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PRIORITY
FOR 2019
Two industry experts
look at what the CIO’s
priority is for 2019

GOING
GREEN
Morocco is competing to
be the renewable energy
leader in Africa

DRIVING
INNOVATION
How technology is being
used in the banking and
finance industry

LEADING THE PACK

Financial services company PPS chose Knotion to deliver an
Enterprise Architecture solution to help support its IT strategy.
The firm used developed infrastructure to deliver on conceptual,
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ARCHIVING

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38

CONTENTS
ISSUE 23

47
07 NEWS: Latest news round-up from across Africa. 52 FEATURE: Going virtual with SaaS

18 LATEST INTELLIGENCE: NETAPP: NFLEX: 56 CASE STUDY: PPS leading the pack
Fulfilling the Promise of Converged Infrastructure through EAaaS
and NetApp AFF vs. Pure Storage FlashArray//M

21 TRENDING: New McAfee report reveals data in the

cloud more exposed than organisations think
52
24 INFOGRAPHIC: Nutanix announces findings of
annual global Enterprise Cloud Index

26 PROJECT LATEST: Latest updates from

Zimbabwe, South Africa, Egypt and Tunisia

28 EDITOR’S QUESTION: What steps should you

take to prevent your digital identity being stolen?

34 TALKING BUSINESS: Powerful data is shared

data – conquering the silo sprawl

38 FEATURE: Understand cloud’s new essence; drive

the business forward

44 CIO OPINION: Aiming to connect the unconnected

47 COUNTRY FOCUS: Competing to be the

renewable energy leader in Africa

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 3
 CONTENTS

ISSUE 23
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 NEWS

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6 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
 NEWS

Action achieves results at AfricaCom

Close to 14,000 people
attended this year’s
AfricaCom event
One of the elements in preventing Africa’s rapid progression is a
critical lack of appropriate skills. The importance of this was reflected
in the number of E-Learning solutions and deployments on display in
the Connectivity Hall and the Technology Arena.

As pointed out by several speakers, the Fourth Industrial Revolution

is now not so much about the technology itself but how to use it to
enable advancement.

The Internet of Things (IoT) will have a transformative impact on

both African business and African society. And this year’s IoT World
Africa proved it by providing a platform for the burgeoning IoT
ecosystem to get together and share their expertise, industry insights
and transformation stories.

Also disrupting and changing the status quo is the increasing

prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AfricaCom 2018 played
host to the first staging of the AI World Summit in Cape Town.

“The buzz around the entire AfricaCom precinct was tangible, as

T estament to the growing influence and importance of the entire

digital ecosystem on everyday life, the 21st edition of AfricaCom
attracted close to 14,000 record-breaking attendees at the CTICC in
South Africa, with the most diverse and informed, audience ever.
those attending and participating in shaping Africa’s digital future
appear to agree the time has now come for less talk and more action
in order to get things done,” said Tom Cuthell, Event Director at
KNect365, organiser of AfricaCom.

/////////////////
RCS-Communication launches new
Ka-Band service in South Sudan
R CS-Communication, a leading ISP in
South Sudan, has established the first
site for Avanti’s HYLAS 4 high-speed satellite
broadband service in the country. Following
successful beam testing in Juba, the new
Ka-Band service with high throughput speeds
of up to 35Mbps download and 4Mbps upload
is now available to RCS-Communication’s
customers. RCS-Communication partnered
with iWayAfrica, an Avanti Master Distributor,
to bring the service to South Sudan.

“We have a long-standing relationship of

almost 10 years with iWayAfrica for the
provision of high throughput volume capped
VSAT services and are pleased to extend this
to the new HYLAS 4 service that offers much
improved speeds,” said Flippie Odendal,
Managing Director, RCS-Communication.
“RCS is always on the lookout for suitable
technology and services that increases
options to our clients and enhances their
user experience. We focus on the enterprise
and SME market, and with the HYLAS 4
broadband service, we see SME clients
across South Sudan benefiting from high
speeds and a selection of volume options at
affordable rates.”
Michèle Scanlon, Managing Director,
iWayAfrica, added: “We have been working
with RCS since May 2009 for VSAT
broadband services in South Sudan.
“It is the leading ISP in its market with
an excellent service reputation. Now with
HYLAS 4, we can bring Avanti’s service
to South Sudan and enable our partner
RCS to deliver even faster download and
upload speeds.”

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 7
NEWS

Cutting-edge Temenos establishes South

platform African “Bank of the Future”
launched to Think Tank
boost telecom Temenos has
regulatory in launched its South
African ‘Bank of the

Ghana Future’ Think Tank

G lobal Voice Group (GVG) has announced

that a Common Platform (CP), using
its state-of-the-art technologies, has been
officially launched by Nana Akufo-Addo,
President of Ghana.

Delivered by Ghana-based firm Kelni-GVG,

with the technical assistance of GVG, the
mCP will be jointly used by the Ghana
Revenue Authority (GRA) and the National
Communications Authority (NCA) to support
and optimise their respective activities
with respect to telecom and mobile money
oversight and taxation.

In his inaugural speech to the launch,

President Akufo-Addo presented the CP
as ‘an essential building block for the
realisation of the government’s vision of a
digitised Ghana.’

For GVG’s CEO, James Claude, this perfectly

defines the very nature of the project.

“The Common Platform is indeed all about

digitisation,” he said.

“It aims at replacing the old paper-based

ways of doing things by cutting-edge
technologies of the digital age that can really
increase efficiency and enforce transparency
in important sectors of the economy such as
telecoms and digital financial services.”
The telecom and mobile money markets
of Ghana have a lot in common with those
of other countries where GVG successfully
implemented similar platforms over the last
few years, such as Tanzania, Uganda and
Rwanda. They are characterised by an overall
lack of transparency, high vulnerabilities to
important risks such as revenue leakages, tax
erosion, unfair competition from Internet-
based OTTs and proliferation of international
grey telephony. The CP is expected to have
an immediate and lasting positive impact in
all these regards.
B anking software company Temenos
has announced the launch of its South
African ‘Bank of the Future’ think tank.
The venture aims to address domestic
and global challenges and opportunities
facing financial institutions in the country.
Over 60 experts from 30 banks and
financial institutions are expected to
take part in the initiative over the coming
year, promoting knowledge creation and
sharing as well as actively responding to
the complex opportunities and challenges
of today’s banking environment.
Jean-Paul Mergeai, Managing Director
Middle East and Africa at Temenos,
said: “An important part of what we
do at Temenos is to create and foster
a community within the banking and
fintech ecosystem. Our clients, partners
and our MarketPlace technology
providers form the most dynamic banking
technology community.
“Our industry is facing structural
changes right now in terms of customer
expectations, regulatory requirements
and new entrants, as well as a genuine
technological revolution. Through this
think-tank, we are creating a forum where
leading bankers from South Africa can
come together to share knowledge and
address the challenges and opportunities
they face on a day-to-day basis. With
some of the world’s most innovative
and technologically advanced financial
institutions coming from South Africa, this
seemed like the perfect country to lead
this conversation on what the Bank of the
Future will look like.”

8 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
 NEWS

IT identified as a future-orientated
business in South Africa
R esearch shows that South African SMEs
are estimated to represent 90% of
formal businesses, provide employment
supporting several companies to conduct
in-depth research into the SME sector.
The research aims to establish the impact
to about 60% of the labour force and of SME-development projects, what the
contribute approximately 34% of the challenges are and where the opportunities
country’s GDP. lie within this vital sector.

To further grow this sector and boost a
struggling economy, J.P. Morgan has been
The companies supported by J.P. Morgan
include Catalyst for Growth, GIBS
Entrepreneurship Development Academy,
Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA) sectors,” said Sifiso Ndwandwe, Executive
and Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct. Director, Catalyst for Growth.

Lesley Williams, CEO of Tshimologong
The four companies shared findings on how
small and medium business can bolster
growth in future-oriented industries such
as IT and the green economy, as well as
a general look at the role and success of
current business incubation.
“At the heart of all four research studies
is a burgeoning optimism regarding the
potential of both the IT and green economy
“The joblessness of a large majority in South
Africa is a growing concern and prompted
these partners to focus more heavily on
future-orientated industries. There is a
definite opportunity for the country to
leapfrog based on experiences of other
countries in these sectors. Our research
presents an analytical overview of the role
of business development support in terms of
SME performance and sustainability.

Industry demand for Intelligent Data
Management continues at pace
grew 30%, licence and upgrade bookings
are up 19% year-over-year and the region
added 105 new customers during the
quarter. This growth is mostly driven by SMB
and commercial customers. The quarter also
saw 264 Veeam Cloud and Service Provider
(VCSP) transactions up 27% year-over-year
in Q3, which can be attributed to mid-
market businesses adopting cloud services.
The region added 43 VCSP partners and
it was a notable quarter for one of the
existing partners, Silicon Sky, which achieved
platinum status, the highest level for a
reseller and the first to achieve it in the
region of Middle East and Africa.
/////////////////
“In Africa, one of the key drivers behind this
is the ubiquity of mobile. The continent has
long been labelled a mobile-first environment.
Some might even say that it is mobile-only
given the challenges of rolling out fixed-line
infrastructure to remote and rural areas.
Irrespective, with a mobile penetration rate
of 43% and expectations that there will be
more than 690 million smartphones in sub-
Saharan Africa by 2025, the positioning is
clear – mobility must be an essential part of
any data management strategy.”

Kate Mollett, Regional Manager for Africa

South, said, “Businesses are using the cloud

V eeam has announced its Q3 2018

results, marking the company’s 41st
consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
Locally, the Africa South region’s bookings
as a second home for data as part of a
disaster recovery plan because the expense
of having a second physical site is too high in
South Africa.

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 9
NEWS
IT security at risk in the
META region, according to
Kaspersky Lab
Amir Kanaan, Managing Director for
the Middle East, Turkey and Africa,
Kaspersky Lab
K aspersky Lab’s State of Industrial
Cybersecurity 2018 survey has
highlighted the different opinions
industrial and energy enterprises, as well
as transport and logistics companies,
have regarding the negative effects of
cyberattacks on their industrial networks.
However, when it comes to the issues
affecting their ability to keep networks
secure there are three key concerns
they can agree on – understaffing,
underinvestment by senior management
and the human factor. Algeria (66.2%),
Morocco (60.4%) and Egypt (57.6%)
10 INTELLIGENTCIO
are among the top countries that face
attacks on its ICS systems.
The consequences of employee errors
pose a critical threat to half of all
organisations worldwide and in all sectors
(49%). According to a new report from
Kaspersky Lab and B2B International,
almost 25% data breaches in Middle
East, Turkey and Africa in the past year
have led to people losing their jobs.
“Recent malware such as Industroyer
and Triton have far exploited
employee weaknesses, proving to be
malicious threats to organisations
and making it more evident that the
cyberthreats landscape is evolving at an
unprecedented pace,” said Amir Kanaan,
Managing Director for the Middle East,
Turkey and Africa, Kaspersky Lab.
“Enterprises across the region have
started to pay a bit more attention to ICS
cybersecurity issues and are evaluating
the industrial segments of their networks
and training employees. It is a good
sign, because it’s highly important for
businesses to take proactive measures in
order to avoid firefighting in future.”
dormakaba
meets Africa’s
demand for
next-gen
access control
d ormakaba, a leading provider of bleeding
edge security and access control
technology, has all but closed the door to
competition within Africa’s burgeoning
commercial access control market. The
company – one of the top three global firms
competing for market share – has made its
Self Boarding Gates (SBG) and Boarding
Pass Control (BPC) solutions available in
Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
Airport and aviation travel is dormakaba’s
most active vertical, according to EAC and
Project Manager Hannes Nortje.
“dormakaba globally installed more than
two thousand SBGs and over one hundred
BPC gates, backed by service through 16,000
employees and numerous cooperation
partners in over 130 countries ready to assist,”
said Nortje. “Turnstiles and barrier systems is a
high growth market on the continent.”
The solutions offer African businesses
everything required for secure access to
buildings and rooms, all from a single source.
dormakaba’s SBG system consists of a
sensor barrier with automatic swing panels.
The unit features an integrated boarding
pass reader, an LCD display for passenger
instruction and a device for printing seat
assignment changes. Industry standard
barcodes can be scanned from boarding
passes printed by airlines or self-service
kiosks, personal printers and smartphones.
The company’s Automated Boarding Pass
Control system provides single-file access
for passengers with space allowance for
carry-on luggage.
www.intelligentcio.com
 NEWS

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 11
NEWS

Oracle accelerates Digital

Transformation in South Africa

R einforcing its commitment to South

Africa, Oracle has announced the
opening of an Innovation Hub in
Johannesburg, a first for the company in
Africa that will help drive the adoption of
emerging technologies across the country’s
corporates, public sector and academia.
In line with South Africa’s National
Development Plan (NDP) 2030, Oracle’s
Innovation Hub is aimed at furthering Digital
Transformation in the country by raising
awareness about the impact of emerging
technologies, such as the Internet of Things
(IoT), Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence
(AI), Bots and Machine Learning (ML) to
help drive economic growth and support
the delivery of innovative and transparent
services to citizens and customers.
The new hub will act as a platform for
Oracle customers, partners and other
stakeholders to better understand the
potential of emerging technologies and co-
create industry specific innovations with top
Oracle experts.
“There is now widespread recognition that
a digital revolution is imperative for South
Africa’s socio economic growth”, said Niral
Patel, Managing Director and Technology
Leader, Oracle South Africa.
“As a leading cloud solutions company,
we are focused on supporting South
Africa’s public and private sector drive with
latest digital technologies.
“Oracle’s new innovation hub in
Johannesburg will act as a catalyst to help
drive awareness, experimentation and
implementation of transformational initiatives
Niral Patel, Managing Director and
that will be customised to address local Technology Leader, Oracle South Africa
challenges and create new opportunities.”

//////////////////
Avaya showcased solutions at Cairo ICT

A vaya has participated in the

Cairo ICT 2018 conference where
it presented cutting-edge technologies
that enable impactful customer and
employee experiences.

The company demonstrated a number of

industry-first platforms that bring together
unified communications (UC) and contact
centres (CC), enabling the seamless transition
of communications between customer-facing
employees and internal teams.

Avaya also showcased the world’s first

social network for chatbots, as well as
several industry-specific use cases that
highlight innovations in workflows,
customer engagement and customer
relationship management.
Fadi Hani, Vice President for the Middle
East, Africa and Turkey, Avaya, said: “The
ICT market in Egypt is growing by leaps and
bounds as the country continues to adopt
smart, connected business solutions. At the
same time, organisations are increasingly
looking to deliver more rewarding and
consistent customer experiences through the
use of technology.
“These experiences are key to driving
customer loyalty, while also boosting
employee productivity and engagement.
Avaya’s strengths in this arena are built
upon years of experience working with
businesses of all sizes in Egypt to seize the
opportunities of the connected world.”
The technology conference took place at the
Egypt International Exhibition Centre.

