TELKOM South Africa selects Barco to extend huge and most sophisticated monitoring solution to become largest “by far”
Kuurne, Belgium, April 9th, 2000 - Telkom has invested over a quarter billion BEF in a 284-channel Barco Monitoring Solution to equip its new facility. This National Network Operations Center – one of the largest of its kind in the world- will allow Telkom to proactively manage the flow of all types of communications “traffic traversing” its network, domestic and international, from one central location based in Centurion outside Pretoria.
"The National Network Operations Center will operate as a centralized point to monitor the status of the entire telephone network, and to provide a single point of contact for resolving problems that are affecting service within the network," commented Reuben September, Managing Executive of Technology Network Services.Investing in a monitoring solution for both the National Network Operations Center (NNOC) and the Information Technology Center (ITC) represents yet another step for Telkom towards preparing its network for the future.
This new NNOC officially began monitoring the network on October 22nd 1999. Nearly three months after completion of the 80-channel monitoring solution, Telkom’s management made the decision to invest in two additional 80-channel display walls spanning almost the entire length of the control room. Completion of this control center will make it the largest reference site world wide, in which a 320m² logical display provides real time data on daily operations using charts, graphs and network maps.
The information technology backbone on which the NNOC will operate is Telkom's Information Technology Center. This IT complex will incorporate a new primary data center for Telkom, as well as combined infrastructure management center and call center from where information technology operations and internal customer problems will be centrally managed. Responsible for the efficient functioning of the IT network, Telkom’s operators rely on a giant display of 44 rear-projection screens to detect, localize and isolate network problems on a 24 hour basis, 7 days a week. Further expansion of the display is currently planned.
A Telkom team, investigating the viability of a control center, visited a number of telco operators in Europe during the planning stage. Issues such as design and functionality of a modern Network Operations Center were evaluated. As a result of its leadership in projection technology and expertise in network control software, Barco was contracted for the initial phase. Awarding the expansion of the NNOC display wall to Barco illustrates the accuracy and speed with which Barco’s engineers accomplished the project.
BARCO, with headquarters in Kortrijk, Belgium, has three key activities which are all active in Image Processing. Barco Projection is in various markets of large screen visualization. BarcoView develops and manufactures display systems for life critical applications, while BarcoVision is in systems for visual inspection and quality control. In 2000, the entire BARCO group delivered a turnover of euro 751 million. BARCO has a network of subsidiaries, distributors and agents in 97 countries throughout the world. BARCO has been quoted on the Brussels Bourse since 1986, and is now quoted on Brussels/Euronext. BARCO is a BEL 20 and a Next 150 company and is member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes.
