TechSurve at the forefront of driving PostGres adoption in SA

Johannesburg - TechSurve, South Africa's tier 1 distributor of Postgres, this week hosted a symposium for IT professionals and an information session for public sector  IT officers to dissect the open source platform for database management.  The events were hosted in both Johannesburg and Pretoria, in partnership with the global company, Enterprise-DB (EDB).

In her welcoming address, Chief Executive Officer of TechSurve, Claudine Els, laid the foundation for why Postgres would be important for the South African market. She highlighted that a platform like Postgres allows local entities to benefit from the dexterity of the global open source community, which can be adapted and moulded to suit local database management needs.

She explained that given the accessibility of the costs of Postgres at its various levels, it would allow an organisation to channel the savings towards other organisational priorities like research and development. "Adopting an open-source technology which is backed by a strong global vendor does not just translate into massive cost savings; but it also increases operational efficiency,"  said Claudine, adding that the ripple effects of the modernisation of IT database infrastructure contributes to the overall economic growth of South Africa.

For the public sector, these savings could be channeled towards the implementation of critical services for constituents. "Those resources you have saved can now be invested into other strategic areas - driving growth and innovation," she added.

In introducing the EDB team to the South African market, Els explained that one of the benefits of the partnership for local businesses is that they can now access a global platform backed by a pool of global experts, with the support of a local distributor that understands the needs and nuances of doing business in South Africa. "We're thrilled to introduce EDB to our country, our continent, and our unique South African market and organisations. Together with our customers, we are not just participating in the market; we're pioneering a space that has long been dominated by legacy players," said Els.

EDB, the single largest contributor of code for the open source platform, was encouraged by the interest of the local IT market. "We are excited to be at the forefront of driving forward the adoption of Postgres in South Africa," said EDB's James Bell, Regional Director. In unpacking the architecture of the open source platform, Bell expressed confidence in the scalability of Postgres and in the purity of the platform in its current format. "We have contributed roughly 40% of the code for Postgres, and we want to keep it open source, to make sure that it remains accessible," he said.  

In investing in Postgres, which is suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises,  clients have the comfort of knowing that they can budget for the product set which comes with the full tech support from EDB and TechSurve.  Bell went on to explain how Postgres can be run concurrently with other programmes, emphasising its adaptability and scalability. 

He emphasised that there is transparency with the costs of Postgres and users won't be held to ransom to dig deeper into their budgets in order to access further services from the platform. "When users subscribe to the platform at any level, be it Postgres, Postgres Extended or Postgres Advanced, there are no hidden costs associated with this investment," said Bell. 

In rolling out the suite of local support services for Postgres, a critical component of this is training to ensure that the full value of the platform is accessible to local users. Accessing the full value of Postgres hinges on the ability to be able to adapt and manipulate the platform to suit your unique business needs. The training offered by TechSurve gives users the skills and knowledge to be able to do this with ease.

The engagement with participants of both events, which centred around platform functionality and compatibility with other programmes, was evidence of the fact that there is an appetite for Postgres within the South African database management market. It further demonstrated that SA's IT sector is moving at the same pace as the global IT sector, with an opportunity existing for South African Postgres users to join the global Postgres community by contributing code to the open source platform to enhance its functionality.