12 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
 NEWS

IRESS
Lex Technologies announced
launches next-
as reseller for Predict360
generation
client portal Namibian based consultancy company Lex
Technologies is now a reseller for Predict360

F inancial technology business IRESS

has announced the launch of its
next-generation client portal with a
clear focus on engagement. The portal,
available through IRESS’ market-leading
financial software solution XPLAN, provides
a contemporary, simple to use, front-end
solution for financial service businesses to
engage their clients in a range of services
digitally. From launch, the client portal offers:

• Portfolio asset allocation and

performance data – presented in a
visually engaging and interactive design
that provides the end client with instant
valuable insight
• Assets and liabilities breakdown – split
by managed and non-managed assets so
the end client has a clear understanding of
what their adviser is looking after for them
• Secure messages and documents – two-
way sharing of documents and a mobile
/ optimised experience for use on-the-go
• Digital signatures – electronic
signing of documents by one or
more parties, enabling speedy and
straightforward document signing in line
with consumer expectations
• A range of templated website designs
– small and large businesses alike can
easily align their portal to their brand
Dr Eugene van Rensburg, IRESS South
Africa Head of Integrated Wealth, said:
“Today’s financial service businesses need
to deliver a professional and personalised
digital experience to their clients, offering an
accurate perspective of their investments and
financial life. Our new client portal provides
a secure and straight-forward way for clients
and financial professionals to engage and
communicate with each other 24/7 and can
be delivered at scale and with ease.”
3 60factors, the industry thought leader
in pioneering the use of Artificial
Intelligence to empower companies to
manage compliance and risk solutions,
has announced that Namibian based
consultancy company Lex Technologies
is now a reseller for its flagship platform,
Predict360.
“We seek to partner with the best in
Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) for our clients in both
private and public sectors,” said Wonder
Mushonga, Group CEO and Co-President
for Lex Technologies.
“We believe the GRC solutions offered by
360factors will deliver on the needs of
our customers across both private and
public sectors,”
Carl L. McCauley, CEO for 360factors,
added: “We’re proud to be working
with Wonder and his team at Lex
Technologies in providing our full GRC
solutions to their customer base in Africa
and around the world.
“Our solutions will increase operational
efficiency and enable Lex Technologies
to deliver the best possible compliance
and risk management technology to
their customers.”
360factors has been developing and
implementing compliance and risk
management software solutions using
Artificial Intelligence since 2012 and
has provided solutions to companies
world-wide.
They continue to build partnerships
within the United States and around the
world to ensure more companies are
engaged in their products and services.

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 13
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INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
 NEWS

Nokia deploys 5G site for rain in

South Africa
N okia has deployed its 5G site for the South African operator rain.
The launch and subsequent rollout are well aligned with the
government’s strategy to connect the unconnected and improve
the lives of citizens, and match rain’s main objective to provide
affordable broadband internet to the masses in South Africa.

The full network deployment is set to start in the first quarter of 2019
and services are expected to launch mid-2019 when standards-based
5G NR devices become available in the country.

Marc Rouanne, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “Nokia

has a long-standing relationship with rain and we are proud to work
with the company on 5G.

“Nokia believes that 5G will change the connectivity landscape

in South Africa and the entire continent. It will connect the that deliver services with high capacity scaling and low latency. The
unconnected and reshape services such as education and health, company will also provide professional services for the deployment of
with the introduction of more connected things.” the solution.

As part of rain’s 5G project, Nokia will deploy its AirScale radio “We are proud to be on the forefront of 5G worldwide and working
access network solution in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern with Nokia and other partners to connect as many South African as
Cape, Kwa-Zulu Natal and the Mangaung (Bloemfontein) regions. possible with affordable high-speed broadband services,” said Willem
AirScale offers a new modular way of building radio access networks Roos, CEO of rain.

/////////////////
Hughes’ JUPITER System selected by
three African telecom firms
H ughes Network Systems, the global leader in broadband satellite
networks and services, has announced three African telecom
companies have selected the Hughes JUPITER System to power
connecting businesses and homes. SatCoNet, the only native VSAT
operator in Tanzania, also chose the JUPITER System to improve its
service offering for the market with improved performance, better
delivery of satellite broadband services for their customers. throughput and a better experience for their customers.

Botswana Telecommunications Corporation, Satcom Networks Africa One of the largest telecommunications companies in East Africa will
Limited (SatCoNet) and a leading East African telecommunications implement the JUPITER System for video and broadband service in
company each chose the system based on its high performance, schools. The technology refresh begins with 1,000 sites, improving
operational efficiency and better customer experience. high-speed satellite performance and evolving their solution to meet
growing demand.
“Hughes is committed to the growth of our operations in Africa and
we have tripled our dedicated sales and engineering support across
the continent to serve growing broadband demand,” said Dharmendra
Singh, Regional Director, International at Hughes.

“Our JUPITER System enables service providers to improve their

offerings and deliver a wide range of applications supporting economic
and social development across Africa – helping close the digital divide,
which is our global mission.”

Botswana Telecommunications Corporation is using the JUPITER

System to expand its high-speed business broadband service. The
first phase of deployment includes hundreds of remote terminals

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 15
NEWS

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16 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
 NEWS

Ducati boosts
Kenya pushes for stronger
business
support for ICT innovations
performance
with
modernised
infrastructure
from NetApp
N etApp, the data authority for hybrid
cloud, has announced the integration
of its industry-leading All Flash Storage
Array (AFF) Series into leading motorcycle
manufacturer Ducati’s Information
Technology (IT) environment.

By leveraging NetApp’s cloud-connected

flash and data services, Ducati can
modernise infrastructure, bolster compliance,
strengthen performance and ensure business
continuity during the transformation process.

Ducati is a leading manufacturer of

specially designed motorcycles that
are characterised by high-performance
Desmodromic engines, innovative design
and cutting-edge technology.
Kenya has successfully pushed for the
adoption of a resolution that will see
stronger support for ICT innovations

“We closely collaborated with Ducati’s IT

team to understand its need for a cutting-
edge data management infrastructure,” said
Fadi Kanafani, Senior Director Middle East
and Africa at NetApp.
“The NetApp AFF series immediately
overhauls Ducati’s data management and
storage to build a powerful, modern IT
infrastructure. The solution aids the IT team
in critical decision making and implementing
operational efficiency in bike production and
other business areas.”
Through the new NetApp AFF data
management system, Ducati can now easily
manage about 200 applications and over 300
terabyte of data to grant reliable real-time
access to the world’s fastest enterprise all-flash
storage from anywhere in the world, across
multiple clouds, with full GDPR compliance.
“Our new flash systems will allow us to
guarantee a quicker response to every business
instance as well as increasing the speed of our
prototyping and go-to-market,” said Stefano
Rendina, IT manager of Ducati Corse.
K enya has successfully pushed for the
adoption of a resolution that will see
stronger support for ICT innovations,
particularly in developing countries.
The new resolution titled, ITU’s role in
fostering telecommunication/ICT centric
innovation to promote development of
digital economy, was adopted at the
2018 International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference
in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
It will see the ITU play an increasingly
prominent role to support initiatives that
promote ICT innovations which have
gained recognition as being critical in
socio-economic development.
ICT innovations are the driving force
behind the emergence and growth of
digital economies.
Even though there is lack of uniform
definition, digital economy is a new
concept that is associated to digital
networking and communication
infrastructures that provide a
global platform which people and
organisations devise strategies, interact,
communicate, collaborate and search
for information.
In Kenya, the ITU is already working with
the Communications Authority of Kenya
in the review of the country’s ICT-centric
innovation ecosystem, whose output will
be useful in guiding in the development
of a framework for ICT innovations.
The resolutions that were passed touched
on various areas including the use of
telecommunications and information
communication technologies to bridge
the digital divide and build an inclusive
information society, strengthening the
role of ITU in building confidence and
security in the use of IT, International
Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs)
and issues related to cybersecurity. n

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 17
LATEST INTELLIGENCE

NFLEX: FULFILLING
THE PROMISE
OF CONVERGED
INFRASTRUCTURE
PRESENTED BY Executive summary of technologies with industry-leading benchmarks in
server and flash performance.
Converged Infrastructure (CI) was full of promises.
Some kept, and some never fully realized. Today, CI Converged Infrastructure continues to grow and
continues to provide the backbone to many data now maintains a large share of Tier 1 application
centers and provide a natural pathway to future deployments in the marketplace.
hybrid cloud infrastructures.
Introduction
Data center administrators have been successful
with the complete flexibility of today’s CI solutions, NFLEX leverages the value of today’s Converged
but they are enamored with the promise of HCI Infrastructure with the added promise of simplicity.
Download whitepaper here
simplicity. NFLEX fills the gap with a Converged Converged Infrastructure was designed with
Infrastructure solution designed to increase simplicity efficiency in mind, both from a technical standpoint
within a framework of flexibility, with the confidence as users looked to automate their IT processes across
of factory integration. components. And, from a business standpoint, CI
can deliver cost and manageability efficiency by
Fujitsu and NetApp are working together to deliver driving expenses down thanks to greater utilization
premier Converged Infrastructure based on industry and decreased physical hardware needs. In addition,
standard technology leadership and unparalleled the evolution of virtualized environments controlled
innovation, taking advantage of over twenty years via a single console was intended to help drive
of successful co-innovation. NFLEX is built on a core management efficiency for CI. n

18 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com

NETAPP AFF VS. PURE STORAGE
FLASHARRAY//M
O
Overview
Data has become the lifeblood of companies
of all sizes and across all industries.
Organizations are reinventing themselves to
unlock new value from existing applications
as well as next-generation social, mobile,
cloud, and analytics technologies.
To address these demands, businesses must
modernize IT infrastructure to accelerate
application performance, improve data
center economics, and adapt to evolving
business demands with confidence.
Download whitepapers free from www.intelligentcio.com/me/whitepapers/
www.intelligentcio.com
This document compares two all-flash
solutions that might be considered by
companies that are modernizing their
storage infrastructure to accelerate
application performance: the NetApp
AFF and the Pure Storage FlashArray//M.
The FlashArray//M family consists of four
different models: The M10, M20, M50, and
M70, each of which is an independent, non-
clustered array containing a pair of storage
controllers and SSD devices.
The NetApp AFF family is also made up of
four models: the AFF A200, A300, A700,
LATEST INTELLIGENCE
and A700S. Like the FlashArray, AFF storage
controllers are deployed in pairs. However,
unlike the FlashArray, as many as 12 AFF
node pairs can be combined to deliver
all-flash performance across 24 storage
controllers as part of a single cluster.
Although the FlashArray and NetApp AFF
share some similarities in design, many
critical points of differentiation exist. This
analysis examines five essential criteria to
consider when evaluating flash storage
products and compares how the NetApp AFF
and the Pure FlashArray stand up to each. n
INTELLIGENTCIO 19
ARE YOU
READY?
FOR CLOUD NETWORKING

66%
companies expect SD-WAN to help
achieve core strategic goal of
expanding cloud usage.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// TRENDING

NEW MCAFEE REPORT

REVEALS DATA IN THE CLOUD
MORE EXPOSED THAN
ORGANISATIONS THINK
New research from McAfee has revealed that sensitive

“
information stored in the cloud, SaaS collaboration and
IaaS/PaaS configuration mistakes, along with cloud
threats, are at all-time highs – creating significant risks
to enterprise data.

M THE REPORT
cAfee, the device to cloud
cybersecurity company, has
released its Cloud Adoption and
Risk Report, which analysed billions of events
in anonymised customers’ production cloud
use to assess the current state of cloud
deployments and to uncover risks. The report
revealed that nearly a quarter of the data
in the cloud can be categorised as sensitive,
putting an organisation at risk if stolen or
leaked. Coupled with the fact that sharing
sensitive data in the cloud has increased
53% year-on-year, those who do not
adopt a cloud strategy that includes data
loss protection, configuration audits and
collaboration controls will endanger
the security of their most valuable asset
– data – while exposing themselves to
increased risk of non-compliance with
internal and external regulations.
www.intelligentcio.com
The study found that while organisations
aggressively use the public cloud to create
new digital experiences for their customers,
the average enterprise experiences more than
REVEALED
2,200 misconfiguration incidents per month THAT NEARLY
in their infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and
platform-as-a-service (PaaS) instances. A QUARTER OF
Cloud service providers only cover the
THE DATA IN THE
security of the cloud itself, not customer CLOUD CAN BE
data or customer use of their infrastructure
and platforms. Companies are always CATEGORISED
responsible for securing their data wherever
it is, hence highlighting the need to deploy
AS SENSITIVE,
cloud security solutions that span the whole PUTTING AN
cloud spectrum, from SaaS (software-as-a-
service) to IaaS and PaaS. ORGANISATION AT
“Operating in the cloud has become the
RISK IF STOLEN
norm for organisations, so much so that our OR LEAKED.
INTELLIGENTCIO 21
TRENDING
employees do not think twice about storing
and sharing sensitive data in the cloud,” said
Rajiv Gupta, Senior Vice President of the
Cloud Security Business, McAfee. “Accidental
sharing, collaboration errors in SaaS cloud
services, configuration errors in IaaS/PaaS
cloud services and threats are all increasing.
In order to continue to accelerate their
business, organisations need a cloud-native
and frictionless way to consistently protect
their data and defend from threats across
the spectrum of SaaS, IaaS and PaaS.”
Cloud collaboration a blessing and
a curse
Cloud services bring a momentous
opportunity to accelerate business through
their ability to quickly scale, allowing
businesses to be agile with their resources
and provide new opportunities for
collaboration. Cloud services like Box and
productivity suites like Office 365 are used
to increase the fluidity and effectiveness of
collaboration. However, collaboration means
sharing and uncontrolled sharing can expose
sensitive data. Findings of McAfee’s research
demonstrate that:
• A total of 22% of cloud users share files
externally, up 21% year-on-year
• Sharing sensitive data with an open,
publicly accessible link, has increased by
23% year-on-year
• Sensitive data sent to a personal email
address also increased by 12% year-
on-year
To secure sensitive data in cloud storage,
file-sharing and collaboration applications,
organisations must first understand which
cloud services are in use, hold their sensitive
data and how that data is being shared
and with whom. Once organisations have
gained this visibility, they can then enforce
appropriate security policies to prohibit
highly sensitive data from being stored
in unapproved cloud services and provide
guardrails that prevent non-compliant
sharing of sensitive data from approved
cloud services, such as when data is shared
with personal email addresses or through an
open, public link.
IaaS and the risks of misconfiguration
With SaaS, securing data, user identity and
access to data is primarily the customer’s
22 INTELLIGENTCIO
responsibility. With IaaS, customers
take on a much larger share of security
responsibility that includes data, identity,
access, applications, network controls and
host infrastructure.
While this provides customers with an
opportunity to have greater control over
their cloud infrastructure, it also increases the
organisation’s surface area for security risks
and their responsibility for the same.
IaaS providers, like Amazon Web Services
(AWS), provide several infrastructure and
platform services, each having deep and
complicated security settings. Magnifying
the IaaS/PaaS security challenge is the fact
that organisations use multiple IaaS/PaaS
vendors running several instances of each
vendor’s product. The research found:
• A total of 94% of IaaS/PaaS use is AWS,
but 78% of organisations using IaaS/
PaaS have both AWS and Azure
• Enterprise organisations have an average
of 14 misconfigured IaaS/PaaS instances
running at one time, resulting in over
2,200 individual misconfiguration
incidents per month
• A total of 5.5% of AWS S3 buckets have
world read permissions, making them
open to the public
McAfee recommends that organisations
continuously audit and monitor their AWS,
Azure, Google Cloud Platform and other
IaaS/PaaS configurations as a standard
security practice, while protecting data
stored in IaaS/PaaS platforms.
IaaS/PaaS use is growing rapidly as an
alternative to on-premise data centres.
Businesses need to get ahead and address
their security responsibilities – data
protection and threat defence as they would
for SaaS cloud services and configuration
compliance and workload protection for
IaaS/PaaS cloud services – before they
experience a security incident.
Compromised accounts and
insider threats
Most of the threats to data in the cloud
result from compromised accounts and
insider threats. The average organisation
generates over 3.2 billion events per month
in the cloud, of which 3,217 are anomalous
behaviours and 31.3 are actual threat
events. In addition:
• Threat events in the cloud, such as a
compromised account, privileged user,
or insider threat, have increased 27.7%
year-on-year
• A total of 80% of all organisations
experience at least one compromised
account threat per month
• A total of 92% of all organisations have
stolen cloud credentials for sale on the
Dark Web
• Threats in Office 365 have grown by
63% year-on-year
To get ahead of comprised accounts
and insider threats, organisations should
understand how cloud services are used.
They should also identify anomalous
behaviour, such as when the same user
accesses the cloud from disparate locations
simultaneously, which could indicate a
compromised account threat.
McAfee advises that, as a first step
towards protecting data in the cloud, cloud
access security brokers (CASB) should be
implemented. CASBs are cloud-native
services that enforce security, compliance
and governance policies for cloud services.
They help organisations leverage and
extend their existing security controls where
appropriate and define and deploy new
cloud-native ones where appropriate to
enable enterprises to consistently protect
their data and defend from threats across
the spectrum of SaaS, IaaS and PaaS. n
Rajiv Gupta, Senior Vice President of the
Cloud Security Business, McAfee
www.intelligentcio.com
 S OMWARE
N
RA

