COMMENT
EDITOR'S NOTE
Africa makes
technology work like
nowhere else on earth
Technology brings Africa
limitless opportunities, writes
Arthur Goldstuck, Founder and
Managing Director at World
Wide Worx.
Welcome to Issue 6 of Intelligent CIO Africa.
Just as the dust was beginning to settle following
the WannaCry ransomware attack, organisations
globally were disrupted once more by an attack
claimed to be even more deadly than the last.
This attack was dubbed, ‘NotPetya’, amongst
other things, and was believed to be a strain of
Petya, a global ransomware attack first identified
in 2016.
ne single statistic revealed this
week summed up a dramatic
shift in technology use
across Africa. O Digital Shadows’ Rick Holland provides an
in-depth analysis of NotPetya and following
his claim that these latest attacks are a sign
of things to come, advises on ways in which
organisations can protect themselves and
become ‘battle ready’.
At the Saphila 2017 conference at Sun
City, where customers of the global
enterprise software company SAP
gathered, the company announced
that its cloud software business had
grown by a massive 147% across Africa
in the past year. In the wake of these cyberattacks, securing your
enterprise and data has never been more relevant and this
goes hand in hand with ensuring you have a solid business
continuity plan. Cyberattacks are just one of the many threats
organisations in Africa are facing; disaster threats, political instability, power outages and hardware failure are just as
prominent today. Veeam’s Regional Manager for Africa, Claude Shuck, talks to Intelligent CIO Africa about what businesses
stand to lose by not implementing a continuity plan and the solutions available.
At the same time, its on-premise
business, where it has traditionally been
a world leader in enterprise resource
planning software, grew ‘only’ at a
respectable 21%.
Brett Parker, MD of SAP Africa, also
revealed that the latter now made
up less than a fifth of the company’s
revenue in Africa.
This, he said, meant that migration
to the cloud was happening more
rapidly across the continent than
anyone had anticipated; it also showed
that businesses were leapfrogging
traditional enterprise resource planning
software in much the same way that
cellphones had allowed consumers to
leapfrog landline phones on a massive
scale. This was opening up many
opportunities for innovation.
“There are things happening with
technology in African countries that
are not happening anywhere else in
the world, both in private businesses
and the public sector,” Parker said in his
opening keynote address.
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Arthur Goldstuck is Founder of World Wide Worx and
Editor-in-Chief of Gadget.co.za.
“It’s amazing what the Internet of
things, big data, artificial intelligence
and robotics can do right now.”
Examples ranged from new ways
of increasing crop yields to
healthcare solutions.
“In Kenya, one of the biggest causes
of death of females in rural areas is
cervical cancer. We’ve introduced
digital analysis through our cloud
platform that provides diagnosis in
hours rather than weeks, saving
many lives.”
In Rwanda, US start-up Zipline has
launched the world’s first regular
commercial drone delivery service, to
drop blood parcels on parachutes to
remote health centres.
“A urology clinic in Pretoria recently
acquitted robotic prostate operation
capability. When you operate on
prostate cancer patients with robotics,
because it is not so invasive, instead of
the patient taking five to six weeks to
recover, it’s a four to five day recovery
period. Think of the savings.”
Later, in an interview with Business
Times, he stressed that there were
limitless opportunities. “For example,
if sensors can pick up nutrients in the
soil and the amount of rain it’s had,
they can send the data to a digital
boardroom, to be analysed and to
decide on changes to fertiliser. In
Morocco, they have shown that this
can improve crop yields by 30%.
“It ranges from M-Pesa for the
consumer in Kenya, to farmers
using sourcing management in
Uganda. In South Africa, the MineRP
analyses geospatial data to predict
the yield of certain minerals in the
ground, taking out human error and
enhancing productivity and value.
We are slowly but surely seeing IoT changing processes across various industries and Infor’s General Manager for IMEA, Tarik
Taman, believes if there is a ‘quick win’ to be had with IoT, it’s within the manufacturing industry. He discusses the four ways
in which he foresees IoT transforming the supply chain for manufacturers.
With IoT spreading across various industries, Aruba’s MEMA Regional Director, Jose Vasco, explains why it’s crucial that you
secure your network to prepare for the vulnerabilities IoT introduces, with every connection to your network being a potential
route for attackers.
Africa is currently taking steps towards a more ‘cybersecure’ future by implementing Internet Infrastructure Guidelines. For
this issue’s 'Editor’s Question' we ask three industry experts how they foresee the guidelines affecting African organisations
and how the country needs to adapt in order to accommodate these new regulations.
This issue’s 'Industry Watch' covers the education sector and we gain insight into how Jomo Kenyatta University of
Agriculture and Technology have optimised the storage and sharing of their research data with IBM’s solutions.
“It’s not going to stop. There
are too many challenges on this
continent that technology can
address in new ways.” This ever-increasing quantity of data that organisations manage is synonymous with a great maturation in data analytics
in Africa. Processes and standards are evolving and organisations are now starting to recognise the benefits of cloud-based
analytics. In a feature on the subject of big data, Intelligent CIO’s Arun Shankar talks to industry leaders about the changes
they’re seeing in the field of data analytics and how they’re adapting their solutions for this modern era of self-service.
Cameron Beveridge, head of SAP
Africa’s cloud division, said this has
massive implications for business.
“It may be a great market for cloud
services vendors, but it is also a
fantastic business opportunity for
any company that is active on the
continent and ready to leverage all
these tools.” ¡ This issue’s ‘Get to Know’ is Schalk Nolte, CEO of Entersekt. He tells us why a flexible and open-minded management
approach is important in the fintech industry and why he thinks biometrics is one of the ‘buzz topics’ for this year.
www.intelligentcio.com
I hope you enjoy the magazine. As ever, if you would like to contribute to any future editions please do not hesitate to get in
touch at [email protected].
Emily
Editor
www.intelligentcio.com
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