Enterprise IT
Why Good Governance is Key to AI Readiness
The events of 2020 have opened the world’s eyes to digital transformation as never before. Despite many people not being aware of the term, remote learning, working and socialising has seen people embrace more technology than ever. Much of this adoption is of technology that has been around for quite a while, but more and more, we’re seeing some advanced services and solutions being spoken about as countries and companies look to emerge from the crisis stronger. One of these, probably the most prominent, is AI. AI seems to make a regular appearance in success stories surrounding COVID-19 specifically. Lebanon is a case in point where citizens now have access to a health bot with an inbuilt symptom checker to conduct self-assessments for the virus. The sophisticated bot is able to identify ...
Rubrik moves to Leaders in Gartner Magic Quadrant
Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa Rubrik, which simplifies backup and recovery for hybrid cloud environments, has joined the Leaders section in the Gartner Backup and Recovery Magic Quadrant. According to the global research and advisory firm’s criteria, this implies that Rubrik is a company that executes well today, and is additionally well-positioned for tomorrow, when measured against its completeness of vision and ability to execute. Rubrik is distributed throughout Africa by value-added distributor, Networks Unlimited Africa. Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa, clarifies, “Previously, Rubrik was placed in the Visionary section of the Backup and Recovery Magic Quadrant. According to Gartner’s evalu...
5 Tech Trends to Increase your Bottom Line
Technology has been constantly innovating and expanding the possibilities for organisations across the world. From AI and data gathering to overall productivity – here are five trends that could shape your companies bottom line: 1. Employees adopt AI Employees are constantly becoming more and more open to letting artificial intelligence (AI) take over some of their tasks – especially the mundane, routine tasks. Millennials are now the largest group in the workforce, and they are instinctively more prepared to use AI solutions. Yes, in fact, in the future, millennials might even expect routine tasks to be automated. In the not too distant future, in many workplaces, artificial intelligence will sort emails, proofread texts, book meetings, etc. As a company, it is, therefore, a good idea to ...
ESET SA Adopts LifeQ’s COVID-19 Early Warning and Disease Tracking Solution
Carey van Vlaanderen, CEO of ESET Southern Africa LifeQ, the leading independent provider of wearable derived health information, today announced the South African operations of ESET, a premier global cybersecurity company, to be the first customer for its COVID-19 early warning and disease tracking solution. With the physiologic monitoring via LifeQ’s wearable-based platform, businesses can better predict outbreaks and assist employees towards recovery by leveraging a critical early warning and disease tracking system for COVID-19 in individuals. After extensive lockdowns globally in response to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, countries and businesses have to find a new set of answers to deal with the ongoing repercussions of the pandemic as part of a much-needed drive to “get back to bu...
Why Remote-Working Works
Sourced from Getty Images. An unforeseen work-from-home revolution has caught many companies by surprise as most employees have now been forced to work from home. The likelihood of returning to the office any time soon seems very unlikely. So what are the pros and cons of working from home? Working from home usually provides employees with greater autonomy over how and when they work, and also how they manage their lives and other responsibilities. Remote working also provides better job satisfaction, increased loyalty, lower absenteeism and less staff turnover. Increased productivity Remarkably, research shows that there is an increase in performance for employees working from home. Airtasker surveyed about 1000 full-time employees in the US of which 50% worked remotely. They compared eve...
Why Women Need to Embrace these 3 Digital Technologies
Over the next decade, a new wave of digital technologies is set to reshape how we live and work. It is imperative that women play an equal role in shaping their impact. Not only should the new opportunities these technologies create be open to all, it is also critical to tap into diverse experiences and perspectives to unlock their full value. Despite the steps taken towards gender equality in most industries, women remain underrepresented in information technology. Just 23% of tech jobs are held by women in South Africa, according to WomenInTech. Given the growing importance of digital tech in our day to day lives, this gender gap cannot be tolerated. Consider these stats from EY: women are predicted to lose five jobs for every job gained through automation, compared to only three for men...
