Enterprise IT
Africa Data Centres to Build 10MW Facility in Nigeria
Africa Data Centres (ADC) has already begun work on its plans to construct a 10MW facility in Lagos, Nigeria. According to TechCentral, the Nigerian data centre will form “(ADC)’ West African hub” and join its network of facilities across East and Southern Africa. ADC CEO, Stephane Duproz says that the Lagos build will help spur the Nigerian economy. “The stimulus effect to the economy of digitisation is well documented and Nigeria is ready for this technology boon. Furthermore, our construction policy is to uplift the community as far as possible, employing local contractors and creating work opportunities within the communities we enter – so the job creation opportunities are realised at both grass-roots and hi-tech levels.” Africa Data Centres Joins NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Centre Pr...
3 Steps to Effectively Organise Healthcare Data
Sourced from TTEC.com As healthcare organisations scrambled to cope with huge surges in patient numbers in the wake of the pandemic, the past year has seen a major change in the adoption of technology and digital services. According to research by Aruba, a HPE company, as of last year the healthcare sector was among the furthest ahead in terms of its adoption of advanced technologies and the sense of urgency it felt around this. Around three-quarters of healthcare IT leaders had started to implement trials or applications in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) (74%), Internet of Things (IoT) (76%) and machine learning (71%). But it was also one of the sectors struggling most with the data this new technology is producing. A third (33%) of IT leaders in healthcare&nb...
The 3 Real Challenges of WFH
It used to be called “telecommuting”. Already the term sounds archaic and has been rapidly displaced by the broader “Work from Home (WFH)” phrase that caught fire in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses all over the world have been experimenting with telecommuting for decades, but the pandemic has woken them up to the fact that it need not remain an experiment. A Practitioner’s View Sujoy Chatterjee, VP of Infrastructure Services at ITC Infotech, says, “WFH can be a wider reality, resulting in interesting, pleasant and desirable upsides. Forward-thinking CIOs and business leaders are already working on long term strategies to support a distributed workforce, not just for full-time employees, but for part-time employees as well.” One such leader Sujoy is working with is Sibus...
Dimension Data Acquires Cloud Solutions Company to Fast-Track AWS Capabilities
Dimension Data has announced its acquisition of cloud implementation company – Acacia Cloud Solutions. The company believes this move will cement its commitment to invest in cloud services and solutions that meet the digital transformation and hybrid cloud requirements of organisations in the Middle East and Africa region in an increasingly competitive and digital business operating landscape. The acquisition is expected to expand Dimension Data’s AWS capabilities and provide its clients with innovative cloud managed services solutions that deliver relevant optimisation tools and speed to market. This will see both Acacia Cloud Solutions and Dimension Data building more capacity and skills to effectively meet client demand. “Our acquisition of Acacia Cloud Solutions, and our global re...
iOCO Brings Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN to Local Financial Services Institution
iOCO, the ICT services business of the JSE-listed EOH Group, has been chosen to assist a large financial services company in the implementation of its software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) rollout. This has allowed the firm to take a bold move forward in its stated aim of building a network incorporating the ‘modernised branch of the future’. Brett van Rensburg, Sales Director for iOCO’s Compute division, says: “Having recently undertaken a rigorous year-long request for proposal (RFP) process to choose our SD-WAN providers, we were duly impressed with the Fortinet Secure SD-WAN offering. “This new project with the financial services company has now allowed us to test the scope and breadth of the Fortinet solution, with truly impressive results. The top benefits that Fortine...
ahomé Cloud as a Service, a New Generation Multi-Cloud Management Tool
In February 2021, Cloud Inspire sas, launched its self-service cloud portal called ahomé. ahomé is a cloud management tool, developed on a powerful automation engine, able to build, orchestrate, deploy and manage a multi-cloud infrastructure. With its intuitive web application interface, ahomé aims at eliminating the complexities of orchestrating a hybrid cloud infrastructure, hence making it accessible to all. Danny Afahounko, CEO of Cloud Inspire, says: “ahomé is a tool designed to counter IT challenges, especially in Africa, where IT progression might be more complicated due to the challenges of the continent. We have developed ahomé to enable Africa into the 4th industrial revolution. By this, we mean that ahomé can enable companies to easily operate a hybrid cloud infrastructure...
