Enterprise IT
Prepaid Electricity Consumption: The Connection Section
Prepaid electricity consumption is a sensible option for many people, under a number of different circumstances: for the home or business owner, for the tenant, for the owner of an Airbnb property, for example. But how do you know what to look for when you first set out to share in the benefits offered by prepaid electricity consumption? Your metering company should be rock-solid A prepaid electricity sub-meter is a device that helps users control and regulate the usage of electricity. It works much like a prepaid cellphone, whereby you pay upfront before you use it, therefore eliminating large unexpected monthly bills. And as with your cellphone service, you want to know that you are signing up with a good provider. Here are some points to ponder when choosing your electricity sub-meterin...
Infobip Appoints Former Microsoft Heavyweight to Board
Infobip has appointed its new Vice President of Planning and Strategy Implementation, Marin Bezić to the Board of Directors. An experienced management consultant with a deep understanding of the sector and expertise in building out bluechip tech organisations, Bezić is ideally suited to help define and support the company’s long and short term strategic business objectives as the Group continues to extend its global footprint. He will be responsible for optimising business management including enhancing the Go-To-Market framework and overseeing revenue operations. Previously at Microsoft, he was central to product development and the force behind Microsoft’s first business intelligence application. “I’m excited to be a part of Infobip’s story. The feeling is very similar to the beginning o...
3 Things to Consider When Adopting SaaS
Sourced from Business News Daily Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provides organisations with enterprise-level scalability and a rich environment via a cost-effective model, allowing smaller businesses access to technology that typically used to be bespoke for enterprise customers. While SaaS was initially designed to service the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market, it has subsequently evolved to a point where large enterprises are seeing the value of this model. The fact that the model lends itself to scale up or down means that organisations of all sizes can benefit from SaaS or Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS). Reprioritise Technology Resources The main benefit of adopting SaaS or BaaS is that companies typically gain on economies of scale, while the cost to entry is lower than an outright pur...
How to Build a Secure 5G Ecosystem
Powered by the convergence of 5G and industry 4.0, the smart enterprise of the future is now here. The critical performance boost of 5G enables critical smart systems to share and respond to information faster than ever, permitting industrial enterprises to digitise and automate their infrastructures with confidence. 5G offers a unique and valuable set of capabilities that, unlike any previous or current mobile technology, enable and expand the implementation of transformative technologies for organisations, including industrial enterprises. The value of 5G encompasses enhanced bandwidth, ultra-high reliability, low latency, high positioning precision, and native support for machine communications that organisations across a wide range of verticals, including manufacturing, logis...
Executive Solutions Improves Morecorp’s Network Capability with Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN
Morecorp appointed Executive Solutions (ES) to securely augment their legacy MPLS network with Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution. This allows Morecorp to meet its goal of ultimately decommissioning its existing MPLS network, significantly reducing costs while increasing operational efficiency, security and network redundancy. “The cost of running their MPLS network was extremely high especially that the performance of this network was limited,” explains Richard Levine, Managing Director at ES. “It made sense for the company to invest in the Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solution as it slashed return on investment in a very short period, becoming operationally more cost-effective within 6 months of project completion. It also enhanced security and bandwidth management and allowed for the organisat...
SD-WAN is an Agile Networking Solution for an Unpredictable Business Landscape
Software-Defined Networking in a Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) has seen significant growth in recent years, and this is set to accelerate – a study of the SD-WAN market by 360 Market Updates found that the market size is expected to reach $2784.5 million by 2026. The biggest reason for this growth is the number of benefits a properly implemented SD-WAN architecture can deliver, particularly in an unpredictable business landscape. Although the events of 2020 may have put SD-WAN implementations on the back burner, the agility, resilience and performance it offers are actually the ideal solutions to many current and future business challenges. As the technology matures and evolves, we can expect to see greatly accelerated adoption in the South African market. A host of benefits In a constantly s...
53% of South Africans are Threatened by Job Automation, Research Shows
53% of South Africans believe that the risk of having their job automated has increased over the last year – more than the global average of 41% – according to a new study from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and The Network. Additionally, 31% of workers in the digitisation and automation fields have a significantly lower perceived risk of automation in South Africa than 46% globally says Rudi van Blerk, Principal and Recruiting Director at BCG. In South Africa, the interest in developing new skills is highest among those in the early- and midcareer phases as 40% of respondents are reporting a negative impact on their work due to the effect of COVID-19 on employment, including a decrease in working time or being laid off, versus the average of 36% of global respondents. Locally, highly educa...
How Do Technology Brands Take Advantage of Content Marketing?
Most technology businesses are well aware that in order to survive and thrive in today’s ultra-competitive environment, a certain amount of their budget must be dedicated to advertising online. The ideal scenario would be for an IT company to advertise on some of the top online technology news outlets so their message can be seen by millions of eyeballs every single day. This massive exposure would enable practically any brand to quickly gain recognition and traction. Popular media outlets – like ITNewsAfrica.com, for example – are prime candidates for online advertising, but the obvious factor that keeps most businesses from doing so is the perceived exorbitant expense. There are many content marketing benefits regardless of whether you are marketing to businesses (B2B) ...
NETSCOUT Visibility is Enhanced by AWS Expanded Support for Virtual Private Cloud Traffic Mirroring
Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest provider of on-demand cloud computing platforms, has now expanded its Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) Traffic Mirroring to support additional select non-Nitro Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance types. As a result of this expansion, NETSCOUT is enabled to provide end-to-end visibility for security and service assurance of even more applications and services that are used in AWS. NETSCOUT, a leading global provider of service assurance, security and business analytics, is distributed throughout Africa by Networks Unlimited. Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at value-added distributor Networks Unlimited, explains, “Nitro is the underlying pla...
Security and Service Assurance Must Rule Financial Services as Threat Actors Remain Relentless
Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa The rise of the pandemic last year meant that corporates around the globe had to embrace a highly dispersed, virtualised environment to keep the wheels of business turning. This is now changing the way that banks need to move forward, with both their security as well as their service assurance. So says Darren Anstee, Chief Technology Officer for security at NETSCOUT, a leading global provider of service assurance, security and business analytics. He explains that, at the start of 2020, digital transformation in the financial services sector was already well underway, and the intervening year has only accelerated this transformation. Writing in a recent blog, he notes that, “The COVID-19 lockdown shut branches, forc...
Why CEO’s Shouldn’t Take on the Role of CIO
The heads of medium to large organisations have a very specific and all-embracing role to play. Peter Drucker, modern business futurist, said it best in 2004: “The CEO is the link between the Inside that is ‘the organisation,’ and the Outside of society, economy, technology, markets, and customers.” It’s a wide-angle lens role that is bestowed on CEOs while everyone else in the organisation applies a much narrower focus in one direction, for the most part, according to the Harvard Business Review. In a medium to large organisation, the CEO does not get involved with the day-to-day operations of the organisation. This is a responsibility shared (among others) by the Chief Operating Officer (COO), the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Chief Technology ...
Paratus to Launch Data Centre in Zambia
Paratus is on track to open its new data centre in the heart of Lusaka, Zambia. This new purpose-built facility is expected to enable businesses to store and access their most vital asset, their data, at any time (24/7) in a secure and world-class 3-tier equivalent data centre. The 1-megawatt (MW) facility will leverage the latest physical and virtual security to ensure the secure storage, protection, and management of data. The data centre will also offer businesses modern-age cloud computing that will help businesses not only enhance operational efficiencies but help cut IT capital and operating costs that come with on-premise data storage and management. Paratus Zambia MD, Marius van Vuuren says, “we are demonstrating our commitment to deliver the best quality services within an ever-gr...
