MENA Data
Centre spend
to reach US$5
Billion by 2020
University of Pretoria launches
new tech business incubator
M
iddle East and North Africa data centre
spend is to reach a record high of
US$5.1 billion by 2020, increasing by 8.5%
from 2017, according to a report by market
research firm Statista.
Much of this spend will go towards enabling
Smart Cities, aligned with the GITEX
Technology Week theme of Experience
Future Urbanism.
“Record-high Middle East data centre spend
shows that regional CEOs understand
that modernising IT infrastructure can
deliver a competitive advantage and enable
Smart Cities,” said Savitha Bhaskar, COO,
Condo Protego.
“GITEX is an ideal platform to showcase how
modernised IT can lead to real-time insights
for better customer and citizen engagement,
new revenue streams, and greater efficiency
and data protection.”
The University
of Pretoria
has launched
TuksNovation
T
he University of Pretoria has
announced the launch of
TuksNovation, a new high-tech business
incubator which will initially support
postgraduate students within the
Engineering, Built Environment and
Information Technology (EBIT) Faculty.
Showing the strong opportunity for data
centre modernisation, a total of 81% of
IT decision-makers agree that without IT
transformation, their organisations will
no longer be competitive, according to an
Enterprise Strategy Group global survey
commissioned by Dell EMC and Intel. “We have ramped up our efforts to
implement innovative strategies to
leverage and commercialise home-
grown technologies to create sustainable
new enterprises and subsequently job
opportunities.,” said Prof Cheryl de la Rey,
Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UP.
Data centre modernisation can integrate
servers, storage, information management
and data protection, and is an ongoing
process rather than a one-off. “We realise that by developing
and commercialising research and
development projects within academic
institutions and by creating new spinoff
companies, universities can contribut