Protecting the IT Landscape in a Borderless World
The evolution of technology has pushed the perimeter of organisations further and further towards the edge, and we no longer have the monolithic structures we did in the past. The cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT), even the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating the adoption of a work from home model, have contributed to what has, in effect, become a borderless world. This means that the traditional approach to security of locking down the perimeter is simply no longer enough. The perimeter cannot be easily defined, and the way in which we access services has fundamentally changed. Cybersecurity mesh has emerged as a framework to address this challenge, with a distributed security architecture that more effectively meets the challenges of today’s landscape. Trust no one With IT infrastructure so...
Why Reimagined IT Strategies are Mission Critical for SMEs
Image sourced from IT Web Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been severely affected by the pandemic – many of which are struggling to ensure continuity, let alone achieve sustained growth. However, the news is not all negative. We have also seen countless examples of entrepreneurs rising to the challenge and tackling the unexpected head-on. SMEs who move quickly to take advantage of new technology business models are not only keeping afloat but are actually thriving. According to an article by the World Economic Forum (WEF), SMEs make up 90% of formal businesses in South Africa. These businesses contribute 34% to the country’s GDP and employ up to 60% of the labour force. For this reason, it is crucial that these small businesses continue to embrace technology and digital solutions i...
Fixing Your Cybersecurity Issues 1 Next-Gen Firewall at a Time
Stefan van de Giessen, General Manager: Cybersecurity at Networks Unlimited Africa When did you last check your firewalls as a barrier to entry against cybercriminals? And, perhaps more importantly: does your organisation still rely on a legacy firewall, or has it upgraded to a next-generation firewall (NGFW)? And have you considered the ‘Broken window’ principle when looking at your internal cybersecurity posture, in order to have a positive effect on your business processes? These questions are posed by Stefan van de Giessen: General Manager: Cybersecurity at Networks Unlimited Africa, who says, “The broken window theory rests on the idea that a neighbourhood or community that appears to be orderly and well-kept will be less susceptible to crime. Conversely, one that has many broken wind...
3 Things to Consider When Implementing an Effective Zero Trust Access Strategy
The most secure network is one that has no connections. Of course, that idea is not only impractical, it defeats the purpose of a network. The reality is that no network is an island, and as businesses become more digital, networks inevitably become more complicated and dispersed. Today’s networks now have many “edges,” so it’s much harder than it used to be to create a single defensible boundary. In the face of these changes, the traditional network perimeter is dissolving, and it’s far more difficult to tell who and what can be trusted. To respond to increasing threats, best practices now stipulate a “trust no one, trust nothing” attitude toward network access. Protecting the network with this zero-trust access (ZTA) approach means that all users, all devices, and all web appli...
5 Reasons Why (Not Only) Financial Companies Struggle with Cybersecurity
Financial services companies have been a popular target for cybercriminals for a long time. Not without good reason, since beyond working with money, financial companies handle a slew of sensitive client data that criminals utilise in various fraud schemes or sell-off on dark web bazaars. According to Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, in the past year alone the financial industry has suffered more than 1,500 incidents, with 448 confirmed data disclosures. Carey van Vlaanderen, CEO of ESET says that in addition to the long-standing threats, most companies have had to contend with the rapid transition to remote work. “The shift happened on extremely short notice, leaving companies with little time to deploy adequate cybersecurity measures or to prepare employees for looming c...
Innominds Joins IoTFA 2021 as Gold Sponsor
Leading provider of digital transformation services, Innominds is set to steer the innovation conversation as a Gold Sponsor of this year’s Internet of Things Forum Africa — taking place from 25 – 26 March. Business leaders and tech heavy-weights alike will hear how the California-based innovator powers the Digital Next initiatives of global enterprises. Under the theme “Enabling Enterprise Transformation with IoT”, Raj Ganti, President of Strategic Accounts at Innominds, and Sairam Vedam, Chief Marketing Officer at Innominds, will tackle transforming the future of AgTech. Register for this free virtual summit and get to grips with taking your IoT pilots from project phase to real-world production. Uncover Emerging Technologies, Data Protection, Ethics and Security in a connected wor...
