2022 August Newsflash
Why have we been quiet?
Over the years, PMT™ put out sometimes up to 4 newsletters a year, but after one or two list participants opted out on the 3rd or 4th, we went off the radar for a while. In recent months, people have asked me why we have been so quiet, so I thought I would share a short 3rd quarter update, and asked my team to assist me with this.
It’s been another blinding year – mid-August and yet it feels like we just had the Christmas holidays! Time is flying even if it’s more than having fun as they say, and of course, a work-from-home regime does blur the days more easily – however, not for all the strange claims of overwork from other companies, but more than finding and adopting the perfect home-work life balance just makes it so much easier – no fighting with traffic, no wasted time for travel meetings and plane trips for the Capetonians – I personally have found our company policy since before Covid (option to work from home), extremely rewarding, productive and a life change I would never abandon!
AWS and Innovation:
Many of you are aware that we put together an “AWS First” strategy some years ago, and even though PMT™ has been working with AWS products for more than 5 years now, the original internal take-up was slow – our Clients didn’t blink, but some of the mature products naturally were harder to plan and execute a move to the AWS environments.
With the launch of the formal product team Obsidian™, and with our CTO Pieter taking lead on this amazing product (conceptualised in 2012 already), PMT™ has been able to categorically prove a few things.
The first is that really, limited only by your imagination, alongside proper planning and execution, the AWS environments do not limit your capacity to develop and deploy a product – Obsidian™ has now been successfully installed and operated in large enterprises, and across African territories, in various journeys now, and that we are already going into our 4th major release with little difficulties in the technology suite, the planning and preparation approximate around 50% reduction in bringing a non-AWS product to market. What has been very exciting for me, is that we have also been able to reuse much of our work learned through “startup” lessons in working with AWS, and this has accelerated other journeys including product migration, scaling and even new smaller production-ready modules and enhancements in sometimes just a couple of months.
There are always risks to aligning with large technology stacks such as Microsoft or AWS, but I feel confident that we have chosen the correct partner for scaling our enterprise offerings for SA and Africa. We even have a client with multiple world territories, and as they are also using AWS stack, we are completely plug-and-play to roll out with them.
This leads me to my last quick point – what do we determine “innovation” to mean when technology is adapting and changing as fast as it is? Well, PMT™ has learned that it’s not just the next great idea – its also Adaptability, Agile strategy and accelerated execution are now as much part of being innovative – PMT™ has gone from a particularly and meticulously slow if not highly methodological approach to building its products, to using latest and best technologies with very short and intensive testing and implementation cycles – we still believe with this approach that we deliver core-grade and enterprise-grade solutions, but with the agility of a startup without the mistakes and half-cocked results!
I look forward to sharing a short note with you for our end-of-year newsletter! Stay safe and enjoy the last few months of the active year!
CEO, Markus Schorn
2022 has truly been a year where PMT™ continued to drive digital innovation and excellence!! We’ve seen our services outperform and scale to new heights and have also expanded our services into other territories, which continue to extend our services footprint.
The PMT™ Brand has always been associated with trust and even more so with the immense support received from our Clients and Partners that have worked with us to release fantastic press releases on the back of shared success stories achieved from projects delivered with the PMT™ Brand now becoming a more recognised and visible name within the Industry.
In staying true to our vision, PMT™ Continues to change people’s lives through technology, and we were privileged to provide sponsorship to over 20 teachers from Family Africa as part of our support for the Eazi-Teach™ initiative in equipping teachers to help build better communities through education. There is no better feeling than to know that you have contributed to building the next generation of South Africa!
We have many exciting projects in flight and new impacting services planned for 2023 and hope to provide a sneak preview in our end-of-year Newsletter just around the corner!
Managing Director, Henning Viljoen
It is always a great pleasure for me to retrace our steps and think back on what we have been investing in over the first part of the year since our letter went out in 2021, on how Obsidian™ has evolved from more than just a Reverse Billing Gateway, but a fully-fledged Service Connectivity Platform, with the ability to enable many more (and very different in some) use cases on a well-established and solid framework.
