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Catalyst Business Solutions: Spearheading Cloud and Big Data Adoption in Africa
“Creating an enterprise has its own risks and rewards, but to build one in an emerging market like Africa and be a part of the tremendous evolution, brings it’s own satisfaction. And this is the passion behind the founding of Catalyst,” says Anupam Awasthi, Co-Founder, Catalyst. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Catalyst imparts services and solutions in Business applications, Data center/ cloud computing and Machine 2 Machine (M2M) solutions. With local teams in emerging markets of Africa, Middle East and data center in India, Catalyst drives it’s revenues from Africa and Middle East by providing unique solutions built on Oracle platforms, including cloud delivery or on-premise models to serve customer’s requirements.
The business challenges in Africa need an out of box thinking
The commercialization of telecom has generated enormous amount of data which has to be mined to better understand the user. Catalyst is working with the telecom companies to implement various applications, set up their infrastructure and data centers, conduct client audits for IT and applications, enabling the Telcos to mine and benefit from Big Data Analytics. Catalyst is an Oracle Platinum Partner, offering Oracle business applications and also operates the only Oracle Approved Education Center in West Africa. The firm’s, ISO 27001 Data center provides public or hybrid cloud solutions including services like Storage as a Service that are the engine for Big Data and tailor made for the emerging markets.
“The business challenges in Africa need an out of box thinking & innovation,” says Amol Awasthi, Co-Founder, Catalyst. To implement cutting edge solutions in the region’s diverse economies and to work within the client’s tight budgets, Catalyst employs local expertise.
Developing the local talent, the company’s education centers provide training, build the local teams to deliver projects regionally resulting in cost effective implementation. Amol says it’s very important to develop this local talent by providing hands on training in data center operations or providing the basic skills for Machine to Machine programming. It is this trained local workforce which result in a successful execution and support of the projects. The company’s hand holding approach till the end of the project has helped build the trust of the clients in the subcontinent and Middle East.
Catalyst’s clientele includes more than 300 customers, across verticals such as telecom, central banks, public sector, manufacturing, oil and gas, aviation security and financial services in projects spread over 40 countries. The company’s innovative solution such as ATG in the M2M space provides security by detecting and alerting any oil theft or inventory discrepancies. The solution provides Big Data Analysis on the historical data. Most of these IoT initiatives are integrated at the backend to the client’s ERP and hosted in Catalyst or the client’s data centre for real time view and data intelligence.
One of Catalyst’s clients, Asecna, which is the aviation security agency for 18 countries in Africa, required a robust and scalable solution to handle HR, payroll and financial forecasts, budgeting, planning and reporting. They also wanted Catalyst to review the existing communication infrastructure and suggest necessary upgrades. The consultants from Catalyst built the localized solution using Oracle applications. The resulting data intelligence provided Asecna with forecasts and budgetary control to manage numerous mission control systems, flight planning, billing systems and ongoing IT operations.
“When you work in a constantly evolving environment, the challenges you face are very different from what is written in any business book, because you are working with real life problems not tackled for 20-30 years with no benchmarks or case studies to refer to,” says Anupam Awasthi. The vision at Catalyst is to build a technology company in Africa, skill and empower the local talent providing emerging African and Gulf Corporations to fulfill the long-term economic ambition of the continents.
Catalyst’s clientele includes more than 300 customers, across verticals such as telecom, central banks, public sector, manufacturing, oil and gas, aviation security and financial services in projects spread over 40 countries. The company’s innovative solution such as ATG in the M2M space provides security by detecting and alerting any oil theft or inventory discrepancies. The solution provides Big Data Analysis on the historical data. Most of these IoT initiatives are integrated at the backend to the client’s ERP and hosted in Catalyst or the client’s data centre for real time view and data intelligence.
One of Catalyst’s clients, Asecna, which is the aviation security agency for 18 countries in Africa, required a robust and scalable solution to handle HR, payroll and financial forecasts, budgeting, planning and reporting. They also wanted Catalyst to review the existing communication infrastructure and suggest necessary upgrades. The consultants from Catalyst built the localized solution using Oracle applications. The resulting data intelligence provided Asecna with forecasts and budgetary control to manage numerous mission control systems, flight planning, billing systems and ongoing IT operations.
“When you work in a constantly evolving environment, the challenges you face are very different from what is written in any business book, because you are working with real life problems not tackled for 20-30 years with no benchmarks or case studies to refer to,” says Anupam Awasthi. The vision at Catalyst is to build a technology company in Africa, skill and empower the local talent providing emerging African and Gulf Corporations to fulfill the long-term economic ambition of the continents.