DAILY AVERAGE
INFECTIONS RANSOM

3-5 bitcoins
4000+ $3500-6000

AVERAGE IMPACT

6 workstations 2 servers

AVERAGE AVERAGE
DOWNTIME REMEDIATION

Loading...

12 hours 12 hours
INFOGRAPHIC
INFOGRAPHIC
Nutanix announces findings
of annual global Enterprise
Cloud Index
N
utanix, a leader in enterprise
cloud computing, has announced
the findings of its first annual
global Enterprise Cloud Index, measuring
enterprise plans for adopting private, hybrid
and public clouds.
The new report found enterprises plan to
increase hybrid cloud usage, with 91%
stating hybrid cloud as the ideal IT model,
but only 18% stating they have that model
today. In South Africa, the results compared
strongly with the rest of the world, with
a total of 93% of the local respondents
agreeing that hybrid cloud is the ideal future
IT model, although only 15% responding
that they have this model in play.
The findings also revealed that application
mobility across any cloud is a top priority
for 97% of respondents – with 88% of
respondents saying it would ‘solve a lot of
my problems’.
Additionally, the report found public cloud
is not a panacea; IT decision makers ranked
matching applications to the right cloud
environment as a critical capability and
“
35% of organisations using public clouds
overspent their annual budget. In South
Africa this figure was 41% – a fair bit higher
that its global counterparts – highlighting
that cloud cost management remains a
problem locally.
When asked to rank the primary benefits
AS A COUNTRY of hybrid cloud, interoperability between
cloud types (23%) and the ability to move
OUR CLOUD applications back and forth between clouds
BEHAVIOUR (16%) outranked cost (6%) and security
(5%) as the primary benefits. Other key
PATTERNS AND findings of the report include:
CONCERNS • Hybrid cloud better addresses business
EMULATE THAT needs over single public cloud, including
the price tag: 87% of respondents said
OF OUR GLOBAL that hybrid cloud as an IT trend is having
a positive impact on their businesses
COUNTERPARTS. with the exact figure stating the same
24 INTELLIGENTCIO
for South Africa, and more hybrid cloud
users reported all their needs were
being met (49%) compared to single
public cloud users (37%). Furthermore,
organisations that use public cloud
spend 26% of their annual IT budget
on public cloud and 21% in South
Africa. Perhaps most striking is the fact
that only 6% using public cloud came
in under budget with an average of 8%
in South Africa, while nearly six times as
many (35%) overspent in their use of
public cloud resources with a staggering
41% locally.
• Security is top of mind for determining
workloads: 71% of respondents surveyed
for the report ranked data security and
regulatory compliance as the top factor
in determining where to provision their
workloads, locally the figures were almost
the same at 72%. This was followed by
performance at 62% (58% locally), ease
of management at 53% (60% locally),
and cost at 52% which differed locally
weighing in at 34%.
• App developers today are circumventing
IT: 57% of respondents said their
developers are circumventing IT when
it comes to deciding where applications
run, putting the organisation at potential
risk with this number even higher in South
Africa at 77%, placing the microscope on
Shadow IT.
• Finding hybrid IT talent is difficult:
With clear benefits to a hybrid model,
respondents say scarcity of hybrid experts
is a challenge, with 54% claiming talent
retention is part of the problem, locally
this was higher at 64%.
• EMEA is expected to surpass the Americas
with hybrid cloud adoption: Regionally,
the Americas reported greater use of
hybrid clouds now (22%) with South
Africa trailing (15%) and within 12
months’ time (31% global average) with
local respondents at only 18%. However,
the two-year outlook has EMEA (43%)
surpassing the Americas’ hybrid plans
(39%) and APJ (39%) catching up.
www.intelligentcio.com

“As a country our cloud behaviour patterns
and concerns emulate that of our global
counterparts,” said Paul Ruinaard, Country
Manager at Nutanix Sub-Saharan Africa.
“However, where we differ is in the current,
planned and future distribution of workloads
www.intelligentcio.com
with more emphasis being placed on the use
of the public cloud than in other regions.
It seems cost is still a primary inhibitor and
concern locally and South African business
appears to be facing significant challenges
in keeping cloud spending in check. If we drill
INFOGRAPHIC
down into what the findings mean to South
Africa in particular, we can surmise that there
is a need amongst local organisations to get
a better handle on their cloud spend, there
is a clear gap for better cloud management
and cloud resources and talent still pose a
threat to local business.” n
INTELLIGENTCIO 25
PROJECT UPDATE

LATEST REGIONAL
PROJECT UPDATE

ZIMBABWE

A 100-megawatt solar plant is underway at Chertsey Farm,

Gweru, Midlands Province, Zimbabwe. The project will also
include the construction of a 0.2 kilometre of a 132-kilovolts
line from the Midlands solar plant to the existing Chertsey
132-kilovolt (KV) substation.

SOUTH AFRICA

A solar power plant will be constructed in Pofadder,

Northern Cape, South Africa. Xina Solar One is a
100-megawatt (MW) parabolic trough plant with a five-
hour thermal energy storage system using molten salts. The
plant will produce enough energy to serve more than 90,000
households and will prevent the emission of more than
398,000 tonnes of CO2 per year when compared to a natural-
gas plant. The plant will use parabolic trough technology
and a superheated steam cycle with a storage capacity
of 1,650 MWh configured to be used during the
South African peak load demand.

26 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
 PROJECT UPDATE

TUNISIA

A 7.5-kilometre railway line is to be constructed in Tunis.

Capable of carrying 9,800 passengers per day, the project
will improve the capacity and quality of urban rail transport
with a net reduction of pollution, enhance the urban and
economic development of Soliman, support the modal shift
to rail transport and contribute to the decongestion of the
Greater Tunis especially during peak hours. The project
includes acquisition and installation of rails, construction
of stations, electrification and traffic signs.

EGYPT

A 32-megawatt hydropower plant will be built in Assiut,

Egypt. The new barrage will be constructed 400 metres
downstream of an existing barrage and includes a sluiceway
with eight 17-meter-wide radial gates, a hydropower plant
with four 8 MW turbine-generators, a double-chamber ship
lock, a road bridge, an 11-meter-tall embankment dam and
rehabilitation or replacement of the Ibrahimia canal head
regulator. A section of the River Nile will also be deepened in
order to mitigate any potential increase in groundwater
levels in Assiut city and neighbouring areas.

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 27
 EDITOR’S QUESTION
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
A
new study from Kaspersky Lab has
revealed that while our identity
may not be worth a lot in terms of
dollars, it is a significant asset to criminals in
other ways.
The research uncovered an appetite
among cybercriminals for data stolen from
popular services – including via social media
accounts and remote access to gaming
websites. User confusion about what their
data is worth could result in a haphazard
approach to security, making it all too easy
for thieves to steal data and commit crime.
Data stolen due to people’s lax security may
have limited resale value but can be put to
many uses. This can cause huge problems
for an individual victim, who may lose money
and their reputation, find themselves being
chased for debt that somebody else has
incurred in their name, or even suspected of
a crime that somebody else has committed
using their identity as a cover. Kaspersky Lab
investigated Dark Web markets to find out
how much personal data is worth and how it
is used by criminals.
The company’s researchers found that
criminals can sell someone’s complete digital
life for less than US$50; including data
from stolen social media accounts, banking
28 INTELLIGENTCIO
WHAT STEPS
SHOULD YOU TAKE
TO PREVENT YOUR
DIGITAL IDENTITY
BEING STOLEN?
details, remote access to servers or desktops
and even data from popular services like
Uber, Netflix and Spotify.
Meanwhile, researchers found that the
price paid for a single hacked account is
lower, with most selling for about US$1
per account, and with criminals offering up
discounts for bulk-buying.
The most common way criminals steal
this sort of data in the first place is via
spear phishing campaigns or by exploiting
a web related security vulnerability in an
application’s software.
After a successful attack, the criminal gets
password dumps which contain a combination
of emails and passwords for the hacked
services. And, with many people using the
same password for several accounts, attackers
might be able to use this information to access
accounts on other platforms too.
Interestingly, some criminals selling data
even provide their buyers with a lifetime
warranty, so if one account stops working,
the buyer will receive a new account for free.
“It is clear that data hacking is a major
threat to us all and this applies at both
an individual and societal level because
stolen data funds many social evils,” said
David Jacoby, Senior Security Researcher at
Kaspersky Lab.
“Fortunately, there are steps we can take to
prevent it, including by using cybersecurity
software, and being aware of how
much data we are giving away for free –
particularly on publicly available social media
profiles, or to organisations.”
People can avoid such risks by taking several
security steps:
• To stay safe from phishing, always check
that the link address and the sender’s
email are genuine before clicking
anything. A robust security solution will
also warn you if you attempt to visit a
phishing web page
• To avoid one data leak harming all
your digital identities, never use the
same password for several websites or
services. To create strong, hack-proof
passwords and remove the struggle
of remembering them, use a specific
password manager application, such as
Kaspersky Password Manager
• To find out who has your personal data,
use services such as PrivacyAudit.me that
automatically search for a user’s data
across a large number of sources
www.intelligentcio.com
 Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A
EDITOR’S QUESTION

MARIUS COETZEE,
CEO OF IDECO

///////////////////
B
anking as we knew it is on its way out,
with a bold new world of seamless,
cardless, cashless financial systems set
to change the way people live and transact
forever. But this next level banking depends
entirely on the ability to create a trusted link
between the physical and the digital world.

Innovation in banking is taking hold around

the world and South African financial
institutions are not lagging. Major local
banks and financial services firms are rapidly
moving to use next generation technology
to innovate and improve the customer
experience, harnessing facial recognition,
voice recognition and biometric scanners to
verify customer identity and authenticate
transactions; as well as Blockchain systems
to secure and track transactions. In future,
consumers will enjoy ‘ERA’ – effortless,
reliable and accurate – authentication,
with no need to remember their identity
document, bank card and proof of residence
in order to transact.

These developments are bringing consumers

new levels of financial services and greater
convenience through mobile banking,
cashless banking, self-help kiosks, cross
border payments and faster inter-bank
transfers. With any innovation comes a
certain level of risk, but since innovation
drives a competitive edge, this progress
cannot – and should not – be slowed.
Banks may be taking the lead in this brave
new world, but soon, digital identity will
become the key to unlocking all transactions,
services and government processes.
Digital identity will ultimately enable
everyday life, promising convenience, lower
cost and greater trust in processes. But this
can only be achieved when digital identity is
effectively linked with physical identity and
underwritten by an oracle who maintains
this trusted identity, to ensure that the
processes of engaging is seamless, trusted
and accurate.
As digital identity becomes the most critical
factor in unlocking a world of services
and transactions, it becomes increasingly
important to ensure that this digital identity
is a trusted one.
Ensuring that there is a trusted link between
the physical and the digital identity
depends on an Identity 4.0 environment,
in which world-class, infallible biometric
systems accurately capture biometric data,
impenetrable algorithms ensure this data
is secured and trusted custodians serve
to safeguard the data and authenticate
identity, so facilitating transactions with an
approved acquirer.
Identity 4.0 therefore seamlessly
establishes trust by linking the identity
owner, the acquirer and the issuer in a
single on-chain transaction. There can be
no room for error, since once captured and
authenticated, flawed identity data could
exist within financial services Blockchain
environments forever.
The growing importance of digital identity
as a valuable asset is reflected in moves
internationally to call for sovereign identity,
in which individuals seek to establish and
‘own’ their identity in the digital world.

