MERIT TS

MERIT TS specialises in providing IT Products and Services to Financial Institutions and Large Corporations. Experience and innovation has resulted in MERIT TS being acknowledged as a leader in providing Open-Systems-Architecture-Design, Implementation and Support Services to Banks and more specifically in the fields of storage, backup, high availability and disaster recovery technologies.

Architecture Designs Services at MERIT TS take aspects like reliability, redundancy, scalability, performance, flexibility, interdependency and cost of systems into consideration. Implementation services include product comparison, benchmarking and pilot testing of proposed solutions. The collective knowledge of the employees and experience gained, from many years workplace implementation and ongoing support services have resulted in MERIT TS' own tried and tested system deployment methodology. This unique project approach has enabled MERIT TS to assist various Banks to build technology solutions with which they are able to consistently achieve their business- and compliancy objectives

At MERIT TS the emphasis is on value added services, together with a product agnostic approach, we design and implement best fit solutions as determined by the customer's specific requirements. MERIT TS has built a reputation for problem solving and project delivery and has established itself amongst the top ICT services companies for the Financial sector in South Africa. MERIT TS was founded in 2000 and is a privately owned Proprietary Limited Company with offices in Parktown, Johannesburg, South Africa

• Architecture Design Services
• System Implementation Services
• Specialised Financial- and General IT Support Service
• Technical Project Management Services

We attribute our successes to the partnerships that we could build with customers. The emphasis at MERIT TS is on solving business critical problems as collective efforts. Successes include corporate bank consolidation projects and designing, implementation and ongoing support of various dealing rooms:

• Standard Bank Corporate Investment Bank total open system IT infrastructure consolidation project 2001-2006 (Backup, Storage, SAN, Server, Application Consolidation)
• ABSA Midrange System Services 2001 & 2006 ABSA Dealing Room Projects, 1992, 1993 and 2000 (Towers North)
• ABSA Dealing Room On-Line Disaster recovery Project Y2K
• ABSA Corporate Bank, Treasury IT Outsource Services, 1996-2000
• STANLIB Storage and Backup Consolidation, 2005 and 2006
• African Merchant Bank IT Outsource Services, 1997-2000
• African Merchant Bank On-Line Disaster Recovery Project, 1999
• Eskom Pension and Provident Fund Dealing Room Design Implementation and Support, 1995-2000
• Eskom Pension and Provident Fund Dealing Room On-Line Disaster Recovery Project,1998
• SA Reserve Bank Dealing Room Design Implementation and Support, 1993
•  Bankorp Dealing Room Design Implementation and Support, 1991

• Standard Bank, Corporate and Investment Banking Division (Previously SCMB)
  • IT Department
  • Treasury
• ABSA Corporate Bank
• ABSA Midrange Support
• STANLIB
• VERITAS Consulting
  • Standard Bank
  • STANLIB
  • Nampak
  • EDCON
  • ETC (Ethiopia Telecommunications Company)
• Dimension
  • Data De Beers
  • Implats
• SUN Microsystems South Africa
  • ESKOM
  • Telkom
• SUN Microsystems Dubai
  • Riyadh Bank
• PPS
• Fujitsu Siemens Computers
• SARB (South African Reserve Bank)

The MERIT TS management team has a professional association of more than ten years both in a business and in technical capacity.
CEO
Lex Pienaar is CEO of MERIT TS and has 30 years experience in the IT industry. He is a pioneer in the implementation of Data General Winchester-technology-disk-drives, ComputerVision Solid modelling array processors and 128bit Floating Processors, Thick Ethernet LANs, SUN Microsystems, Micrognosis Video Switches, InVision Digital Market Data Delivery systems and RAID7 intelligent storage devices in South Africa. For the last 15 yeas, in his capacity as CEO/ Technical Director in MERIT TS, The Trading Desk (Pty) Ltd and Computer Foundation was where he gained his business experience.

Operational Directors
DJ van den Berg is a senior architecture designer at a major Corporate and Investment Bank where MERIT TS is the design and implementation partner on a recently completed On Line High Availability Solution (OHAS). He has been involved with Real-time Market Data and Treasury systems for 12 years. DJ was amongst others the team leader responsible for dealing room IT Outsource Services at one of the largest banks in South Africa from 1996 to 2000. His areas of expertise include all hardware components related to servers, storage devices, backup devices, Local Area Networks, Wide Area Networks and Storage Area Networks. DJ is proficient with various operating systems (Unix and Intel), treasury systems (Front, Middle and Back Office), digital delivery systems, storage solutions, backup solutions and general office systems.

Cliff Girodo has been involved with Information Technology for more than 25 years. His areas of expertise include High Availability Systems, Storage solutions including NAS and SAN. Cliff is proficient with Unix operating systems. He has worked as a Technical Project Manager on projects which included the procurement and commissioning of Electronic Document Management Systems and the deployment of Financial Trading systems in large banks. Cliff is currently a Technical Project Manager at a major Corporate and Investment Bank where MERIT TS is the design and implementation partner to implement an On Line High Availability Solution (OHAS).

Adriaan van Jaarsveld first worked for Telkom in their various telecommunication departments. After Telkom Adriaan was employed by TTD where he was involved in providing Dealing Room IT Outsource Services to a major Bank. He was later promoted to IT support manager and was seconded to another leading bank where he was responsible for maintaining the entire IT requirement on behalf of them. Adriaan is currently a Technical Project Manager at a major Corporate and Investment Bank where MERIT TS is the design and implementation partner to implement an On Line High Availability Solution (OHAS) with his specific responsibilities being centered on Intel NAS and VERITAS clustering solutions