FEATURE: 2017 IN REVIEW
SAVIO TOVAR DIAS:
“Over the course of
2017, Avaya has
been working with
organisations to
design solutions
to create superior
customer experiences and drive
business success in today’s digital
world. Fundamental to this digital
transformation has been creating open,
standards-based platforms that protect
organisations’ existing investments
while making it easier to leverage
new technologies such as artificial
intelligence, the Internet of Things and
blockchain to deliver business value.
“In particular, blockchain was on
everyone’s mind in 2017 – and
for good reason. Blockchain
has the potential to create new
foundations across economic and
social systems, marrying enormous
volumes of historical and real time
data into actionable insight. While
the technology is still nascent,
by augmenting existing business
processes with blockchain technology,
the market has started to achieve
an increased level of trust and
transparency in putting their data into
blockchain systems.
“In fact, we showcased a real world
example of this in 2017 through
our Happiness Index on Blockchain,
which we developed in partnership
with Avanza Solutions in the UAE. By
applying blockchain, data analytics
and AI on different data profiles and
sources, the Happiness Index is a
globally unique solution that allows
large organisations to measure and
manage sentiment for every single one
of their customers, as it happens.”
WHAT DEVELOPMENTS HAS
YOUR COMPANY MADE THIS
YEAR THAT YOU’RE MOST
PROUD OF?
PAUL WILLIAMS:
“Fortinet Southern
Africa has invested
heavily in growing
its skills base and
expanding its IT
security education
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INTELLIGENTCIO
initiatives. “Education and skills
development are crucial in the ongoing
battle against cybercrime. And
because high-end skills are in short
supply in South Africa, we have nearly
doubled our own team and verticalised
our operations to offer niche and
specialised security consulting and
support across all verticals. We have
also upskilled our own team and trained
over 275 engineers in our partner
organisations, as well as expanding
the number of security workshops we
staged this year to 35.
“Fortinet has also taken its awareness
and education programmes to
high schools and tertiary education
institutions, to broaden the local
knowledge base and better equip end
users to mitigate cyber risk.”
CHERIAN VARGHESE:
“The development
we are most proud
of from an Oracle
perspective is the
introduction of Oracle
Cloud at Customer.
This is a unique service that allows
customers to adopt private cloud
within the customer premise with the
infrastructure monitored and managed
by Oracle. It is designed to enable
organisations to remove one of the
biggest obstacles to cloud adoption –
data privacy concerns related to where
the data is stored.
Another development is Oracle
Autonomous Database Cloud,
announced at OpenWorld 2017. It
includes self-driving, self-patching and
self-repairing capabilities to enable
unprecedented availability, high
performance and security at a much
lower cost.”
SAVIO TOVAR DIAS:
“Today Avaya is
coming back stronger
than ever. We had
a challenging start
to 2017 after filing
for Chapter 11 at
the turn of the year, but Avaya is now
exiting within a very short timeframe.
We have transformed our business
model, removed barriers to stronger
customer relationships, and embraced
technologies essential to future
growth. Even more important, we can
proudly say we have not lost a single
customer throughout our journey.
We’re thankful for the elevated level
of confidence and support provided
by our partners, employees and long-
standing customers. It is a testament to
the importance of relationships. If we
don’t get those relationships right, the
technology is meaningless.”
WHAT TECHNOLOGY
DEVELOPMENTS DO YOU
PREDICT WILL EMERGE IN 2018?
BRANDON BEKKER:
“The threat landscape
will continue to
evolve, cybercrime
will rise and criminals
will become more
sophisticated in their
targeted attacks. Ransomware attacks
will be more prominent and successful –
the ones we’ve seen in 2017 have been
damaging but haven’t made anyone
a lot of money yet. And as attackers
learn how to monetise their creations
and become more capable illegitimate
business entities, we’ll see a greater
variation of attacks emerge from a
broad base of criminals.
“A major game changer will be the
effect of artificial intelligence on
cybersecurity. It’s likely that we will
“The POPI Act
and Cybercrimes
and Cybersecurity
Bill will catalyse
change in the way
organisations
protect information
and build security
into every aspect of
their operations.”
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