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 29

EDITOR’S QUESTION
//////////////////
A
s we live in a globally connected
world, almost all our personal
information – a virtual expose of our
lives – exists online and we need to ensure
that our digital identities are protected in the
same way that we care for ourselves and our
physical property.
Here are a few practical tips to help you keep
your digital identify safe.
1. Passwords: The world still relies on
passwords for security. Please make
sure that your password is not easy
to guess, it must not be your name
and do not include your birthdate. You
do need to ensure that you do not use
the same password for every online
portal and wherever possible, use two-
factor authentication
2. Antivirus and applications: While
Antivirus struggles to identify many
modern threats, it is still important to
ensure it is running, up-to-date and has
the latest updates at all times. The same
30 INTELLIGENTCIO
JOHN MCLOUGHLIN,
MANAGING DIRECTOR,
J2 SOFTWARE
must be applied to your applications,
whether they are PDF readers, Java or
Office applications. You need to ensure
they are patched and up to date to
prevent exploits.
3. Always check your security and
privacy settings: On every online
platform on which you engage, you
need to be careful to keep your security
settings up-to date. Check these
settings regularly to guarantee that your
information and identity is secure
4. Think before you post: Before you put
anything online, think about whether
you are comfortable having that
information in the hands of a stranger.
Share personal, company and family
information only with those who need
to know about it. Telling the whole
world that you are on holiday and out
of the office can give a cybercriminal
the opportunity to trick your colleagues
into falling for a cyberattack. Consider
everything that you post is public, do
they really need to know?
5. Get rid of your friends: Ok, not the real
ones. Make sure you do regular reviews
of your connections and friends. If you
do not know them, cull them.
6. Stranger danger: If you do not know
the person you are speaking with,
approach with caution. Do not click
on their links and do not open their
attachments. It takes a few seconds to
do some verification. A few seconds can
save you a lot of money.
Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A
7. Monitor everything: Whenever there is
a deviation or an anomaly, investigate.
Nothing is 100% guaranteed and you
need to monitor in order to identify
problems. Look out for strange activity
on your bank statements. Ensure you
can see strange behaviour across your
network. A sudden change is a good
indicator of compromise.
8. Use common sense: If you did not
enter a competition or have never been
to Italy, you did not win their lottery. As
exciting as it seems, there is nothing in
this world that is free. Obviously, never
tell strangers your identity number or
bank pin codes.
9. It is not just about the company: We
see too many compromised businesses
because they do not monitor behaviour
of all connected equipment. Your email
security platform may be great for
corporate email. This does not help if
your user is compromised through their
free email service, accessed from their
work PC.
10. Talk about it: The biggest contributor
to rising cybercrime statistics is
ignorance. People are generally not
taught what to look out for. Users are
not engaged in awareness campaigns
and do not understand technical
jargon. Conversation and awareness
training is required for the technology
users and in a manner they can relate
to and understand. Above all never
stop monitoring, responding, adapting
and improving.
www.intelligentcio.com
 Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A
EDITOR’S QUESTION

MAYLEEN BYWATER,
SENIOR PRODUCT
MANAGER AT VOX

///////////////////
O
ur cyber footprint is increasing daily as technology improves
and evolves. This statement seems to strike fear in to our
minds. So, how do we protect our identity and the data that
is created? Digital identity theft is on the increase and for this reason
we stress the importance of and implore with our clients, both as
individuals and as a business, to take the correct measures in order to
ensure that sensitive information is secured.

What is our digital identity? Digital identity encompasses

characteristics, or data attributes, such as username and password;
online search activities, for example electronic transactions; date of
birth; ID number; medical history and shopping history or behaviour.
A person’s digital identity is linked to one or more digital identifiers,
such as an email address, URL or domain name.

It’s the business’s responsibility to make sure that it adopts the

correct measures and keeps the following top of mind:

• Ensure that your network has the correct perimeter security

• Consider whether the emails you are receiving and sending are
properly protected, this will safeguard that your organisation is not
sending out harmful viruses that may be hiding on your network
• Are you aware of the endpoints utilising your network and who
has access to your data?
• Do you have policies in place to ensure that you are protecting
the details of your clients?
• Make sure that you share policies and best practices with
your staff, insist that security forms part of their training and
continuously enforce policies
• Run regular checks on your systems to identify vulnerabilities
• Back your data up to ensure ease of restoration and
business continuity
take the security headache away and allow them to spend more time
All these points lead to a solid security posture but will require constant on innovation and focus on growing their business.
evaluation and checkpoints. Remember that policies are only effective
when they are communicated, enforced and kept updated. The threat landscape is continuously evolving; therefore, it is
important for a business to have a firm understanding of its data
There are so many different aspects to digital data and information and its people. Simulate, educate and create a culture of awareness
storage to consider. We recommend using a managed service in terms of cyberthreats. After all, the reputation of a business is its
partner to assist businesses to manage their environments. This will most valuable asset. n

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 31
EDITOR’S NOTE

32 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
 A

AFRICA
PUBLICATION
Providing Unparalleled Technology Intelligence

ISSUE 23 // www.intelligentcio.com
Global Intelligent Intelligent
Cooling Partner Education Partner Phishing Partner

Intelligent Intelligent Intelligent

Cabling Partner Manufacturing Partner Security Partner

Intelligent
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Intelligent Intelligent Intelligent

Supporting Partner Software Partner Energy Partner

PRIORITY
FOR 2019
Two industry experts
look at what the CIO’s
priority is for 2019

GOING
GREEN
Morocco is competing to
be the renewable energy
leader in Africa

DRIVING
INNOVATION
Looking how technology is
being used in the banking
and finance industry

EDITOR’S LEADING THE PACK

NOTE
Financial services company PPS chose Knotion to deliver an
Enterprise Architecture solution to help support its IT strategy.
The firm used developed infrastructure to deliver on conceptual,
logical and physical levels.

PROJECT LATEST | INTELLIGENT CABLING | INTELLIGENT DATA CENTRES

H
ello and welcome to the latest
edition of Intelligent CIO Africa. This
month’s cover story focuses on how
financial services company PPS has utilised
an Enterprise Architecture (EA) solution from
Knotion to boost its IT strategy.
Established in 1941, the PPS Group is the
only mutual financial services company
in South Africa focusing exclusively on
graduate professionals. The firm provides
tailor-made insurance, investment and
healthcare solutions to its members and
is an exclusive organisation of graduate
professionals.
Despite its IT team participating in a training
programme, they lacked practical experience
to develop the EA on their own.
The Knotion approach aligned with its
strategic requirements given the changes
that were taking place inside the company
and has had a massive impact.
According to Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda
Survey, the role of the CIO is changing, with
industry leaders in the region spending more The magazine is again packed with plenty of
time focused on business leadership and other features and news stories from across
becoming more open minded, showing a the continent.
greater capacity for change.
I hope you’ve had a great year and look
In our feature on what the CIO’s priority forward to your contributions in 2019. You
is for 2019, we hear from Niral Patel, the can email me at paul@lynchpinmedia.co.uk
Managing Director and Technology Leader
for Oracle and South Africa, who says it is
imperative for business leaders to ensure
their organisations are future-ready and
that they reskill their workers for the tidal
wave of change.
Craig Freer, Executive Head: Cloud at Vox,
also provides detailed analysis, stating that Paul Rogers
some companies are not fully aware of the Editor
challenges faced with moving to the cloud.
Morocco is this month’s Country Focus,
where we learn how Masen is leading the
way in its renewable energy sector. The aim
is for the kingdom to achieve 52% of its
energy mix from renewable sources by 2030.
Meanwhile in Industry Watch, we look at
how technology is being used in the banking
and finance sector.

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 33
 ‘‘
TALKING //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
business

Powerful data
is shared data –
conquering the silo sprawl
James Petter, VP, EMEA at Pure Storage argues that, if organisations are to innovate
and survive in a business environment that is increasingly data-driven, they must
design their IT infrastructure with data in mind and have complete, real-time access
to that data.

34 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
 ‘‘
////////////////////////// TALKING
business

A
ccording to IDC, spending on data-
intensive AI systems in the Middle
East and Africa (MEA) region will
grow at a CAGR of 32% between 2016 and
2021, reaching US$114.22 million in 2021.
Projects range from automated customer
service agents, shopping and product
recommendations to health and safety
use cases such as automated cyberthreat
detection and AI-powered medical research,
diagnosis and treatment.

Some have referred to this opportunity as

the Fourth Industrial Revolution. That’s a
massive understatement. The last industrial
revolution was driven by the assembly line –
a feat of strategic engineering that helped
build a car faster. Today we’re talking about
feats of engineering that allow cars to drive
themselves. It’s less apples to oranges and
more apples to atoms. A new generation of
tools, fuelled by an ability to ingest, store and
deliver unprecedented amounts of data, are
driving a tidal wave of innovation, previously
relegated to the realms of science fiction.
Data’s role in the future of business
cannot be overstated. According to a
survey conducted by MIT Technology
Review, commissioned by Pure Storage,
an overwhelming 87% of leaders across
MEA say data is the foundation for making
business decisions and 80% believe that
it is key to delivering results for customers.
But acknowledging the importance of data
and putting data to work are two separate
things. To put the latter in perspective, a
recent study conducted by Baidu showed
its dataset needed to increase by a factor
of 10 million in order to lower its language
model’s error rate from 4.5 to 3.4%. That’s
10,000,000x more data for 1% of progress.
All this research points to one thing –
to innovate and survive in a business
environment that is increasingly data-
driven, organisations must design their IT
infrastructure with data in mind and have
complete, real-time access to that data.
Unfortunately, mainstream storage
solutions were designed for the world of
disk and have historically helped create
silos of data. There are four classes of silos
in the world of modern analytics – data
warehouse, data lake, streaming analytics
and AI clusters. A data warehouse requires
massive throughput. Data lakes deliver
James Petter, VP, EMEA at Pure Storage
scale-out architecture for storage. Streaming
analytics go beyond batched jobs in a
data lake, requiring storage to deliver
multi-dimensional performance regardless
of data size (small or large) or I/O type
(random or sequential). Finally, AI clusters,
powered by tens of thousands of GPU cores,
require storage to also be massively parallel,
servicing thousands of clients and billions of
objects without data bottlenecks.
As a consequence, too much data today
remains stuck in a complex sprawl of silos.
Each is useful for its original task, but in a
data-first world, silos are counter-productive.
Silos mean organisational data can’t do
work for the business, unless it is being
actively managed.
Modern intelligence requires a data hub – an
architecture designed not only to store data,
but to unify, share and deliver data. Unifying
and sharing data means that the same data
can be accessed by multiple applications
at the same time with full data integrity.
Delivering data means each application has
the full performance of data access that it
requires, at the speed of today’s business.
Data hub is a data-centric architecture
for storage that powers data analytics
and AI. Its architecture is built on four
foundational elements:
• High-throughput for both file and
object storage. Backup and data

