The recent explosion in the number of employees working from home has put cloud services back in the spotlight as an essential tool to facilitate remote working. Whilst cloud-based applications can offer significant benefits, there are also challenges around moving applications to the cloud. Even with major hyperscale platforms like Amazon Web Services and Azure now available locally, if your business’s network is insufficient to handle the increase in traffic, then latency, downtime, security, and privacy concerns can come to the fore. Resilience and availability of the future WAN is critical for businesses. It is crucial for organisations to take a fresh look at how they manage their wide area networks (WAN) and consider how they will future-proof them to improve network...
Organizations will have to look at re-engaging with their customers and business prospects in an entirely new way in a post-COVID-19 economy. This will most likely force an assessment of business model design and delivery, in which the wide-area network (WAN) will play an important role in defining success. So says Kristian Thyregod, vice president for Europe, Middle East, and Africa at SD-WAN solution provider, Silver Peak. Writing in a blog entry, Thyregod explains, “Forward-thinking companies continuously plan and execute their enterprise architectures to not only accommodate current requirements, but also foresee developments of future requirements – e.g. a temporary, or even permanent, shift in business model design and execution. “…The WAN is the connecting tissue across the enterpri...
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change,” said the renowned genius and theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, and cloud data management company Rubrik is taking this to heart in its latest offering which delivers flexibility at its core. Rubrik is distributed throughout Africa by value-added distributor, Networks Unlimited Africa. Rubrik Go, the company’s new subscription purchasing programme, applies a Software as a Service (SaaS) model and enables customers to enjoy future innovation through one simple and predictable subscription licence. “In these current uncertain times brought about by the global COVID-19 lockdown situation, the ability for customers to have flexibility with their IT arrangements is extremely useful,” comments Risna Steenkamp, General Manager: ESM Divi...
IT services major ITC Infotech is all set to take its long-standing association with South Africa to the next level. The company will soon inaugurate a new global delivery centre in Johannesburg. ITNA’s Jenna Delport had the opportunity to chat to Vishal Kumar, President & Regional Head at ITC Infotech, about the launch of this 10,000 sq ft facility. Here’s what transpired: What inspired the need for ITC Infotech’s delivery centre? ITC Infotech established its presence in South Africa in 2010, and we have steadily expanded our operations across the region. Over the years, we have witnessed firsthand the evolution of South Africa into a very attractive destination for IT service delivery, both for our clients in the region, as well as our global clients. South Africa offers a rich &...
COVID-19 has altered industries across the globe highlighting just how dependant the world is on data. The Global Data Center Security Solutions Market is expected to grow by $5 billion during 2020-2024. The role of the data centre has never been more important during this pandemic, enabling business continuity with the delivery of remote working tools and cloud-based services. When it comes to healthcare, data has played a key role by facilitating artificial intelligence and other tools for tracking the spread of the virus, including emergency services systems, research and development into vaccines. Other industries such as retail and supply-chain management have also seen a surge in the use of the data centre as a mission-critical tool. This is also applicable to media, content and gami...
The world is now entering into the era of the digital economy, leaving the industrial era behind with the emergence and rapid development of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). According to a survey conducted by global research and advisory firm Gartner, 75% of large enterprises have already transferred their principal strategic focus onto digital transformation. And while the most critical production elements were land and labor in the agricultural era, and capital and technology in the industrial era, data and intelligence have now replaced these industries in the digital economy. A significant amount of data has and is still being generated during digital transformation, which has become a core asset for enterprises. However, data is not an end in and of itself. Rather, it ...
Nutanix has announced that its scale-out file storage solution, Nutanix Files, recently reached the significant milestone of 2,500 customers, including nearly 180 Global 2,000 companies. The solution provides simple, flexible and intelligent enterprise file storage for the cloud era – allowing customers to scale and adapt to changing file storage needs across multiple locations and centrally managed from anywhere, something especially important in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Files also offer a native analytics engine that allows customers to gain deep insights into their data. It shows how the data is being used, provides use and access audit over time, and allows for anomaly detection to prevent misuse and threats from malicious actors and malware. “The storage market is very fra...
Anton Jacobsz, Networks Unlimited CEO There is a mysterious alchemy about the number three. As the saying goes, ‘Good things come in threes’ – which is why Networks Unlimited Africa is embracing this ‘magic number’. “A triangle, with its three sides, is one of the most stable shapes that you will find, which is why it’s used in building bridges and other structures where supporting a lot of weight is required,” says Anton Jacobsz, CEO at this leading value-added distributor in the sub-Saharan Africa market. “In the world of colour, we find three primary colours that make up all the rest – red, yellow and blue. In sport, we invariably award medals to the top three competitors, while in photography and design, artists often work in the rule of thirds for perspective. And so here ...
The oil and gas industry is embracing digital transformation. As a traditional pillar of the energy sector, the oil and gas industry has always had an important part to play in the energy field. However, these are challenging times. On one hand, the industry is subject to increasingly complex mining conditions and, with that, higher mining costs. On the other, it is faced with tumbling global oil prices that bring new challenges to all players in the field. In such circumstances, how can Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, cloud, and 5G technologies be used to increase efficiency while reducing costs? This is now the key concern of all oil companies. In sum, it is beyond doubt that the implementation of digital transformation has become a key factor determining the success of oil compa...