All-Flash would Still be Cheaper, even at Twice the Price
Fred Saayman, Huawei BU Executive at Pinnacle The conversation around which is the better technology between hard disk and flash storage has been going on for years. In the data storage arena, flash arrays have been thriving, with no evidence this will slow down at any time. Hard disk drives (HDDs), on the other hand, which have been around for a lot longer are definitely seeing a slow decline in today’s technology landscape. There was a time when hard disk storage won on price alone, as flash arrays were considered extremely expensive, and there is a limit to the amount of storage any business can afford. The largest enterprises that needed a lot of capacity often went the HDD route, as these solutions were far easier on the pocket. “However, this is no longer the case. As flash technolog...
PAIX Data Centres Expands into Kenya
PAIX Data Centres has begun construction of “PAIX Nairobi-1” data centre in Nairobi. This facility, which is expected to open in November, is part of the company’s accelerated Pan-African expansion. PAIX Nairobi-1 will be located at Britam Tower, the capital’s tallest office building and a prominent landmark located in Upper Hill. Upper Hill is Nairobi’s new financial district and commercial hub of East Africa with regional offices of various national and international financing institutions and multinationals. The adjacent new office facilities of Britam Tower make the location very attractive for international customers that are considering to open offices in Nairobi and prefer close proximity and 24×7 access to their critical data infrastructure. “We are delighted to host PAIX Data Cent...
The Future of Remote Working in South Africa
Sourced from We Work Remotely For several months now, office spaces across South Africa have been gathering dust, void of occupants as employees have been working from home. While there is no telling when the pandemic will end, if the current work-from-home culture is adopted more permanently, offices may soon become ghost towns. But the future of remote working largely remains to be determined. When the COVID-19 crisis began, countless businesses were put to the ultimate test from an IT infrastructure support perspective. A large proportion of the workforce had to cease going in to the office in order to prevent the spread of the virus. As such, for businesses to survive, they had to devise a remote working strategy and leverage digital technology to bring work into the home instead, ensu...
Creating an Equitable Workforce to Inspire Future Generations
Sourced from TechCabal Diversity in the workplace is a phrase which we hear often, but rarely pause to consider what it means beyond representation, and more so, what it can empower businesses and society to achieve. In the Middle East and Africa alone, PWC estimated that $575 billion are lost due to legal and social barriers that exist in women’s access to jobs. One of the biggest roadblocks comes down to people’s mindset and how they perceive women in roles of leadership. Women in Lenovo Leadership Ambassador, Claire Carter says that it is, therefore, no surprise that women feel their seniority is questioned frequently, are asked about family planning at interviews or that women are twice as likely to be interrupted when speaking up in meetings. “This, in turn, leads to talen...
5G Drives the Need for Network Energy Solutions
Fred Saayman, Huawei BU Executive at Pinnacle It is estimated that within five years, the number of connections between people and other people, people and things and things to other things will number more than 100 billion. Add to this the increasing uptake of 5G networks, as well as new services including online healthcare and education, smart homes, telemedicine, virtual and augmented reality, autonomous cars, and it’s easy to see why broader network connections, higher bandwidth and computing that is closer to users are in demand. So says Fred Saayman, Huawei Business Unit: Executive, at Pinnacle ICT, SA’s leading local ICT distributor. “In addition, the world has witnessed incredible new technologies that enable surgeons to supervise operations based on real-time 5G ultra HD imaging. ...
NETSCOUT Proves it’s Ready to Take on Threat Actors
Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Division at Networks Unlimited Africa Midway through June, American citizens thought the country was experiencing the world’s biggest-ever distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which seemed to be taking down internet service providers, social media platforms, and online services from gaming to banking. It very quickly turned out that no such attack was underway at all, as reported by Forbes, but the most interesting point was that so many citizens in the world’s most technology-enabled Western country believed the story so quickly. “A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic,” explains Ris...