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 35
 ‘‘
TALKING
business ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
warehouse appliances require massive
throughput for mainstream, file-based
workloads and cloud-native, object-based
applications
• True scale-out design. The power
of data lake is its native, scale-out
architecture, which allows batch jobs to
scale limitlessly as software – not the user
– manages resiliency and performance
• Multi-dimensional performance. Data
is unpredictable and can arrive at any
speed—therefore, organisations need a
platform that can process any data type
with any access pattern
• Massively parallel. Within the
computing industry, there has been
a drastic shift from serial to parallel
Driving the effective use and adoption
of information
Adriaan Hubinger,
Engagement Manager: Data,
Information and Analytics at
Decision Inc, examines how
to effectively adopt data
inside the business.
J
ust consider how much data is
available to decision-makers. In 2015,
12 zetabytes (1ZB is the equivalent
of about one trillion gigabytes) of data
was created worldwide. And by 2025, it
is forecast to increase to a staggering
163 zetabytes. Clearly, companies need
a carefully constructed adoption strategy
to capture, manage and understand the
information they have at their disposal.
Adding to the complexity of this challenge
is the fact that many existing business
intelligence (BI) tools are not being used
to their full capacity. There is a willingness
to adopt them, but there is a lack of
understanding how to integrate BI across
the organisation for all employees to benefit
from it.
Even though the financial sector has received
a lot of attention when it comes to data
analysis and information strategy adoption,
36 INTELLIGENTCIO
technologies, built to mimic the human
brain, and storage must keep pace
A true data hub must have all four qualities
as all are essential to unifying data. A
data hub may have other features, like
snapshots and replication, but if any
of the four features are missing from a
storage platform, it isn’t built for today’s
challenges and tomorrow’s possibilities.
For example, if a storage system delivers
high throughput file and is natively scale-
out but needs another system with S3
object support for cloud-native workloads,
then the unification of data is broken and
the velocity of data is crippled. It is not a
data hub.
the reality is that any sector can benefit
from this. In the current difficult economic
environment, businesses are trying to keep
costs low while still being competitive and
maximising the technological solutions they
have at their disposal.
To truly achieve business value from BI
and other analytics tools, companies must
extract value out of the information they
have at hand. This is not only a South African
challenge. Local companies are on par with
their international counterparts when it
comes to adoption rates. Some statistics
show that insurance and technology lead all
other sectors in terms of BI adoption with
40% of organisations having 41% or greater
penetration of BI. It all boils down to making
solutions accessible and customisable to the
specific needs of the business.
Change management
Moving beyond the willingness to change and
having the capabilities to analyse data more
effectively, another component that needs
to be considered is change management.
It has become too easy to migrate BI and
data analytics solutions without taking into
account the people who need to use it.
Granted, costing is always a consideration
as organisations want to run as optimally
For organisations that want to keep data
stored, a data hub does not replace data
warehouses or data lakes.
For those looking to unify and share their
data across teams and applications, a data
hub identifies the key strengths of each silo,
integrates their unique features and provides
a single unified platform for business.
Think of storage like a bank, or an
investment. We put our money in banks, or
in the stock market because we want our
money to work for us. Modern organisations
need to do the same with data and they
should speak to their preferred vendors to
see how they can help. n
as possible. Even though it might be too
expensive to convert the entire organisation
to a comprehensive BI platform, there
are options to embrace a more modular
approach. This is not only cost-effective but
enables the organisation to train sections
of people with the solution and gauge its
impact on the organisation.
African expansion
Looking at the rest of Africa, there are
significant opportunities for businesses to
extract additional value from insights across
the continent. Data structures differ in each
country and these are not always in the
most accessible formats. By getting the data
into a usable format, businesses can gain a
greater understanding of the needs of their
target markets.
Data needs to be accessible in its simplest
form for decision-makers to gain actionable
insights. Currently, it is about transforming
innovative technologies like Machine
Learning and Artificial Intelligence into
relevant solutions that can deliver BI value
for the organisation.
The opportunities are there as is the
willingness. Now it is a matter of combining
data with tools and ensuring employees can
unlock the insights inside it. n
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www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 37
FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019 ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Despite prevalent
economic challenges, the
IDC says that IT spending
by organisations in South
Africa has grown at a
faster rate than GDP
over the past year, with
cloud computing and
services driving a large
part of this. Craig Freer,
Executive Head: Cloud at
Vox, says that companies
are not fully aware of the
challenges faced with
moving to the cloud.
T
o mitigate potential risks, CIOs
need to break their current IT
infrastructure down to a granular
level to gain an understanding of
the business requirements and to look at the
value that IT delivers to the business. They
must obtain a view of what technologies
are in place, including a full view of the IT
ecosystem and all its dependencies.
This information can then be used
to produce a total cost of ownership
comparison to demonstrate the gains that
can be made by making the shift to cloud
computing, as a cloud architecture blueprint
and implementation roadmap that brings
together a public, private and/or hybrid
cloud solution for the business.
Understand cloud’s
new essence;
drive the business forward
38 INTELLIGENTCIO
Managed services
Although many companies are adopting
a cloud strategy, the majority see this
as a phased approach, not a short-term
goal. This means a continued reliance on
on-site computing as their cloud strategy
evolves. Added to this is the current ICT skills
shortage in South Africa and as a result,
more companies are turning to managed
services as a business model.
This brings us to the essence of cloud, which
is not necessarily the platform but the
managed services and applications that are
enabled and made available to companies
in order to optimise their businesses and the
resources that they have access to.
Businesses need to undergo a fundamental
skills and mindset change and IT
departments under the leadership of the
CIO need to move away from a ´break and
fix´ approach to being more SLA orientated.
Investing in skills that focus less on hardware
and more on software will become a
necessity, or CIOs can consider shifting to
vendors that offer not only a cloud solution,
but also a managed services layer.
CIOs will increasingly need to think about
whether their organisations will own the
skills the organisation requires to operate in
the cloud, or if there is a vendor relationship
management model required. In each
instance, it will require a skills change across
the IT department. The CIO will need to find
a partner that not only understands how
to translate a cloud strategy into business
reality, but also the requirements and skills
for cloud transition.
The reality is that the market is moving to
cloud – with a clear split between private
www.intelligentcio.com
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019
and public. A more hybrid approach is on
the cards, as the needs of the organisation
change, and depending on what cloud is
utilised for. Less critical applications and tools
will likely remain in the public cloud, while
solutions and services that differentiate the
organisation’s value proposition or means of
doing business, will move to private cloud.
A conservative estimate is that 30% of
businesses will retain onsite infrastructure,
which will drive other hybrid computing
models. As more managed services become
www.intelligentcio.com
available, so many organisations may move
away from extensive IT resources and will
look for ways to get better value.
Evolving role
Ten years ago, all we needed from our
CIO was email and basic database and
CRM management tools. Today, our entire
business is heavily reliant on our internal IT
systems. The CIO of 2019 knows exactly
Craig Freer, Executive Head: Cloud
what the company’s plans are and can at Vox
highlight potential risks and inform the
INTELLIGENTCIO 39
FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019
rest of the C-Suite of what changes are
possible or not with the systems the business
currently has.
CIOs should not be viewed as barriers to
progress, but rather as integral parts of the
business. When a new product, service or
division is launched, or the company wants
to make a change to any sales or operations
technical strategy, the CIO should by default
be a part of the process to mitigate the risk
to systems.
If more companies embrace a culture of
openness among the C-Suite they will likely
find that their CIO is potentially an enabler –
and not an inhibitor – in driving the business
forward. More critical though, is for the CIO to
have a vision of what the business needs and
how cloud can future proof the business. n
Autonomous IT brings
a tidal wave of change
Niral Patel, MD and
Technology Leader for
Oracle South Africa, says,
with the Fourth Industrial
Revolution upon us, it is
imperative for business
leaders to ensure their
organisations are future-
ready and that they reskill
their workers for the tidal
wave of change.
T
he time is now for local businesses
to turn to autonomous technology
to lower cost, improve efficiency,
and be more competitive – all key
business fundamentals.
According to Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda
Survey, the role of the CIO in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa is changing. CIOs in
40 INTELLIGENTCIO
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
this region are spending more time focused
on business leadership and becoming more
open minded, showing a greater capacity
for change. In South Africa, there is a new
appreciation for business leadership and a
clear understanding that it is critical to drive
collective action.
To keep pace, the most forward-looking CIOs
will need to capitalise on autonomous services.
What are autonomous services?
Today, autonomous represents a new
category of cloud services; empowering
businesses to lower costs, reduce risk, go
beyond predictive insights to suggested
action and steer innovation into the fast
lane. Offering unprecedented levels of
simplicity, self-service and security, through
being self-driving, self-securing and self-
repairing, autonomous cloud services are
setting a new industry standard for IT. The
resulting ‘autonomous enterprise’ won’t
need people to run, maintain, integrate,
develop and secure its core IT systems.
Instead, AI and automation will work
together to manage everything from
database to application development and
provide actionable insight around business
processes, all without human input.
Closing the skills gap
Keeping our region’s youthful population
in mind and the need to create jobs,
businesses should do their part to skill the
workforce for the world of tomorrow. At
Oracle, we prepare young South Africans
for employment in the ICT sector through
our Oracle Graduate Leadership Programme
that equips them with specialised IT and
leadership skills. To date, 84 students have
successfully completed the programme since
its inception in 2014.
Looking at it from a people perspective,
companies must ensure their employees
are ready for an autonomous cloud
technology-driven environment and
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//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 41
FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019
are able to capitalise on its benefits.
Re-training existing members of staff is
critical. There are a range of options to
help organisations upskill their IT teams
through training; from government
programmes through to vendor academies,
such as the Oracle Academy. The latter
is useful for providing both the technical
skillset required and the necessary security
and compliance training.
Work smarter
CIOs don’t just want to save costs – they
want to move faster and smarter to take
the business in more exciting directions
than ever before. Autonomous will be
key to fulfilling those aims. Accenture, for
example, needed a better way to manage its
largescale professional services workforce.
Trialling an autonomous cloud solution
against its key, data-intensive HR application,
42 INTELLIGENTCIO
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
the company can get quicker and more
personalised analytics to make smarter,
faster workforce decisions.
Similarly, Hertz has used an autonomous
cloud solution to remove the pain of
administration and focus on delivering
faster projects.
Instead of setting up and tuning a server
and database, the team can invest its man
hours in innovation – delivering the right
products to market, and customers, with
more speed.
Build security resilience
By 2022, Gartner predicts that a company’s
cybersecurity rating will become as
important as its credit rating to customers,
suppliers and partners. Yet, security attacks
and breaches are increasing, and humans
can’t keep up. In fact, Gartner previously
predicted that 95% of cloud security failures
will be the customer’s fault.
With AI and automation, businesses can
automate the detection, prevention and
response to security breaches, performance
anomalies and vulnerabilities. Only by using
machines to fight machines can companies
reprioritise and rethink about how they
defend their information.
Autonomous services are precisely the kind of
technology that forward-looking CIOs in South
Africa should strive to adopt. The power of
autonomous services, capable of self-patching,
self-tuning and automatically optimising
performance while running, is just the start.
It won’t be long before autonomous cloud
services bring simplicity, self-service and
security into all areas of the business,
providing new fuel for innovation. Some
organisations are ready. What about you? n
www.intelligentcio.com
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www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 43
CIO opinion
CIO OPINION
“ PEOPLE MIGHT
BE GETTING EXCITED
ABOUT 5G, BUT IT’S NOT
REALLY A REALISTIC
PROSPECT.
Nick Watson, Vice-President EMEA at Ruckus Networks
Aiming to connect
the unconnected
According to a UN report,
T
here has been much talk about
Smart Cities, the requirements,
around 2.2 billion people the connectivity, the policies
could be added to the necessary and the parties that need
global population by 2050, to come together to make it a reality.
Smart lighting and traffic system
with more than half of interlinked public transit and lightning-
that growth occurring in fast Internet connection for every
Africa. Because there is citizen are just some of the benefits
of what you get in a Smart City, but
increasing pressure on all of it won’t be realised until more
the continent to provide advanced and more reliable connectivity
sustainability, efficient is adopted, with a focus on bridging the
digital divide.
mobility and health and
safety, technology has a What is evident however is that nations
big role to play. that complement local government
initiatives with national government
support will likely lead in Smart City
development and more quickly secure
the social and economic benefits it has
to offer.
44 INTELLIGENTCIO
CIO OPINION
//////////////////
Intelligent CIO spoke to Ruckus Networks
EMEA Vice-President Nick Watson about
the connectivity issues in Africa.
“We’ve been working with a number of
cities in Africa over the last few years to
bring networking and Wi-Fi to them,”
said Watson.
“In Lagos, we’re working with Facebook
Express to provide subsidised payments
and we have a number of other projects.
It’s being driven mainly from investment
where traditionally, the over the top
providers like Google and Facebook want
to get access to people who otherwise
won’t be able to connect.
“Part of the reason is because the cost of
data using a mobile network here is still
very expensive for the vast majority of
the population, even though devices are
www.intelligentcio.com

relatively economic to buy. So, what you have
is that many people have got devices that can
connect to data but don’t have a realistic way
of connecting without building a Wi-Fi.”
What is the current infrastructure
like in Africa?
The big oil companies have been able to
fund Virtualised Services Assurance Platforms
(VSAPs) from various early stages and fibre
to major cities, but there’s still large amounts
of Africa where there simply isn’t any fibre
connectivity. So, a lot of the technology is
being deployed on wireless of some sort
because, even though you might have 3G,
4G has not really been rolled out anywhere.
/ People might be getting excited about 5G,
but it’s not really a realistic prospect even
if the standards are agreed next year. So,
when you say you want to embrace a city
and provide equal opportunities, particularly
www.intelligentcio.com
CIO OPINION
“
for those that are less well off, how do you
connect them?
Well, by far the economic way of connecting
YOU ONLY HAVE them is by using their mobile devices as a
Wi-Fi. So, you’ve got a ‘where are we today’,
TO LOOK AT which is much more primitive than I think
COUNTRIES people realise. Opposing that you’ve got a
lot of very visible articles where people are
LIKE NIGERIA TO trying to suggest that 5G is just around the
corner. But it’s really not.
SEE THAT IT’S
ABUNDANTLY Even if you have the devices after you’ve
got the standard, who’s going to pay for
CLEAR THAT the infrastructure? But if we can bring
connectivity to people early in their lives, we
YOU WON’T BE can help educate them. There’s no shortage
ABLE TO HAVE of roles, there’s just a shortage of people
skilled for those roles. We’re certainly able
THINGS WITHOUT to dramatically improve employment, but
people need to be caught early in their lives
TECHNOLOGY. to get them the education.
INTELLIGENTCIO 45
 CIOopinion
Realistically, when will Africa
experience the true benefits of
Smart Cities?
South Africa is a bit of a conundrum
because, in theory we should be miles ahead.
We should be using electronic payments
and broadly able to connect. This is the only
place I go to where I turn off my mobile
data as I switch on my phone as the plane
lands because it’s so expensive. But if you
go to Lagos where are only a few hundred
access points around the city, it’s running
very well. Facebook Express is putting the
subsidy in where, even though it’s not
free, it brings everybody into a connected
world. It does require public and private
partnerships and if it was made a priority by
government, it would happen. But if you look
at somewhere like Kenya, micropayments
are abundant, whereas here we’re still in a
situation where that hasn’t happened.
The challenge is that it’s been developed to
a degree; they’ve got fibre and connectivity,
but they haven’t got wireless. There are
also multiple operators here which in theory
should be a benefit but in practice means it’s
quite difficult to enforce something. But we
46 INTELLIGENTCIO
are seeing change. There will be a significant
rollout in the near future, certainly in the first
half of next year around Cape Town which
will be quite transformational, and I think
that will lead the way.
With the population numbers set
to increase in Africa, what role can
technology play?
You only have to look at countries like
Nigeria to see that it’s abundantly clear that
you won’t be able to have things without
technology. People need to understand their
own health with simple devices. They don’t
need to be expensive but have to be pervasive
and we need to make sure not wasting our
resources and are proactive with metering
and loss prevention. These countries are vast,
so it’s not really practical to have cables and
connect to things. The technology of choice
is inevitably going to be a radio network of
some kind. Each device uses different radios
so it’s not as if you can use the same IP to
every device because they all have different
characteristics and requirements.
You’re not going to build dozens of radio
networks, so what you have is the equivalent
of a fibre network; a radio backbone network,
which is Wi-Fi and the other networks are
connecting in. That’s proving very effective
and I think that’s a trend we will continue
to see.
What role do national governments
need to play to accelerate and
coordinate the development of
Smart Cities?
The only thing that governments can really
do is to look carefully at spectrum allocation
because what we’ve done in recent years is
giving big chunks of spectrums to the highest
bidder which of course has been extremely
helpful to the financial situation of the
country. The challenge with that though is
that it’s clear from studies done in the US, that
we will run out of spectrums if we continue
with that model. Therefore, if I continue to
give huge chunks of spectrum to the highest
bidder and I’m limiting it to some very
wealthy operators, then we are constraining
the growth of all these different devices. So
the government has a very important role to
decide how to go about that. As you go from
3G to 4G, that needs to be talked about now
before they put forward the 4G licence. n
www.intelligentcio.com
 COUNTRY FOCUS: MOROCCO

Only 10 years ago, more than half

of Morocco’s electricity supply was
provided by coal. However, as forecasts
indicate that energy requirements in the
North African country will constantly
rise until 2050, a new law was passed
encouraging citizens to look for
ways to diversify the energy supply,
including more renewable resources.
Now, Morocco is competing to be the
renewable energy leader in Africa.

//////////////////

Competing to be
the renewable energy
leader in Africa

I
n order to meet increasing energy
demand while fighting climate change,
Masen, the Moroccan Agency for Solar
Energy, is leading the way in the country’s
renewable energy sector. It is pursuing the
Kingdom’s goal of achieving 52% of its
energy mix from renewable sources by 2030
and has developed a unique model based
on five components – producing electricity
from renewable sources, applied and
pre-operational R&D backed by industrial
projects, training, industrial integration and
local development.
“
is also aiming to mobilise a competitive
economic fabric that efficiently harnesses
existing skills and helps create new ones.
Masen nurtures and encourages the
development of applied and pre-operational
THIS IS A R&D backed by industrial projects and the
STRATEGIC promotion of technological innovation. At
the heart of Masen’s integrated approach,
PARTNERSHIP this incentive to innovate is epitomised
by the development of a 200-hectare on
THAT COMBINES site platform at the Noor Ouarzazate solar
LEADERSHIP complex. The common thread running
through this integrated approach is the local

As well as producing electricity and raising

AND TECHNICAL development strategy Masen implements,
which helps the regions hosting the projects
the necessary funds for its projects, Masen EXPERTISE. to achieve equality and sustainable growth.

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 47
COUNTRY FOCUS: MOROCCO

48 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
 COUNTRY FOCUS: MOROCCO

“
Internationally, Masen is aiming to be the
preferred partner for any country wishing
to make renewable energy a priority
for its socioeconomic development and
has already signed several partnership
agreements with African countries for the
MOROCCO IS development of renewable energies.

A REFERENCE Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African

Development Bank Group and Masen
IN TERMS OF President Mustapha Bakkoury have also
RENEWABLE signed a letter of intent marking a new
cooperation initiative as part of the 'Desert
ENERGY. to Power' programme.

The goal is to support African countries,

especially those in the Sahel region targeted
by the 'Desert to Power' initiative, to develop
renewable energy technologies which are
adapted to their natural environments and
specific energy needs.

The African Development Bank Group began

operations in Morocco in 1970. From its
first financial disbursement in 1978, to the
Kingdom’s water and sanitation sector,
the Bank has an active portfolio of many
programmes and projects.

Nestled on the steep slopes of the

northernmost part of Morocco facing
Spain, is the Melloussa interconnection
station, which provides 15% of Morocco’s
electricity production.

The plant, located close to Tangier, connects

to Spain through a 27km undersea cable
and has transformed the country’s national
power supply.

The station was one of the first to link

the north African nation to Europe and
Northwest Africa. Melloussa’ s first power
interconnection became operational in
1997 via a link, reinforced with new cables
in 2006, doubling transmission capacity
from 700 to 1,400 megawatts.

A third 700-megawatt line has further

enhanced the frequency and voltage
stability of the Moroccan electrical grid.

