DigiOutsource

DIGITALISING THE WORKFORCE

DIGIOUTSOURCE

2 | Africa Outlook issue 89

TECHNOLOGY

Digital

Development We spoke to Craig Hovey, Chief Technology Officer at DigiOutsource, about the company’s adaptation during COVID-19 and its goals for the future Writer: Marcus Kääpä | Project Manager: Thomas Arnold

T

he growth and importance of the tech industry has increased substantially in this past decade, and critically within this past year.

Since the inception of national lockdowns all over the globe, the latest digital products and services have become vital to the smooth operation of many industries, companies, and employees. Alongside this increase in digital services, the realm of online entertainment has risen in demand across the board.

Video streaming services have boomed, the global gaming industry has seen a significant rise in players, streamers and followers, and global online gambling companies, whether through sports or active games,

have seen a tremendous uplift in customers.

For DigiOutsource, this global growth in consumer demand has led to a competitive industry in which to operate.

“You do feel the growth in this space especially through the difficulty in retaining talent. With a lot of big players outsourcing services into South Africa that talent pool is in demand,” begins Craig Hovey, Chief Technology Officer at the company.

“This is great for our country and for the people who live in it. I am passionate about our country and I want to see continued investment into the amazing talent we have here.

Africa Outlook issue 89 | 3

DIGIOUTSOURCE “While this does create a competitive market for talent, every challenge is an opportunity, we have always focused on a culture that is centralised around our people and, now more than ever, the focus is on growing the technical talent to truly drive innovation.”

DigiOutsource is an industry leading global technology and e-commerce company. With a focus on the global online gambling industry, DigiOutsource’s services cover the entire eco-system of supporting gaming brands, including acquisition marketing, call centre support, risk and fraud screening,

Africa Outlook: What led you to a career in the technology industry?

Craig Hovey: For me, it has all been about doing what you love.

As a teenager my idea of fun was working with computers, and while games accounted for the bulk of the time, I also had this odd passion for hosting services. I would create my own web servers, mail servers, file servers even pretend network users. We did not have internet back then but as internet services arrived it was like opening up the curtains - my closed network fun became globally visible.

I studied Electrical Engineering and then quickly moved into the corporate world, luckily my first job was for an e-commerce focused company trying make the most of the late ninety’s internet boom. When that all literally went boom, I was out

retention services and financial reporting. Underpinning these core services are the company’s support departments that make this all possible; from the technological side of infrastructure, development and business intelligence, to its HR, training and facilities teams.

Primarily located in Cape Town, and with just over 2,000 employees, DigiOutsource also has an office in London at which the company’s recruitment strategy brings in talent from across the globe to the company, providing DigiOutsource clients professional support across various regions.

of a job and lacking good options. I eventually chose to work at a more traditional corporate company, here we were not serving internet facing users and so my passion was not being fulfilled.

Within three months I moved on due to finding a vacancy at DigiOutsource in the role of WebFarm System Engineer. My role there was to look after the customer facing hosting services - doing exactly what I loved. Through the years, hard work, willingness to take on anything that was thrown at me, ability to self-learn and obsession over the detail saw me move into a leadership role.

Eventually after many years of supporting the IT services at DigiOutsource my role moved over to CIO, and then shortly after a change in corporate structure saw the opportunity to become CTO.

Continent 8 Technologies Continent 8 Technologies has more than 20 years’ experience in providing international businesses with cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions, reliable facilities, plus networks that support and protect critical online operations across the globe.

As a business that protects the world’s most valuable information in the iGaming, finance, payment processing and public services industries, security is at the core of everything we do – from online protection through services such as DDoS mitigation and WAF, to the physical security of our facilities.

Our private global network has data centres and points of presence (PoPs) in more than 60 locations, with additional sites being added monthly. We pride ourselves on being a boutique provider offering flexibility and outstanding customer service – a view supported by customer testimonials.

Choosing Continent 8 as a partner enables clients to scale globally, and gain the advantage of having disaster recovery from a single provider because all traffic can pass through one highly secure, redundant network with end-to-end SLA packet delivery.

We’re proud to have supported DigiOutsource in South Africa for over 15 years, and to provide our cuttingedge technology which connects the business to the world. With a shared passion for innovation and being at the forefront of new technologies, we have forged a long and trusted partnership.

We understand the data and security requirements for a successful business operating in a complex, competitive, fast-paced industry.

Learn more about our world-class products and services at www.continent8.com

www.continent8.com

4 | Africa Outlook issue 89

DIGIOUTSOURCE

Data Sciences Corporation Data Sciences Corporation was founded in 2013 with the aspiration to provide leading South African organisations with innovative solutions and services that optimise their IT infrastructure. We believe that harnessing the data and technology that surrounds us is paramount in driving innovation, developing knowledge and stimulating growth in our respective customers markets.

Data Sciences Corporation is driven by a passion to provide South African organisations with truly innovative, next generation solutions combined with unsurpassed levels of service. Our ability to provide customer service excellence with industry leading skills and our consultative approach with our customers throughout the engagement process, ultimately enables us to be easy to do business with.

PEOPLECENTRIC OPERATION Company employees are most critical to DigiOutsource’s success. DigiOutsource has always focused on its culture of creating a positive environment that supports its staff. The company encourages innovation and initiative, and so much of company performance review processes focus on the core behavioural competencies it believes are needed to provide positive change to the company.

