MakwaIT’s business unit lead for digital platforms and solutions, Lesedi Modibane, and head of network solutions, Ntando Dhlamini, share how MakwaIT’s integrated approach – bringing together cloud, data, cybersecurity and observability – is empowering organisations to shift from reactive to proactive, intelligence-driven IT management.
Following the successful first-ever IT Indaba, CIO South Africa spoke with Ntando Dhlamini, head of networking solutions: observability and Lesedi Modibane, business unit lead for digital platforms and solutions at MakwaIT to follow up on their dynamic presentations on observability and the company’s digital offering.
As enterprise IT environments grow more distributed and complex, the limitations of traditional monitoring have become clear. According to Ntando, organisations are increasingly turning to observability, an approach that uses live data to understand what is happening within complex systems, why issues occur and how to prevent them from recurring.
“Observability changes the paradigm from reactive digital assurance to proactive, data-driven resilience,” Ntando explains. “Logs, metrics and traces, the three pillars of telemetry, together give us a living map of system behaviour. With that visibility, we can detect anomalies faster, trace performance degradation to its root, and validate uptime against business SLAs.”
Telemetry – the automated collection of logs, metrics and traces from systems – provides the raw data that powers observability. “Monitoring tells you when something breaks,” she says. “Observability tells you why it broke and what else it might affect. It’s about understanding the system’s entire physiology, not just its heartbeat. When we move from isolated monitoring tools to unified observability, we move from firefighting to foresight.”
Building the foundations for visibility
For observability to deliver on its promise, however, it must rest on the right infrastructure. “Visibility starts with architecture,” says Lesedi. “We approach every engagement from the ground up, starting with cloud as the foundation, because scalability and agility are non-negotiable.”
MakwaIT’s digital strategy integrates cloud, cybersecurity, data, AI and automation into a unified ecosystem. “We embed cybersecurity by design into every layer, from zero-trust architecture to identity and access management, encryption and real-time threat detection,” Lesedi notes. “This protects the telemetry pipeline itself. If your data flow isn’t secure, your observability is compromised.”
Once security is established, data consolidation and governance become critical. “We cleanse and harmonise data across environments so that we can create a single source of truth,” he says. “Only when data is consistent and accessible can observability tools deliver meaningful insight. That’s why data strategy and observability strategy must evolve together.”
The language of telemetry
Ntando describes observability as a universal language across IT domains. “Every component – network, application, infrastructure – speaks in logs, metrics and traces,” she says. “Our job is to make those languages intelligible to each other. Once telemetry is normalised, we can correlate events across layers and see how a single error cascades through the system.”
She adds that this correlation is what transforms operations. “It removes the blind spots. Instead of pointing fingers between infrastructure and application teams, everyone works from a common evidence base. It shortens the time from detection to diagnosis and, increasingly, from diagnosis to prevention. Observability creates a single source of operational truth, and that changes culture as much as it changes technology.”
According to Ntando, observability has also matured into a strategic capability that links performance to measurable business outcomes. “The key is marrying telemetry with business context,” she says. “We map system health to metrics such as revenue, customer satisfaction and compliance. That’s where it becomes transformative.”
Through data correlation and AI analytics, MakwaIT’s observability frameworks allow clients to quantify impact. “If a payment gateway slows down because of packet loss, we can immediately see its effect on transaction completion rates or customer churn. It means IT isn’t working in isolation anymore. It’s directly influencing risk and revenue. When CIOs can show that a 30-second improvement in system response time increased conversions, that’s observability driving business value.”
Breaking the toolchain barrier
There are challenges however and enterprises often struggle to unify observability because of legacy silos. “Different teams have their own preferred tools, their own definitions of ‘normal’,” Ntando explains. “Consolidating under a single observability strategy means shifting from tool ownership to shared accountability for outcomes. That’s a mindset change as much as a technical one.”
Lesedi agrees. “It’s not just a tooling conversation; it’s a data-engineering milestone. We normalise telemetry across domains, align on open standards, and build centralised intelligence layers for correlation and alerting. That’s how we move from reactive monitoring to continuous optimisation.”
He adds that MakwaIT’s hybrid teams, spanning network engineering, cloud architecture and data science, deliver value by bridging those gaps. “We don’t approach observability as a software deployment. We treat it as part of the organisation’s nervous system design – one where every signal has purpose and every anomaly has context.”
Observability in action
The shift to observability is reshaping incident response. “Network incidents are no longer just IT problems; they’re business events,” says Ntando. “With shared dashboards and correlated telemetry, there’s no need for long war-room sessions or endless bridge calls. You have facts on the table within minutes.”
Using platforms such as Splunk, MakwaIT applies machine learning to detect anomalies, automate triage, and even trigger preventive alerts. “We’ve seen a dramatic reduction in mean-time-to-innocence and mean-time-to-resolution,” she explains. “But more importantly, teams are collaborating around data instead of opinion. Observability enables trust across departments because everyone sees the same truth.”
Automation then closes the loop. “AI models identify abnormal patterns before users feel an impact, and robotic processes execute routine fixes, from scaling and rebalancing workloads to restarting microservices,” Lesedi adds. “This transforms observability into a performance engine rather than a cost centre. It’s about sustaining reliability while freeing people to focus on innovation.”
Embedding observability into strategy
Observability also changes how CIOs frame technology investments. “Boards don’t want to talk about dashboards,” says Ntando. “They want to understand how an initiative strengthens resilience, compliance and reputation.”
She argues that positioning observability as a risk-management and continuity platform resonates more with business leaders. “If you can show that observability reduced critical incident time by 65 percent, protected millions in potential revenue and improved SLA adherence, you’re not reporting on IT metrics, you’re reporting on business continuity. It’s the same language the board already speaks.”
Lesedi agrees. “Our clients are using observability to build digital trust. When systems are transparent and predictable, customers stay longer, regulators have confidence and teams can innovate without fear. That’s the strategic value. Observability connects reliability to reputation.”
From insight to continuous advantage
At its core, MakwaIT’s observability approach connects its broader digital capabilities into a single, intelligent loop:
- Cloud provides elasticity and reach.
- Cybersecurity secures the flow of telemetry.
- Data governance ensures integrity.
- AI and automation enable prediction and self-healing.
Together, these create an ecosystem that sees, learns and adapts.
“Modern enterprises can’t afford blind spots,” says Ntando. “Observability isn’t a luxury layer, it’s the visibility that keeps the business alive. We’re seeing a cultural shift where reliability is no longer the responsibility of a single team; it’s embedded across the organisation.”
“The organisations that win aren’t just the ones with the most data; they’re the ones who can interpret it, act on it, and evolve continuously. Observability is how we get there,” Lesedi concludes.