A pioneer in undersea connections between

two continents, Morocco also leads the
way in power connectivity within the North
Africa region. Moroccan, Algerian and
Tunisian networks were interconnected in

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 49
COUNTRY FOCUS: MOROCCO
1988. In June 2010, Morocco, Tunisia and
Algeria adopted an action plan for 2010
to 2015, underscoring their intention to
create an electricity market in North-West
Africa with the objective of integrating the
European market.
A third link, which became operational in 2010
between Algeria and Morocco, has enabled
the Kingdom to benefit from an additional
interconnection of 400 kilovolts and underlined
Morocco’s resolve to pursue a green energy
agenda with low fossil fuel emissions.
Shortly before then, the Bank approved
a loan of €109.82 million to Morocco’s
National Electricity Agency (ONE) for the
development of the electricity transmission
and distribution network. The goal of the
project, co-financed by the French Agency
for Development, the European Investment
Bank and the World Bank, was to optimise
the quality of services provided to all of
ONE's domestic and industrial customers
and distribution authorities.
In addition, it was to improve and secure the
electricity supply and the reliability of the
50 INTELLIGENTCIO
network through increasing the transmission
capacity of the lines. The project will also
facilitate overall completion of the Global
Rural Electrification Programme (PERG).
The rapid growth in demand for electricity in
Morocco and the expansion of the networks
to serve the entire country led to the
saturation of the electricity transmission grid,
causing voltage drops, but this is now a thing
of the past, thanks to the installations.
The reduction in energy losses between
production sites and the distribution network
is an additional benefit that will also help
prevent 180,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions
per year.
The Bank’s financing of this project forms
part of its continuing operations to support
the Moroccan energy sector.
Masen’s expertise in renewable energy
will be combined with the operational
experience of the African Development Bank
to strengthen regional integration, focusing
on the transfer of technology, capacity
building, technical assistance and project
development in renewable energies and
resource mobilisation.
"Morocco is a reference in terms of
renewable energy," said Adesina. "When
I visited the Noor Ouarzazate complex, in
which the Bank has invested considerably, I
was fascinated to learn that it had been built
using Moroccan know-how. It is proof that
Africa can achieve great things and perform
to international standards.
"That is why we have asked Morocco to
support us in the 'Desert to Power' initiative
that we are developing in the Sahel. This
is a strategic partnership that combines
leadership and technical expertise. Together,
we shall scale up efforts to power Africa."
Bakkoury added: "Sharing the experience
that Masen has developed and launching
a drive for the competitive development
of renewable energy across Africa is
commensurate with the goal of making
renewable energy a real lever for inclusive
growth. This partnership with the African
Development Bank will contribute to the
realisation of that ambition.” n
www.intelligentcio.com
 BREAK DOWN
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FEATURE: SAAS //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

The Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS) market is certainly
on the rise and is expected
to reach US$185.8 billion
by 2024. Intelligent CIO
explores why many
industries are adopting
it and how it is being
implemented in Africa.

S
aaS is a model in which software
and other associated data is hosted
centrally and accessed with the
help of a web browser. The model allows
users to gain access to various components
and features of software with the help of a
subscription model and without the need for
worrying about product licenses.

DigiBlu is a leader in digital workplace

implementation and has signed a
partnership with Thoughtonomy to deliver
the first SaaS based intelligent automation
solution in Africa.

Among the first organisations to be taking

advantage of the new partnership is a
premier South African financial services group,
which is deploying the Intelligent Automation
platform within its subsidiary in Namibia
to process a number of core customer
onboarding and account management
processes which largely depend on systems at
the parent in South Africa.

Going virtual with SaaS

52 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
“DigiBlu whole specialises in intelligent
automation and effectively offer two
routes to it; one is by using Robotic Process
Automation (RPA) software and you add
components to that, but it’s slow,” said
DigiBlu CEO Steve Burke.
“You have to go through procurement
processes, but the beauty of Thoughtonomy
www.intelligentcio.com
FEATURE: SAAS
is that all capabilities require to automate
value chain from cognitive to RPA, plus
other capabilities like Machine Learning.
It’s seamlessly integrated into one solution,
so it’s just one investment decision and
sponsorship arrangement. It gives you the
capabilities to do all sorts of creative
stuff and be imaginative in your adoption Steve Burke, CEO at DigiBlu
of the technology.
INTELLIGENTCIO 53
FEATURE: SAAS
“We are also in the process of building a
Robotic Operation Centre (ROC), which will
be the vehicle for providing SaaS. We have
our own platform of virtual workers and we
THE VIRTUAL WORKERS HAVE
RELEASED SIGNIFICANT HOURS
OF FTE IN THAT SOME COMPANIES
ARE REDUCING OVERTIME AND THE
NUMBER OF CONTRACTORS.
use our vehicle for delivering virtual workers.
We can run remote implementations, which
is useful when you’re working in somewhere
like Nigeria where it can be difficult to get to.
“We’ll still send people into the country
and they will do the consulting side, but
we will do the development stuff in the
ROC and when those automations are
deployed, we will provide those out of the
ROC as a service. We are also looking to
provide processes as a service which we
can provide internationally.
“We seem to be really on the cusp of being
on the leading edge of the deployment
of virtual workers to such an extent that
we’re almost ahead of the UK. It’s quite
encouraging that we’re here at the bottom
of the world but are taking world-leading
capabilities to the rest of the world.”
Burke went into more detail about the SaaS
market when speaking to Intelligent CIO.
Can you give an overview of
the SaaS market, with specific
focus on how it is being
implemented in Africa?
We provide digital or virtual workers as
a service and at scale. The technology is
software, but the software we’re using as a
service is actually software that is mimicking
workers and provides capacity to perform
functions, so you’re buying workers that are
doing what would otherwise be human jobs.
We use integrated application solutions,
but the core of it is RPA. Thoughtonomy
54 INTELLIGENTCIO
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
integrate cogitative technologies to provide
a fully integrated ‘out of the box’ solution.
It provides you the capabilities to provide a
virtual workforce and it really opens up use
cases right from the customer’s first touch all
the way to the fulfilment of RPA.
We find that in some African countries, IT
departments are not the most sophisticated
or the largest so don’t have the expertise
or the number of people required to create
the enabled environment to run digital
workforces. It requires a lot of infrastructure,
but we can circumvent the issues by
providing the services over the cloud.
The other big thing about Africa is that
we’re able to leapfrog legacy by providing
SaaS. We can work with whatever legacies
are there but take that company into
the Fourth Industrial Revolution through
cognitive and robotic technology.
There’s no need for system replacements or
expensive builds of new technologies; they
can access it immediately.
What industries predominately
use SaaS?
Our biggest traction initially is in financial
services and especially within insurers, which
is weird because they’re normally more providing virtual workers as a service, or
conservative and not renowned for their processes as a service.
technology innovation. The banks still have
reservations around security though and How big do you think the SaaS
have a desire to keep the software in-house. market could become?
But in QI 2019, TymeBank launches in I see it being the equivalent to ERP.
South Africa as the first digital cloud- Companies will be looking at investments
enabled bank and I think that will establish in digital workforces, just as much that
the precedent for the greater adoption of they were previously investing in SAP and
cloud by removing a barrier of entry for core systems.
www.intelligentcio.com
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
What do you say to people who
may criticise the SaaS solution?
Even if we just go back a year, there was a
lot of fear about virtual workers, but from our
experience, the robots are ubiquitous, and we
are scaling digital workforces fast. The virtual
workers have released significant hours of
FTE in that some companies are reducing
overtime and the number of contractors.
There is obviously a consequence of replacing
www.intelligentcio.com
people doing work, but we haven’t yet seen
a client that hasn’t used that human labour
elsewhere and no one is properly exploring
what you can do with those savings.
What would your message be
to industry leaders looking to
use SaaS within their company?
I see it inevitable that their will be an
adoption of virtual workers, whether it’s
FEATURE: SAAS
in-house or as providers as a service, and
cloud will follow through very quickly. I
think you may be uncompetitive if you
were not to adopt SaaS and especially
virtual workers. Business leaders should
really be looking at their business and
operating models and asking themselves
how to get the maximum benefit of virtual
workers, provided by SaaS over the cloud.
The real secret is how to get a competitive
advantage out of it. n
INTELLIGENTCIO 55
 Case study //////////////////

PPS leading the pack

through EAaaS
Knotion has supported the implementation
of an Enterprise Architecture solution to
ensure financial services company PPS
achieves its 2020 vision.

Av
sh
ar
nB

ch
a

oo
,C
hie
fT
ech
nolo
gy Officer at PPS

56 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com

I
n the modern world, the journey to
Digital Transformation is both exciting
and daunting. Astute businesses are
forming smart Information Technology
(IT) strategies to drive better operations
and greater customer experience. For PPS,
it became clear that a comprehensive
IT strategy was required. Upon research
the company identified the architectural
approach as best suited to its industry and
sought assistance in building this plan using
best practice architectural principles.
PPS essentially wanted to create a 2020
vision. Preparing the strategy was only
part of the equation, as it would need
to be presented to PPS executives. To do
so effectively, a well-defined Enterprise
Architecture (EA) was required. At the time,
while the PPS IT team had participated in
www.intelligentcio.com
The Open Group Architecture Framework
(TOGAF) training, they lacked the practical
experience to develop this EA on their own.
The goal was to build a plan to empower
the application of data within an intelligent
architecture, using developed infrastructure
to deliver on conceptual, logical and
physical levels.
“We were acutely aware of the need to
partner with a business that could help us
develop an accurate target state architecture
to develop this strategy,” said Avsharn
Bachoo, Chief Technology Officer at PPS. “This
need is fueled by the desire to improve.”
Established in 1941, the PPS Group is the
only mutual financial services company
in South Africa focusing exclusively on
graduate professionals. The company
provides tailor-made insurance, investment
and healthcare solutions to its members
and is an exclusive organisation of
graduate professionals.
Solution
For PPS, the Knotion approach aligned with
its strategic requirements given the changes
that were taking place inside the company.
“We successfully launched an EA function
within the group and examined ways to
effectively grow it,” said Bachoo. “Following
extensive research, we decided to outsource
to a specialist company as opposed to
building the capacity in-house.”
Marius Snel, Chief Executive Officer and
owner of Knotion, said the process began
with modelling the current PPS environment.
“Information was drawn from existing
configuration management systems,
THE POSITIVE IMPACT KNOTION HAS
ALREADY HAD ON OUR APPLICATION
ARCHITECTURE IS THE BIGGEST
SUCCESS STORY.
CASE STUDY
providing the data required to create the
initial building blocks to show the current,
physical state,” he said. “Reference models
were then built to represent the target state
both conceptually and logically, based on
architectural building blocks.”
With the current environment and the
target state effectively represented,
Knotion could now map the ‘as is’ to
the ‘target’. Using colour coded visual
representations, PPS could easily identify
what should be re-used, where potential
problems were hiding, what needed to be
retired or fixed, and what they didn’t have
in place but needed.
“A gap analysis was put together to close the
gaps between the current and the target –
and this is the information that was fed into
the strategy,” added Snel.
To achieve this, Knotion used its ‘Smart
Strategy’ solution; a customised method
based on TOGAF. While this international
framework gives companies insight into
what to do, Knotion’s customised framework
tells users how to do it.
“Many companies choose a framework such
as TOGAF, as the foundation to develop their
EA capability,” said Snel.
“This is followed by customising the
framework for the organisation based on the
architects’ skills and experience. By the time
that the EA capability is up and running, a
company would have spent a significant
amount of resources already, without
showing any clear business value.”
With EAaaS, the value is derived by providing
services to develop the relevant architectures
as and when required by the client.
INTELLIGENTCIO 57
CASE STUDY
Marius Snel, Chief Executive Officer and owner of Knotion
These are provided using an architecture
framework that Knotion has developed for
this purpose – so delivery is consistent across
the function. The client pays for the service
and architecture deliverables and not the
capabilities. Unlike traditional approaches to
EA where the value comes after the creation
of a capability, the ‘as a service’ approach
focuses on the outcomes, not the means.
“Setting up an EA environment can take
anything from three months to more than a
year, our value proposition is already saving
a client a significant amount of time.”
added Snel.
Another challenge with the traditional
approach is that EA can easily become an
organisational entity. It is transformed into
‘just another part of the business’ instead
of being integrated into all operations and
offering a return continuously.
Snel says an EAaaS approach turns
this thinking on its head and leads to
delivering value in more cost-effective and
efficient ways.
“The focus is on getting the most out of EA
instead of spending resources to create it
from scratch,” he said.
58 INTELLIGENTCIO
Customisation
For Bachoo, the Knotion EAaaS solution was
ideal as it was designed to deliver outcomes
instead of being stuck in the methods, meta-
models and tools of architecture design.
“Most organisations try to predict the future
and then build a rigid IT ecosystem around
it,” he said.
“I believe in a more modular approach to
architecture and using that to see what is
coming. Knotion uses layers and building
blocks that can easily snap in and out of our could spend time focussing on the 20% that
systems as technology evolves. This sees us gives PPS its core competitive advantage.
being more agile to changing innovations and
able to quickly adapt to new technologies.” “The positive impact Knotion has already
had on our application architecture is the
Knotion can provide this service thanks to biggest success story,” said Bachoo.
the investment it has made in the Enterprise
Architecture development process, as well “Prior to commencing with the project, we had
as the reference models it has built using 130 silo-based applications. Subsequently,
industry best practices. It believes that by this has been streamlined into a single
commoditising 80% of that, which makes blueprint to provide us with an integrated
up not only an architecture capability, view of everything inside the business.”
but by creating modular components for
that architecture, it can deliver this service Reducing complexity
effectively. The result was that Knotion could
provide the modular architecture that Bachoo The Knotion implementation at PPS has
desired. The added benefit was that Knotion enabled the organisation to ensure its
www.intelligentcio.com

cloud strategy for the remainder of the year
remains in place.
“Our various applications need to seamlessly
migrate to the cloud,” said Bachoo.
“Already, many of them have been
architected for it, but we will continue to
expand our development to incorporate all
essential services for the cloud.
“Even though our migration path has
not changed, the Knotion Enterprise
Architecture as a service approach has
enabled us to be more effective and
embrace a multi-tenancy way of
doing things.
www.intelligentcio.com
“One of the biggest benefits of using
Knotion in this way has been to enable
us to explain complex IT infrastructure
in business terms. With ‘as a service’, we
take away much of the fuzziness generally
associated with technology jargon and
translate it into deliverables that our
business users can understand.”
EA for all
Knotion is quite excited about this
approach as the offering is not limited to
large enterprises.
“Considering that many SMEs do not
have the resources to deliver internal EA
CASE STUDY
capabilities, our solution plugs in to their
environment and can be fine-tuned as
required,” said Snel.
“Even corporates that have seen enterprise
architects leave the company or divisions
being disbanded, can leverage the
offering to streamline and fast track its
implementation and management inside
the business.
“With this, enterprise and solution
architectures can be done in a more effective
way and we believe it will significantly
change how architecture is viewed. It will
unlock significantly more value for businesses
on the road ahead.” n
INTELLIGENTCIO 59
 CASE STUDY