When it comes to recognition, DigiOutsource believes in the importance of individual and collective recognition, using platforms like Teams to immediately celebrate success, awarding badges for achievements and meeting regularly to allow teams to share with others what they have achieved. This all contributes to the company’s positive culture of learning and growth.

6 | Africa Outlook issue 89

We endeavour to ensure that we retain the highest quality of people by providing ongoing training both locally and internationally, and with this boast a number of highly qualified staff with bachelors, honours and master’s degrees.

DigiOutsource sets itself apart from its industry competition through its collective industry know-how and professional execution of its services.

“It’s the experience we have and the systems we have built to maximise the effectiveness of the product we offer; we have focused on in-house development allowing for bespoke solutions not available off the shelf.

These systems have 25 years of experience in their DNA, not easily replicated,” Hovey informs us.

This experience has carried the company through the challenging 2020 period. Despite the popularity of online games and entertainment rising, there are obvious challenges when it comes to workplace restrictions and employee health and safety. However, Hovey assures us that DigiOutsource places employee safety first.

Data Sciences has enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership with DigiOutsource since 2015 and have provided our next generation technologies and services for all its core Datacentres across the globe. We are immensely proud of the relationship that we have with DigiOutsource and has been a privilege and honour to be considered a true partner to DigiOutsource by providing some of the most disruptive technologies available in the market today.

Being a technology partner to DigiOutsource has helped them to deliver on their global objectives over the past several years and their continued support of our business is testament to our ability to deliver above and beyond their expectations.

In closing, we wish to thank DigiOutsource for their continued support and trust that their business will continue to grow in the future.

www.datasciences.co.za

datasciences corporation

INSPIRED BY DATA

Trust The Data Sciences & DigiOutsource Story Johannesburg Office 3 Georgian Crescent West Bryanston East Johannesburg, 2152

Cape Town Office 1st Floor, Vineyard Square (North) The Vineyards Office Estate 99 Jip de Jager Road, Bellville, Cape Town

Office: Direct: Web: Email:

+27 86 177 7372 +27 11 568 3200 www.datasciences.co.za info@datasciences.co.za

DIGIOUTSOURCE “We always prided ourselves in being adaptable - change is the norm for us,” he tells us proudly. “COVID was exactly that, a change of the way of working. For DigiOutsource, we were a non-mobile workforce company - you could count the number of users that had laptops on one hand. So, phase one was business continuity, and this is where our DigiPeople and our culture really showed its true colours. Staff used their personal PC’s or re-purposed machines from the office in the switch to home working, and this was done with zero interruption to the business and was an amazing team effort.

“Then going forward, it has changed how we look at work from home vs in the office, especially in the tech space, where we have seen a dramatic increase in productivity.

We are fortunate to have amazing office workspaces with a recently re-furbished tech building that focuses on collaborative spaces

and less so on traditional open plan desking. Our focus now will be to get that balance right, being in the office when you need to brainstorm, strategise, or just take some downtime from the home stresses, and then back at home when you need to focus and get the work done.”

Microsoft, one of the company’s major partners, has been critical in this flexible approach to work through services such as DigiOutsource utilising Teams as a collaborative digital workplace tool.

This employee-centric focus has led the company to successfully complete in-house projects that reinforce the professionalism provided by DigiOutsource. One such project is DigiLife; the company’s new intranet in the cloud to improve communication and the ability for staff to interact with management and increase the mobility and effectiveness of work wherever employees may be based.

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“Another is ISO 27001,” Hovey tells us. “Driven mostly by regulatory requirements in certain countries, we see this as an absolute requirement to establish the best practices and good corporate governance. Information Security has always been a big focus for us, and it will be good to prove this with the seal of approval ISO 27001 gives you. Following this, we will continue to focus on compliance certifications across the board.”

For DigiOutsource, supply chain partnerships aid operations and are critical to the company’s success. Focusing on a multi-vendor approach, DigiOutsource removes single dependency on individual partnerships.

“This is critical in South Africa,” Hovey assures us. “We do our best to partner with magic quadrant leaders to further mitigate this risk, most noteworthy is Continent eight for our global hosting services, Dell Computers for our compute needs, 8 | Africa Outlook issue 89

TECHNOLOGY

Accelerate your digital communication with Kentico Xperience.

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Pure Storage who have completely revolutionised our storage services and Palo Alto for their advanced security services.

“Microsoft themselves deserve a special mention, two years ago we made the move to their cloud offering and have found their services to be life changing. Especially their security services that have turned our response times into minutes whenever someone tries something funny.

“We have however struggled during this time to get stock moved into the locations we need them; this causes delays but nothing that hasn’t been managed and so there have been no significant impacts to our effectiveness.”

Through 2021 and beyond, DigiOutsource’s primary goals focus around supporting its clients’ goals for expansion and growth; ensuring a focus on operational efficiency and

user-centric products to support these goals.

“We base our success here on the DORA metrics, mean time to recover, change fail rate, mean time to deliver and deployment frequency,” Hovey says. “This touches on another goal of reducing the time from insight to actions, being able to make data informed decisions in the moment, this will see investment in real-time analytics tools.

“Combine these and we can shorten that feedback loop between having an idea, testing it with real users and then informing future ideas, we believe this is key to being ahead of the competition.”

Tel: +27 21 528 9300 info@digioutsource.com www.digioutsource.com

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DIGIOUTSOURCE Waterview Park 1 Waterview Close, Century City, 7441 Cape Town, South Africa Tel: +27 21 528 9300 info@digioutsource.com www.digioutsource.com

PRODUCED BY AFRICA OUTLOOK MAGAZINE