Working with our major clients we have had the opportunity to start expanding our Obsidian™ Enterprise Service Gateway into African regions – we have always put emphasis on the fact that our Gateway would be Mobile Network Operator agnostic – and would allow us to serve our customers in any territory where they already have a presence, or are expanding into, where the MNOs support the Core Network Services required for Obsidian™. Very soon our Obsidian™ Enterprise Service Gateway will be serving our clients in 3 other African regions over and above South Africa.
We have also recently had the opportunity to apply our Obsidian™ Platform to two unique new use-cases and have enabled major integrations for our banking clients. The first is the enablement of a Campaign Management and Rewards System used for financial education and Obsidian™ was applied there to provide a Management Portal where campaigns are configured with dynamic rewards tiers linked to each type of campaign and facilitates a single integration API for the training and education system to interact with, which then also facilitates the Mobile Network reward top-ups through our Emerald™ system directly with all major MNOs in South Africa. The second is being a pure API Management use case for secure interaction with our Lotto API where we focused on Authentication, Authorisation and Reporting to bring visibility to the API journey.
Lastly, I can only add that we are nearing the completion of our roadmap for the remainder of the year with a major release being planned that will add a unique ability to securitise data flows on our Obsidian™ Enterprise Service Gateway and enhance our consumer and device security footprint.
CTO, Pieter Janse van Rensburg
PMT’s Article and Partnership Articles
Since the start of 2022, PMT™ has been involved in multiple press releases and partnership articles, highlighting our team’s fantastic work and how our products and services have brought value to the market.
In case you might have missed our press releases, kindly see the links below to our articles and partnership articles:
- Digital channel technologist PMT supports TymeBank to thrive
- PMT is an AWS Select Tier Services Partner
The year is not done yet! Keep an eye open for many more press releases and articles this year still….
For almost the last decade, PMT™ has been involved with an NGO close to our hearts called The Family Africa. Over the years, PMT™ has strengthened its partnership and collaboration with The Family Africa organisation. The Family Africa team supports local communities through various initiatives, including ECD centres, youth education programmes, health & safety awareness and food parcel distributions. PMT™ has supported these incredible initiatives in many ways over the years.
PMT™ understands the importance and value of ECD centres in our society as they are the pillars of education and essential to bridging equity gaps, overcoming multigenerational poverty, and unlocking a child’s full potential. A few years ago, PMT™ went a step further in creating and sponsoring The EaziTeach™ programme, which is run by The Family Africa team. The EaziTeach™ programme is focused on bringing educational aspirations for the future of South Africa by rolling out learning programmes to creches at grass root schools across the country.
“PMT is privileged to provide sponsorship to over 20 teachers from Family Africa as part of our support for the EaziTeach™ initiative in equipping teachers to help build better communities through education. There is no better feeling than to know that you have contributed to building the next generation of South Africa!” said Managing Director of PMT™, Henning Viljoen.
The EaziTeach™ Programme has been rolling out to many new creches since the start of the year with the help of The Family Africa team.
There is still a lot to be done. Visit the EaziTeach™ webpage, where Corporates and Individuals can easily get involved with making a positive change in these children’s educational future.
The Family Africa Blanket Drive!
By now, the yearly Family Africa Blanket Drive has become a tradition for PMT™ to be involved in. At the start of the colder winter months, the PMT™ team came together to donate over 800 blankets to people in need and to make sure these families were kept warm over this winter.
We give regular updates on the progress of the EaziTeach Programme and The Family Africa’s initiatives on our blogs.
In Closing
We are looking forward to the exciting things still to come in 2022 and beyond. As we have always said, the success of Pattern Matched Technologies™ is based on the relationships we have built over the years, and we wouldn’t be where we are without your support. We remain committed and driven to delivering you a service of excellence beyond expectations without exception.
As we move towards the final few months of 2022, we are confident they will be successful and productive and can continue to build and grow our journey with you all.