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60 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
POWERED BY
Open access making
progress in South Africa,
says ISPA
C
ommunities across South Africa
are increasingly insisting on open
access fibre optic cable installations
which provide a neutral platform for ISPs to
compete with each other.
That’s the word from South Africa’s Internet
Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) which
says elected representatives of gated
communities, estates and business parks
are gradually adopting a hard line with fibre
providers; some of whom still refuse to do
business openly and transparently.
“There’s a clear trend towards homeowners’
associations, body corporates, residents’
associations and property developers
rejecting any potential fibre installation
that does not allow for multiple Internet
service providers to compete for owners’
and tenants’ business,” said ISPA chairman
Graham Beneke.
www.intelligentcio.com
“They are doing this because they recognise
that open access fibre networks provide the
best of high-quality, affordable connectivity
for consumers while increasing the value of
property in the estate or community.
“It is imperative that communities choose
open access providers and that clauses to
this effect are always inserted in any written
agreements with planned fibre providers.
“Consumers should be free to choose who
they buy Internet access or data from and
this is firmly in line with stated Government
policy. In October 2016, Government
outlined the right of consumers to choose
their service provider as a key requirement
of the National Integrated ICT Policy
White Paper.
“It requires fair and sustainable service-based
competition which will increase consumer
INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cabling
/////////////////////////////
choice (of service providers and of services),
reduce costs and increase innovation.”
Not all networks want to provide a
platform for competition and do not want
competition at the services level.
ISPA’s view is that this is not in the best
interests of consumers and needs to be
addressed to reduce the cost to communicate,
poor service levels and a lack of innovation.
It adds that vigorous competition in the
services layer is imperative for increased
innovation and value for money.
“Network deployment agreements that
deny subscribers the choice of service
provider represent a disservice to that
community where the network is to be
deployed and denies them their right of
choice,” said Beneke. n
INTELLIGENTCIO 61
62 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
POWERED BY
Siemon enhances single-mode
fibre offering with Uni-boot APC
LC BladePatch jumper
Siemon has enhanced its
extensive product line of
LightHouse advanced fibre
cabling solutions with the
latest upgrades to offer
improved performance.
S
iemon, a leading global network
infrastructure specialist, has
enhanced its comprehensive line
of LightHouse advanced fibre cabling
solutions with a new APC BladePatch
Uni-boot duplex single-mode fibre jumper.
The new jumper has been developed in
response to increasing fibre densities and
the growing demand for APC (angled
physical contact) connectivity that offers
www.intelligentcio.com
improved return loss performance for high-
speed fibre links.
Siemon’s new LC APC BladePatch Uni-boot
duplex jumper features the company’s
patented revolutionary BladePatch low-
profile push-pull boot design for easy access
and removal in tight-fitting areas such as
high-density fibre patching for switches,
blade servers and storage equipment.
Utilising ITU-T G.657.A1 bend-insensitive
singlemode fibre and a smaller-diameter
uni-tube cable design, the LC APC BladePatch
reduces cable pathway congestion, improving
air flow and increasing energy efficiency while
simplifying overall cable management.
“In recent years, we have seen a growing
need for better return loss performance and
INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cabling
/////////////////////////////
APC single-mode connectivity for connecting
carrier services and supporting higher-speed
protocols in data centre, long haul and FTTX
environments,” said Kevin Stronkowsky,
product manager for Siemon.
“The fibre end face of an APC connector
features an eight-degree angle that provides
better reflection performance versus UPC
(ultra-physical contact) connectors.
We are extremely pleased to expand
our APC singlemode offering with the
patented push-pull design of our already
popular LC BladePatch.”
Siemon’s LightHouse APC singlemode
offering also includes fibre patch cords,
fibre pigtails, pre-terminated fibre trunks
and connectivity. n
INTELLIGENTCIO 63
 INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud

/////////////////////////////

Fast forward to the future.

Data centers are doing more than ever, and the trend is accelerating as new applications,
services and solutions come online. One solutions partner can help you see around the corners
to anticipate tomorrow’s challenges—and seize tomorrow’s opportunities and economies.
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64 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
© 2017 CommScope, Inc. All rights reserved. AD-112250-EN

Arcserve unveils Business
Continuity Cloud solution
A
rcserve Southern Africa has
announced the unveiling of Arcserve
Business Continuity Cloud, the
first fully-integrated cloud-born solution
to prevent the impact of unplanned
downtime. It immediately restores access
to critical data, systems and applications
across complex, multi-generational IT
infrastructures ranging from non-x86 and
x86, to software as a service (SaaS) and
infrastructure as a service (IaaS). With this
solution, Arcserve solves the challenges of
protecting modern IT caused by the time,
skill, expense and multiple tools needed to
protect new workloads.
According to new data being released by
Arcserve, 64% of global IT decision-makers
agree that protecting business-critical data
has not become easier over the past five
years, despite efforts to adopt solutions to
simplify and reduce costs. Further, as backup
infrastructures are increasingly becoming
costlier and more complex, the tolerance for
data loss is diminishing. A total of 93% of IT
decision-makers revealed their organisations
could tolerate ‘minimal’ if any, data loss from
critical business applications, yet just 26% feel
extremely confident in their ability to recover
quickly enough to avoid business disruption.
“Based on our observations and
underscored by this research, it’s evident
that organisations cannot effectively
protect modern IT infrastructures with
today’s incomplete tools that create more
complexity, drive up the total cost of
ownership, and ultimately increase the risk
of data loss and downtime through gaps
in protection,” said Byron Horn-Botha,
Arcserve Southern Africa, Lead: Channel and
Partnerships. “Arcserve Business Continuity
Cloud is the only solution capable of
addressing these challenges by bringing all
data protection processes together in one
www.intelligentcio.com
place. Whether migrating workloads to the
cloud, needing advanced VM protection or
requiring support for sub-minute RTOs and
RPOs – it’s all under one bonnet.”
Edwin Yuen, Senior Analyst at Enterprise
Strategy Group, added: “Arcserve has
accomplished something unique in this
market by closing a substantial gap
for businesses requiring more robust
data protection capabilities without the
complexity of juggling multiple backup tools
for new or disparate workloads.
“Many solutions today consist of products
bolted together with a UI upgrade, yet
Arcserve Business Continuity Cloud stands
out with a level of integration beyond most
other vendors, creating a truly seamless
solution that’s extremely intuitive yet
incredibly powerful.”
Arcserve Business Continuity Cloud
eliminates the need for other data protection
tools and management consoles with fully-
integrated capabilities to protect and restore
applications and systems in any location,
on-premises and in public and private clouds.
• Provides a consumer-grade user
experience: Capabilities spanning the
data protection lifecycle are accessible
through a customisable, cloud-based web
console. Most tasks are implemented in
three clicks or less
• Eliminates data loss and extended
downtime: Supports near-zero RTOs and
RPOs with high availability, minutes with
virtual standby and instant VM, hours with
bare metal restore, and granular recovery
and quick discovery for compliance
• Shifts the economic profile: Fully-
integrated technologies reduce time and
money spent on IT management by up
to 50%
INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
/////////////////////////////
• Simplifies protecting modern IT
infrastructures: Safeguards modern
infrastructures, including those with x86,
non-x86, SaaS and IaaS. Multi-cloud
and cross-cloud data protection support
organisations planning to or are currently
in the process of implementing a cloud
platform for backup or disaster recovery
Additional findings from the survey found
that as data protection concerns grow, most
organisations are looking to the cloud for
backup and disaster recovery. IT decision-
makers cite implementing a cloud platform
for backup and disaster recovery as their top
priority this year, with more confidence in
protecting critical data in private clouds than
local storage, hypervisors, public clouds and
Blockchain. Concerns over downtime and
data loss are growing, primarily driven by:
• Media coverage of data breaches and/or
ransomware attacks
• Cambridge Analytica’s access to
Facebook users’ personal information
• The 2017 Equifax data breach n
Byron Horn-Botha, Arcserve Southern Africa,
Lead: Channel and Partnerships
INTELLIGENTCIO 65
 INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Edge computing will come
of age in 2019
/////////////////////////////
Christian Mahncke, Enterprise Business
Development at Routed
C
hristian Mahncke, Enterprise Business
Development at Routed, Africa’s only
vendor neutral cloud infrastructure
provider, says that disruption will continue
to dominate the technology landscape as
2019 approaches. Supporting Gartner’s
predictions, Mahncke says that computing
will extend well beyond centralised facilities
to the ‘edge’ of the network where data can
be stored, processed and displayed.
“This will bring an ‘empowered edge’ trend
well into 2019 and will expand computing
power indefinitely,” said Mahncke. “Edge
computing has been on the cusp of breaking
technology and next year will see it gain
wider traction and awareness.”
Mahnucke added that by utilising the
growing cloud phenomenon, edge
computing will leverage cloud architecture to
enable better delivery and capabilities.
“Working together with Artificial Intelligence
(AI), edge computing will provide more
66 INTELLIGENTCIO
storage options, while the imminent arrival
of 5G will also drive technology further to the
edge,” he said.
Having recognised the need for a new type
of architecture to enhance the traditional
cloud, edge computing will address the
connectivity of billions of devices across
widespread locations. Mahncke says that
it will create much needed support as
digitisation continues to develop and grow,
producing more applications and services.
“Benefits expected include cost reduction,
improved responsiveness and efficiencies,
greater capacities and increased speed,”
he said. “Overall, this new distributed
computing model holds promise in terms
of improving the current network but will
also encourage broader use and interest
in devices with computer and storage
capabilities at the edge.”
Supporting the burgeoning Internet of
Things (IoT) trend, edge computing will
improve IoT deployments as it brings the
devices closer to the edge.
“Network connectivity needs to be considered
as much as the devices themselves; only then
will effective communications be achieved,”
added Mahncke.
Meanwhile, Routed CEO Andrew Cruise says
that, thanks to the cloud and a growing
base of market disruptors, innovation and
technology are becoming more critical to the
survival of today’s financial institutions.
“Traditionally, this sector has been slow in
its cloud adoption and the use of deployed
infrastructure,” said Cruise. “We are seeing
a move in the right direction as financial
institutions start moving beyond the initial
concerns of risk and security in the cloud.”
He says that this is particularly relevant
across Africa as the barriers to entry are
lower and a breeding ground for disruptors
to challenge the old guard. The innovation
in this sector has been boosted by the arrival
of Internet giants such as Amazon Web
Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
“The arrival of these key vendors will
encourage more cross connecting from
the enterprise sector, which acknowledges
the assurance now provided from cloud
providers,” said Cruise.
“This improvement in risk and security has
started to positively impact the financial
services sector too. We will also see an
increase in multi-cloud strategies, which
will result in a general increase in cloud
acceptance and adoption.”
Traditionally marred by a highly regulated
industry demanding strict IT security and
privacy controls, the financial services sector
is becoming increasingly more open to
cloud strategies and running applications in
the cloud.
Internationally, several banks and insurance
companies are leveraging the cloud and
considering ways to utilise the platform for
other processing requirements.
“It is logical for the next adoption curve to
include the financial service sector,” added
Cruise. “They need to become more agile
and responsive to the mark.”
With just over a year until 2020, cloud
adoption needs to increase and continue to
evolve. According to Cruise that technology
will, by that time, become more mission-
critical and will have started to drive not
only customer engagement but operational
efficiency too. n
www.intelligentcio.com

Investments to boost the
digitalisation of East and
Southern Africa
F
irst Brick Holdings, a Roha Group
company, has announced plans for
multiple investments to boost the
digitalisation of East and Southern Africa
with the funding and development of several
data centres across the region. These data
centres will open up new opportunities for
financial services, governments and small to
medium enterprises (SMEs) by addressing
their mission-critical needs for data storage,
business continuity and disaster recovery
and create a network of data centres able
to accommodate international and regional
customers in state-of-the-art facilities.
“Economic growth in East Africa is averaging
between 5 to 10% across the region,”
said Robert Mullins, Executive Director at
First Brick Holdings. “When combined with
parallel trends in digitalisation and content
consumption, we are seeing annual data
usage and associated storage requirements
increasing by 20 – 30%.
“From mission-critical enterprise services
to e-government initiatives, the Digital
Transformation of East Africa is being held
back by the lack of secure, scalable, reliable,
low latency data storage solutions. By
www.intelligentcio.com
INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Data Centres
leading investment in, and development
of, data centres in the region, we are
unlocking this latent demand in the market
and removing a significant barrier to the
continued Digital Transformation of this
exciting and vibrant market.”
First Brick Holdings’ initial investment is
in Uganda, where the digital economy is
accelerating at such a rate that there is an
immediate requirement for facilities to store
and process data safely and securely.
Raxio Data Centre Ltd is delivering Uganda’s
first state-of-the-art Tier III, carrier-neutral data
centre in the Namanve Industrial and Business
Park. Due to open in the middle of next year,
the data centre will have capacity for up to 400
racks, delivering 1.5MW of IT power.
The Raxio data centre will be a key pillar to
Uganda’s digital economy, reducing the cost
of connectivity in the country and attracting
global cloud service providers, content
distribution networks and regional carriers.
“Data centre installations in East Africa are
lagging behind other emerging economies,
despite the region facing similar underlying
/////////////////////////////
trends in terms of the growth of data usage
and storage requirements,” said James
Byaruhanga, General Manager, Raxio Data
Centre Ltd. “Businesses in Uganda are
seeing their data requirements become
increasingly more sophisticated and
subject to data sovereignty compliance
rules that necessitate local data storage
and processing. These dynamics, coupled
with the expansion ambitions of some of
the world’s biggest companies who are
either already active in or looking to expand
into the East African market, is driving the
commercial need for data centres.”
The desire for fast, affordable and safe
digitalisation in Uganda is reflective of a
broader need for data centre installations
across East Africa. First Brick Holdings plans
to invest in several more facilities across
the continent, expecting five Tier III data
centres to be live by 2022. With a total
project investment of around US$50 million,
First Brick Holdings will address the latent
demand for data centre infrastructure in
various local markets.
“Our commitment to invest in this much-
needed infrastructure is a fantastic opportunity
for all players in the digital economy, lowering
the overall cost of storing data and of
operating increasingly complex and mission
critical IT equipment,” said Mullins.
“These state-of-art facilities will also serve
as enablers, bringing access to local cloud
computing closer to enterprises and content
closer to consumers.
“Not only that, but it will also contribute
significantly to skilled job creation and tax
revenue generation. East and Southern
Africa is primed for these data centres and
they will allow the region’s businesses to
better compete on a global level.” n
INTELLIGENTCIO 67
 INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Data Centres

ConvergeIT™
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68 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com

