Turrito Networks delivering Cloudware to African Mining Sector
The Turrito Application Delivery program, which was launched on January 1, after nine-and-a-half years of development, is being recommended to mining companies throughout Africa to save costs and improve their connectivity, says converged communications and Cloud provider Turrito Networks.
Sales director Louis Jardim tells Mining Weekly that the technology is already being used by some mining houses in Africa and interest in the technology is growing.
“Having been developed in South Africa, this technology is made for the African environ- ment, keeping elements like power and bandwidth restrictions in mind,” he explains.
Cloud computing refers to the delivery of information tech- nology services during which resources are retrieved from the Internet using virtualisation tools and applications, rather than accessing these services locally from a server.
The Turrito Application Delivery technology takes this a step further by providing a path for clients that require the benefits of cloud computing and virtualisation from their existing server infrastructure, whether it is private or public.
The software enables applications to be delivered to the client’s existing desktop hardware or mobile devices without having to migrate to a third-party platform or data centre.
“The technology enables the customer to become its own cloud provider instead of facing considerable disruption and migration costs associated with current cloud platforms,” says Jardim, who note
s most institutions or companies have a centralised server environment that stores business-critical data and applications, as well as financial information.
“The biggest challenge with these data centres is to install and support each application on each end-user’s device, and to establish compatibility with the users’ mobile devices.
“However, Turrito Application Delivery enables the virtual delivery of any application from the centralised server by pixilation to any device connected to the server. This eliminates the need to install and support business-critical applications on every end-user device,” explains Jardim.
Therefore, a customer can have an application, such as Pastel or Payroll, installed on its server once and instantly deliver it to thousands of staff in that particular business by distributing the pixels to any device, whether it has a Windows, Apple, Linux or a mobile-based operating system.
Users can have instant access to their business applications, provided that the device has a screen on which the pixels can generate and an Internet connection for the delivery of the application.
Jardim points out that mines in Africa can also easily communicate data and report to international owners and stakeholders.
“The mine employees have the ability to use this technology to communicate with family in other countries or cities. This technology was developed with businesses, as well as people, in mind,” he explains.
Meanwhile, as only pixels are sent down the link, the amount of data needed to interact with business-critical applications is a fraction of the current requirements.
“Security is also enhanced. As no actual data is sent, it cannot be intercepted. “If encrypted pixels were to be intercepted and compromised, the intruder would not retrieve data but rather encrypted instructions of individual pixels,” Jardim says.
He explains that even if these instructions were to be reassembled in the correct order, the intruder would, at best, only get a screen shot.
“Further, we use the ARCFOUR algorithm, a military-grade encryption, on the instructions set, which makes the encryption layer more secure than standard data encryption,” he adds.
“Most mine sites in Africa have a via-satellite (v-sat) connection. The v-sat technology is expensive and inefficient, as it has a high latency, which causes delays and time-outs when trying to access data or applications from the main data centre.
“This technology makes the v-sat link functional in Africa by removing applications’ sensitivity to high latency. “It works on any v-sat connection – even those exceeding the 800 ms latency mark,” he says.
The application delivery technology mitigates the challenge of high latency, as the applications are run inside the same environment in which the data resides.“
All the processing power takes place at one location, the data centre, with pixilation then being sent to the user,” says Jardim.
Cost saving is another feature of the technology, not only through bandwidth but also through eliminating the need for the client to put a database in more than one place.
Jardim notes that this technology also allows clients to have control over which applications end-users can access and at what times, increasing productivity in the workplace.
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