IT Consulting
Exceptional functional and technical expertise coupled with extensive industry knowledge makes GIS Associates the ideal choice for a consulting firm to manage the implementation of your ICT Project and hardware needs.
As the leading provider of digital and security solutions, we integrate proprietary technologies to help our clients improve productivity, process flow and cost control. We bring increased efficiency to our stakeholder workforces – without major changes to the way they work, and without the need for any significant upfront investment.
ISP, Telecommunications & Unified Communications
The GIS Internet service provider division (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing and using the Internet. Internet service providers may be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned.
Internet services typically provided by GIS ISP include Internet access, Internet transit, domain name registration, web hosting, Usenet service, and
collocation.
GIS ISP comprises of:
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) – a paradigm under which businesses outsource computing
equipment required to support their operations. This typically includes hardware such as servers, storage subsystems and networking devices, and is similar to what today is commonly known as outsourcing.- Platform as a service (PaaS) – the underlying enterprise software platform (the operating system of a business). PaaS provides the basis on top of which enterprise software can run.
- Software as a service (SaaS) – this provides a range of business application software including ERP and CRM environments.
- Desktop as a service (DaaS) – a virtual operating system including basic applications such as a choice between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice. The purpose is to provide a full basic desktop environment, including the ability to generate or edit word processing documents or spreadsheets, available to all users at the flick of a switch.
- Communication as a service (CaaS) – standardising both fixed and mobile voice communications, distributed PABXes and contact centres into a single cloud-based unified communications and collaboration, fixed mobile converged solution suited to all business sizes.
- Security as a service (SecaaS) – an outsourcing model for security management, including the installation and maintenance of security tools such as firewall software and anti-virus packages.
GIS Telecommunications first tier division comprises of:
- For the last 20 years, making calls in South Africa has changed quite considerably. One of the biggest contributing factors to this change is the evolution of the interconnect rate. The interconnect rate, the tariff one operator charges another to terminate a call on its network, affect all parts of the telecoms industry. This includes mobile and fixed line operators, right through to corporate businesses and the every-day consumer.
The history of the interconnect rate:
The history of the interconnect rate has shaped the telecoms industry as we know it today. Since 2010 until now, we’ve seen huge developments to the interconnect rate that have in turn affected the South African economy as a whole. In 2010, the mobile interconnect rate was R1.25, today it’s R0.16.
In 2010, the interconnect rate was so high, that it was very expensive to call a number on a different mobile network. Because of this, Least Cost Routing (LCR) existed, which connected your business telephone to a sim card device allowing you to make calls to mobiles at reduced rates. By using LCR, businesses could avoid the interconnect rate. However, as the interconnect rate started to drop so LCR was no longer needed. VoIP soon followed where you could use data links like ADSL, Diginet and later fibre to send calls over direct interconnects. This created a gap in the market for smaller Value Added Network Service Providers to enter the market and provide telecom solutions at reduced rates.
Through a combination of the reduction in the interconnect rate, a huge variety of VoIP services and better connectivity solutions, VoIP has now become the favoured method of carrying calls across corporate South Africa.
Products Range
Our Products on Telephony handsets include:
- Cisco
- Siemans
- Alcatel
- Yealink
- Polycom
Unified Communications
Unified communications (UC) refers to the integration of communication tools that help people exchange ideas and do their jobs more effectively.
Some communication tools, like IP telephony, presence technology and instant messaging, facilitate synchronous communication. Synchronous communication occurs in real-time and is sometimes referred to as "same time/different place" communication.
Other communication tools, like email or Twitter, facilitate asynchronous communication. Asynchronous communication facilitates communication that takes place at a person's convenience and is sometimes referred to as "different time/different place" communication. The goal of unified communications is to integrate the software that supports synchronous and asynchronous communication so the end user has easy access to all tools from whatever computing device he is using.