Cornastone is one of the technology partners for the Blue IQ initiative taking shape in Pretoria, and is implementing a number of business processes specific to the pure Ć¢¬Ėœgreenfields technology environment.

The strategic IT partner to this initiative will have a responsibility to ensure that TIH fulfils its mandate of adding significant value to Gauteng as the countrys Ć¢¬Ėœsmart province, and to SA as a competitive economy in the high-tech sector, says Kena Setshogoe, business development executive at Cornastone.

For the past three years Cornastone has been an HP enterprise solutions and services partner in SA, and we bring our kind of expertise to TIH. We have provided a high performance, cost-effective and adaptive IT infrastructure environment that is capable of evolving into a utility-based Datacenter. This Adaptive Enterprise Datacenter will seamlessly accommodate and adapt to the business and technology requirements of TIH as and when these change, he says.

This mission-critical solution will include HPs high-end Integrity Superdome platform, a number of Itanium-based HP servers, as well as additional HP blade servers and ProLiant servers.

Included is a highly scalable fibre channel storage area network (SAN) with backup and restore, and virtualisation management software all of which will be made available to the residents and tenants at TIH on a shared utility-type basis.

The Innovation Hub Management Company is expected to move into its new premises in December 2004.
According to Alan West, ICT consultant to TIH, as the first Science Park in southern Africa that takes its benchmark from the best such developments in the world, while responding to local business needs, The Innovation Hub is creating a community for technology-related businesses across a range of disciplines.

The R346m initiative by the Gauteng Provincial Government to stimulate economic growth for the province will focus on clustering high-tech businesses to foster innovation of new products and services, and drive the development of new intellectual property through research and development (R&D) projects that enhance the SA economy.

West points out that TIH facility is also a technology showcase that demonstrates the convergence of infrastructure, architecture and applications such as VoIP telecommunications, near 100% systems and services availability, and various value-added services to on-site tenants.

The Science Park has been designed to encourage interaction between companies and employees. It features an Innovation Centre with the Maxum Business Incubator and the CoachLab facility, where leadership skills are fast-tracked for the high-tech industry, and the Enterprise Building, which will provide A-grade space at affordable rentals to a variety of tenants.
"Systems and services will be provided to tenants at TIH through an ASP model with Ć¢¬Ėœplug-n-play functionality, making it simple for non-IT-literate as well as technology-advanced entities to join the community," he adds.

Setshogoe says that the solution provided will ensure that TIH manages the supply and demand of IT resources in real time, so the business can quickly capitalise on and manage change.

The HP adaptive enterprise philosophy ensures that every business requirement change is met by an immediate IT response. And it is not enough just to respond to change. To be truly responsive, you must be able to anticipate change to make change work to your advantage. With HPs adaptive technology, that is exactly what we have been able to provide to The Hub, he concludes.