In discussion with Ashwin Frankie from Knowledge Factory

Rodney Power

With me I have Ashwin Frankie, CEO of Knowledge Factory (www.knowledgefactory.co.za) a longstanding First Horizon customer, discussing their cloud adoption journey.

Ashwin Frankie Over the years, our company has continued to evolve with the times in terms of technology and Cloud-based hosting. In more recent times, Knowledge Factory has partnered with First Horizon, an AWS Services partner, and migrated completely to the Cloud where all business-critical applications and production systems are hosted securely.

Our decision to migrate to the Cloud stemmed from a few factors:

We recognized the need for greater flexibility to scale cost-effectively, the need for industry-standard support and advice, the need for up-to-date architecture, and also importantly the need for a service provider at the top of the field to assist in driving our business forward.

We needed a Cloud partner who could meet all these requirements for us and in turn, our clients.

This is where the decision to partner with First Horizon and migrate to AWS came about. Before we partnered with First Horizon, we used another local company to assist us with the migration process. With their help the migration was seamless and we were happy with the service we received. Once we were completely set up on the Cloud, we realised we needed a partner who could help up grow and drive our strategy forward. First Horizon hosts a team of experts, and being part of the largest privately-owned IT company in South Africa, they have the edge to complement our AWS experience and provide us with the strategic edge we needed.

First Horizon, being a leading local service provider, has been able to assist us with the right new technologies to adopt into our business which will enable us to create products and services we can take to the market.

They understand our business model and long-term strategy and have been instrumental in helping us drive our goals forward. Security and performance are pivotal to our successful business model, and First Horizon has added tremendous value with their input into these fronts.

We can work together to create the technologies and services our business needs to drive forward. The AWS platform is global which is a testament to their quality and this helps us when bringing on new clients as well. Their connectivity and service availability is top-notch, and their ability to assist from a technical standpoint due to their many different partners they can consult is a major value-added service.

This migration has allowed us the flexibility we so needed. We have been able to drastically reduce costs, giving us the flexibility to scale according to our business goals, as well as easily change performance levels, workloads, and priorities between various tiers of resources. We thus have the freedom to work within our budget and deliver an industry-best service to our clients.