s external customers and stakeholders,” said Monde Mawashe, CDC Programme Director: IRS.
The research division works closely with CDC’s Business Development (BD) unit in assisting investment promotion. The Research Unit is designed around four broad categories, namely Market Intelligence, Economic Quarterly Reviews, Feasibility Studies and Data Analysis.
“We have extended our Research Unit services to partner with public entities. Our team consists of experienced and junior economists and analysts with extensive and in-depth knowledge in global and local economic issues. Our services are equally segmented between internal and external services,” said Idriss Mouchili, Senior Quantitative Analyst for CDC’s ICT, Research and Strategy business unit.
For external clients, the Research Unit caters to Socioeconomic Outlook Intelligence and Knowledge Management of key industries for agro-processing, construction, automotive and tourism, among others, in order to support strategic decision making. Among the services offered include Local Economic Development Strategy (LEDS), Impact Analysis and technical advisory services.
The CDC’s Research Unit also publishes the Perspectives Journal, which seeks to stimulate debate among professionals, specialists and academics on issues of industrial and economic development relevant to the international, domestic and local economies.
“The journal is an initiative of the CDC, in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU). Other professionals and institutions also contribute by writing ground-breaking articles and by reviewing and editing submitted articles. The journal strives to establish the CDC as a thought leader in the theory and practice of economic and industrial development. It also provides a platform for engagement with social, political and economic policy practitioners. It is believed that exchanging ideas will improve opportunities for the Eastern Cape as well as contribute to a better understanding of the issues, challenges and observations made by officials and academics,” Mouchili said.
“The establishment of the ICT infrastructure unit has minimised cost for both new investors and companies interested in expanding their operations within the IDZ. ICT services are also offered to external clients,” said Mawashe.
The Coega ICT services benefits include:
- managing the relationship with the telecommunication services providers
- reduced prices for the investor because the CDC purchases ICT services in
- a single point of contact for any ICT related problems
“We strive to provide one point of contact for all ICT requirements within these investment zones,” said Phaphama Msimang CDC IT Services Manager.
The world class Coega Datacentre enables easy provisioning of solutions in a stable, secure, monitored and redundant environment. IDZ investors benefit from the leveraging of economies of scale and have a single point of contact.
Managed and customised ICT service offerings such as: Voice, Connectivity, Network Security, Hosting allows tenants to have peace of mind, to focus on their core businesses.
“By taking the first steps to migrating to a Cloud Computing environment such as ours, will give our tenants a business advantage for future growth and development today,” said Msimang.
Coega Telecoms offers a range of managed utility services through an intelligent monitoring system, all based on the IP open standards based network.
The telecommunication and ICT services offered in the zone are as follows:
- Managed Telephony
- Voice
- Data networks
- Internet Connectivity
- Network Security
- Datacentre Hosting (Rack space, Floor Space, Secured Cage)
- Managed Hosting Services (Shared Virtual Hosting environment)
- Managed Backup service (only as part of virtual hosting)
- Disaster Recovery as a Service
A tenant will have the option of considering a managed service, as per the services above or provide their own ICT infrastructure.
The managed services provided are attractive to tenants who wish to focus solely on their core businesses while leveraging off cost effective managed utility services which are able to scale according to their business demands. These services are readily available to tenants who take this option.
To underpin our Managed Services quality, the ICT Unit has embarked and acquired world best-practice ISO certifications in two areas on ICT systems management, ISO 20000 for ICT Service Management and ISO 27000 for Information Security, concludes Ms Magama Makgamatho, the ICT System Head at the CDC.
“The IDZ is naturally an attractive place to for investors wanting to establish their business in South Africa. The ICT and Research Units are only two of our key features we offer investors and external clients,” said Dr Ayanda Vilakazi, CDC unit head marketing and communications.
Alan Straton
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