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Thorsten Schmied, an apprentice and BA student of Business Informatics in Herne, joined an IT infrastructure project at GEA Aircooled Systems (Pty) Ltd. in South Africa for four weeks. Despite some difficulties with his intended project, the trip was anyhow a great success. The report below summarizes some experiences he gained in South Africa.

Once it was certain that I would go to GEA Aircooled Systems (Pty) Ltd. in Germiston, all of the colleagues who were on site already started to hook me up with information about the colleagues at the office in Germiston. I was told that it is one of the friendliest sites to work at. And they were right! I was given a very warm welcome when I arrived in Germiston and I felt very well appreciated right from the beginning. Everybody was very helpful and looked after me, giving me a whole load of tips and advice as to where to go and what places to see in South Africa.

My intended project was to upgrade some of the Corporate Client workstations to the new Corporate Client image Windows 7. The main target group was the colleagues in the drawing office who couldn’t get the full potential out of their machines still running on a 32-bit operating system. First of all, I got myself an overview of the local IT infrastructure and the software used on the computers in question. In the second step, I did some test rollouts that actually revealed that some configurations on the local infrastructure desperately needed to be done. After reconfiguring and checking back with the IT colleagues in the back office in Oelde, the infrastructure was all set for the rollout. With a proper foundation, I scheduled the rollout to start at the beginning of my second week.

But by the end of my first week, there was a change in plan.  This was because there was an issue that needed special care. The WAN connection from Germiston to the Medupi construction site in Lephalale was not working properly, so that a colleague from a local IT service partner and I went up to Medupi to get a feeling for the problems and troubleshoot them from site. I could finally use some of the things I had learned in a Cisco class in the BA course in Emsland and gained some experience working with routers in a real-life environment. The way from Johannesburg, or Joburg as the locals call it, to Lephalale was about four hours by car and my first real experience of the beautiful South African countryside and nature. After leaving Lephalale, the problem yet wasn’t solved but we had a lead and we were finally able to fix the problem in the following week.

To get some impressions of the South African wildlife, we went to a game park near Johannesburg on my last Saturday in South Africa. It was quite an experience being allowed to get into animal crèches, standing next to a cheetah and two eleven-month old lions and being able to pet them. That was definitely a once in a lifetime experience!

One of my favourite impressions was the invitation to join Braai, a typical South African barbecue which the Managing Director of GEA Aircooled Systems Ltd. organized. The Braai was meant as a thank-you party for the staff located at the Medupi construction site and offered some of the local gastronomic specialties, like pap and boerewors. It was rather more a get together with your friends than just a barbecue. There is just one Afrikaans expression that describes a Braai best: “Local is lekker!”

I really enjoyed my time in South Africa and the chance that I had to get to know some very nice colleagues. I was especially impressed by the hospitality of the colleagues and of the South Africans’ in general. It was also very interesting to see the local IT infrastructure and how different things work compared to the IT support in Germany. I also hope that I was able to add my share of information about the Corporate IT Infrastructure and their processes to GEA Aircooled Systems (Pty) Ltd. Unfortunately, I could not complete my original project but I could at least set the local infrastructure up for a smooth Corporate Client migration and sort out another bigger issue for them. So, all in all, I think the whole trip turned out to be a win-win situation for both sides.