SACS Cable to boost connectivity
in Africa via Teraco Data Centres
Teraco Managing Director Jan Hnizdo
T
eraco, Africa’s largest vendor neutral
colocation data centre provider, has
said that clients currently making
use of its data centres in Cape Town and
Johannesburg are set to benefit from the
cross connection to the South Atlantic Cable
System (SACS) – Africa’s first transatlantic link
connecting the continent to the Americas.
Owned by Angola Cables, the new subsea
network provides the most direct routing
for internet traffic across the Atlantic and
according to Teraco, will bring immense
opportunity for clients within the data centre.
“This is an exciting development and
includes much needed investment into
local infrastructure,” said Teraco Managing
Director Jan Hnizdo.
“Built with a direct purpose to boost business
in South Africa, SACS will provide improved
connectivity and significantly lower latency
routing between Africa and the Americas.”
Offering five times the speed of existing
cable routings and an improvement of up to
www.intelligentcio.com
INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Data Centres
60%, SACS reduces latency from Fortaleza
(Brazil) to Luanda (Angola) from 350ms to
63ms; Luanda is connected with the same
latency to London and to Miami of around
128 milliseconds; and the link from Miami
to Cape Town has been reduced to 163ms –
from 338ms in the past prior to SACS.
Angola Cables CEO Antonio Nunes said that
latency is a global issue, especially in the era
of software driven services.
“SACS has the capabilities to dramatically
improve this – and at the same time Angola
Cables is bringing new routes to Africa with a
lot of available capacity,” he said.
The Angola Cables submarine network is
already providing Teraco’s data centres in
South Africa with direct connectivity to Brazil,
Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, but also to
Miami giving Teraco’s DC clients a premium
opportunity to connect and share digital
content with the America continent.
“The SACS southern hemisphere, ultra-
low latency routings presents a massive
/////////////////////////////
opportunity for Teraco’s direct clients’ to
access fast and reliable cross connections
between Africa and the Americas,” said Nunes.
Hnizdo added that SACS will be a great
contributor to increased economic growth
as this new system compliments the
European route.
“Having a southern-based cabling system is
also good as a contingency plan,” he said.
“SACS provides not only an alternative, but a
cost effective option to access regions that
were previously difficult to reach.
“As Teraco grows its market presence across
carrier, content, cloud and enterprise sectors,
our clients will benefit from the latency and
diversity offered by the subsea cable systems
now available.
“Access to the Americas has never
been easier and we look forward to an
increase in transatlantic traffic fully utilising
the SACS cable system that is built on
100Gig technology.” n
INTELLIGENTCIO 69
 BREACHES ARE INEVITABLE.
BEING A HEADLINE ISN’T.
Secure your systems and
manage your message with
world-renown incident
response services and cyber
threat intelligence.

FireEye.com

www.FireEye.com | ©2018 FireEye, Inc. All rights reserved.

70 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
POWERED BY INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security

The new security mandate:

Never trust, always verify
Organisations are year, yet we continue to read headlines
validating that companies can’t address
coming to realise that the threats fast enough, regardless of
merely a user name and the growing list of vendors and solutions
password are not enough available. What’s even more surprising is
that less than 10% of that spend is allocated
to secure their cyber for identity and access management.
existence. And as Kamel
Heus, Regional Manager – Repeated mega breaches in cybersecurity
have forced experts and vendors to relook
MEA at Centrify explains, at the basic underlying best practices and
a ‘zero trust security assumptions that have been adopted in the
approach’ is increasingly past and question their viability.
gaining acceptance. The revolutionary concept of zero trust
security assumes that the threat actor may
be already within an organisation and is
posing as an employee. Or alternatively, has
assumed the credentials of an employee.
The concept of zero trust seeks to limit the
opportunity of such an internal threat actor
to use the assumed employee credentials
and breach other parts of the organisation.
Previous cybersecurity practices assumed the
integrity of a user’s credentials at face value
and chose to verify them subsequently. In
the new paradigm, any user is never trusted
until both their credentials and device are
rigorously verified.
Identity access management solutions further
grant the user access to the organisation’s
resources, but only as much to complete their
task, mandated by their job role.
Kamel Heus, Regional Manager –
MEA at Centrify
The zero trust security best practice
uses a four-step approach
/////////////////////////////
The second step is to validate the
endpoint, or the device being used by the
end user. Once an end user’s device has
been enrolled and validated, the same
device is associated with some the user to
validate an element of trust the next time
it is used.
However, if the end user chooses to use
another device, from another location, then
the credentials of that device will need to be
authenticated and enrolled before the end
user can gain access into the organisation
using that endpoint device.
Once the user and his or her device has been
authenticated, the third step grants access
to an organisation’s assets, but only as much
as required for the task specified by their
role. Users can therefore access multiple
applications and compute resources only if it
is required for their role. The more critical an
application or a compute resource, the less
access granted to an end user.
The last step is to make internal systems
self-learning and adaptive through Machine
Learning. While organisations need to be
increasingly secure, continuously hindering
employee productivity can lead to an
anarchical internal work environment.
Hence, it is critical that internal cybersecurity
applications learn from user behaviour and
enable their productivity in near normal
situations but raise red flags whenever there
is a deviation from the normal.
Other learnings that emerge could help Chief

T
he concept of zero trust is as profound
in cybersecurity as the sweeping
transformation generated by the arrival
of cloud, mobility agility and availability.
Gartner projects that worldwide security
spending will reach US$96 billion this
The first step is to verify the legitimacy of
the user beyond the credentials of their
username and password. Multi-factor
authentication using personal information,
or another known device of the employee is
the usual add-on practice.
Security Officers to moderate and adjust
security policies to balance organisational
concerns and employee productivity.
Organisations adopting a zero trust
approach will increasingly find that it is the
right path forward to rebuild their user and
resource access policies. n

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 71
 INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security
Should destroy or redeploy
old equipment?
/////////////////////////////
C
ompanies must be cautious to safely
dispose of data-rich electronics,
especially in this rapid pace of
technological and digital change. An even
bigger challenge is to decide whether it is
more economical to destroy or redeploy
old equipment. Recycling old electronics
is the right choice when they are broken
and beyond repair, but equipment that still
works could be sold or donated to needy
organisations and charities.
The only way to do this effectively is with a
proper IT Asset Management Program and,
while doing so, businesses must take proactive
measures to ensure there is no trace of
sensitive information left behind, particularly
considering the growing number of gadgets
now linked to network infrastructure.
According to Xperien CEO Wale Arewa,
businesses that don’t implement device
end-of-life protocols are putting crucial info
in unnecessary danger.
“One needs to create a strategy to protect
data from cradle to the grave,” he said.
72 INTELLIGENTCIO
POWERED BY
“One hard drive can contain millions of
files and when a file or folder is deleted, the
information still remains on the drive and this
includes deleted email messages,” he said.
Formatting or overwriting will not even be
enough to prevent confidential, proprietary
and sensitive data from being recovered
by data thieves using simple techniques
and equipment. Physical destruction of
old devices is the best way to reduce a
company’s data breach exposure.
“There is also a legal requirement that needs
to be considered, by destroying your hard
drives and tapes helps keep your business
compliant with Protection of Personal
Information Act 2013 (PoPI) and the
European Union’s General Data Protection
“IT Asset Disposition best practices involve Regulation (GDPR),” said Arewa. n
both logical and physical destruction of
obsolete or unwanted data and equipment.”
IT Asset Disposal (ITAD) vendors often buy
equipment from organisations to refurbish
and resell or to strip the device for spare
parts. For the company, this approach
provides steady and predictable revenue that
can be offset against the cost of compliant
disposal of electronic equipment.
“Not everyone is thinking about a cohesive
strategy when identifying areas of risk,”
added Arewa.
“Items carrying critical data will normally
have this data erased, the item refurbished
or resold back into the market. However,
many businesses take the path of least
resistance, finding the lowest price vendor to
just take away a device for free.”
Arewa believes the biggest misconception is
that they can just delete the files and folders, Xperien CEO Wale Arewa
but don’t realise that the data is still there.
www.intelligentcio.com

Schneider Electric’s new
power quality meter takes
accuracy to new heights
S
chneider Electric, the global specialist
in energy management and
automation, has launched the world’s
most advanced, most accurate power quality
meter, the PowerLogic ION9000 series.
With rapid advancements in IoT, event
analytics and accuracy, this newest addition
to Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Power
portfolio provides the most complete, most
innovative power quality meter for critical
power applications.
“The ION9000 redefines the standard
for accuracy, resolving power quality
issues faster with patented disturbance
tracking technology and it provides unique
modularity designed to adapt to your
changing energy needs, now and far into the
future,” said Preshlen Chetty, Offer Manager:
Power Solutions at Schneider Electric.
The latest generation of advanced power
quality meters to build on the legendary
success of the ION7650, PowerLogic
www.intelligentcio.com
INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Green Technology
ION9000 offers the industry’s most advanced
capabilities with five core innovations:
• High-quality performance, with third-
party certified Class 0.1S accuracy to
unlock significant new possibilities for
energy savings, ensuring the meter
complies with the highest performance
for revenue grade applications
• Cybersecurity ready, designed to align with
comprehensive grid cybersecurity policies,
helping to eliminate vulnerabilities to
critical power assets and systems
• Onboard power quality analysis provides
useful information, not just data, doing
so via its onboard PQ tool, according to
EN50160 and IEEE519 standards. The
ION9000 also has extended waveform
capture and patented disturbance
direction detection (DDD)
• Smart power event analysis automatically
correlates related trends, events and
waveforms based on time and type of
incident, saving time and providing vital
/////////////////////////////
insight with pre and post-incident data
• Patented ION programmability allows
users to adapt as their power networks
become more dynamic, tailoring
programming to accommodate complex
electrical distribution monitoring or custom
substation automation – protecting their
investment into the future
“The ION9000 is truly the power quality
meter of the future,” added Chetty. “It
provides the future-proof adaptability that
modern power networks need, and it is
highly customisable, setting a new industry
benchmark for accuracy. It also has a
complete power quality analysis tool right out
of the box, so it can immediately identify and
help solve power system events.” 
The ION9000’s power management
software provides quick views of energy
consumption, power quality and power
network status, and all in real time. It has
proven itself a critical tool for preventive
maintenance and root cause analysis in
power outages, helping keep people and
equipment safe.
“A ground-breaking high-performance power
quality meter, the ION9000 is the result of
decades of industry experience,” said Chetty.
“And combined with EcoStruxure Power edge
control software, it helps reveal every power
network risk and opportunity. Knowing
exactly what happened during an incident
is vital for re-establishing normal operations,
while also avoiding future issues before they
become problems.
“ION9000 is a significant addition to
Schneider Electric’s industry-leading
connected products offers, providing a
valued new platform within a connected and
integrated power distribution network.” n
INTELLIGENTCIO 73
 INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Green Technology
Official launch of South
African Renewable Energy
Technology Centre
/////////////////////////////
T
he South African Renewable Energy
Technology Centre (SARETEC)
based Cape Peninsula University of
Technology (CPUT) has officially launched.
The only centre of its kind in Africa, SARETEC
trains wind turbine service technicians and
solar photovoltaic (PV) technicians and is
also mandated to train technicians in energy
efficiency and biomass and biogas.
The SARETEC team took occupation of the
building in mid-2015 but #FeesMustFall
protests scuppered then Minister of Higher
Education and Training, Blade Nzimande’s
plans to open the building, hence Minister
of Higher Education and Training Naledi
Pandor’s planned visit to Bellville campus to
launch SARETEC.
SARETEC Director Naim Rassool says they
had no option but to commence their
training work at the beginning of 2016
despite no official opening.
74 INTELLIGENTCIO
“We had to open our doors and start training
because of the demands for skills in the
renewable energy industry,” said Rassool.
To date, they have indirectly trained 80 wind
turbine technicians and more than 200 solar
PV related trainees. SARETEC-trained solar
PV installers are certified, and their names
are on South African Photovoltaic Industry
Association’s database. They can issue a
PV Green Card on an installation which is
recognised by municipalities as an installation
done by an electrician having the proper
training. The centre currently trains solar PV
mounters and solar PV Installers being Module
1 and Module 2 of the solar PV qualification,
respectively. Module 3 is being developed
to train a solar PV service technician who
can maintain, service and repair the solar
PV systems installed on suburban rooftops.
Module 4 will be to train a solar PV farm
technician who can work on a much higher
voltage of solar generated power. A solar PV
system on a home rooftop generates about
150 Kilowatts of power, a solar farm generates
about 150 Megawatts of power.
The Western Cape Government, through the
Apprentice Skills Game Changer programme,
is helping to develop Modules 3 and 4 and
the material for Module 3 should be ready to
pilot in the second half of 2019.
In terms of renewable energy, the projected
plan is that government wants 11.4
gigawatts of national electricity to be
generated by wind turbines and 8 gigawatts
from solar energy by 2030. Currently it
stands at 2 gigawatts from wind turbines
and 1.7 gigawatts from solar PV power.
“All indications are that SARETEC is going
to be a real strategic asset for the country in
order to ensure that we provide the right skills
for the massive wave of installed renewable
energy that is coming,” said Rassool. n
The South African Renewable Energy
Technology Centre has officially launched
www.intelligentcio.com

MTN Nigeria takes customer
experience to new levels
M
TN Nigeria has taken a bold
approach to customer service,
showing that its customers are at
the core of their organisation. Using Nokia’s
Customer Experience Management (CEM)
solution, it will drive its transformation from
network to customer-centric operations to
improve the overall experience for its 52
million customers.
The inherent automation and intelligence
that is built into Nokia’s CEM solutions
help service providers operate more
efficiently and enable them to seize new
business opportunities while ensuring
subscribers receive the maximum benefit
from their services.
“MTN Nigeria is the first service provider in the
region to deploy our Cognitive Analytics for
Customer Insight, formerly known as CEM on
Demand, with our Service Quality Manager
(SQM) software,” said Henrique Vale, MEA
leader for Applications and Analytics Global
Centre at Nokia. “Using powerful Machine
Learning algorithms, Nokia Cognitive
Analytics for Customer Insight software gives
the operator a complete view of customer
satisfaction and revenue as well as device and
network performance.”
www.intelligentcio.com
INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Mobile Technology
“This, in turn, enables MTN Nigeria to quickly
identify service issues, such as poor voice
call and data session quality and they can
prioritise improvements based on customer
and business impact.”
But why is perceived experience
even important?
With rife competition in the Nigerian telco
market, MTN Nigeria needs to ensure that its
customer knows that the company has their
best interests at heart.
“We, as humans, tend to buy services from
entities that provide us with a good quality
service and has our best interest at heart,”
added Vale. “We want our service providers
to know who we are and what challenges
we are experiencing. By implementing this
CEM solution, MTN Nigeria will be able to
identify challenges upfront and engage
with individual customers to acknowledge
the issue, determine a solution and provide
personalised service to solve the issue.
“The telco industry is known for churn,
therefore by providing proactive solutions to
customer challenges, MTN Nigeria can reduce
this. Customer churn or customers moving
/////////////////////////////
between different service providers costs the
provider money. Firstly, they lose the revenue
and secondly, they need to spend money on
promotions and marketing to try and win
that customer back. However, if you know
what the needs of your customer are, you
can address those needs proactively, reduce
churn and wouldn’t have to invest in trying to
reacquire that customer. A happy customer is
more inclined to spend more money on your
network, resulting in increased revenues.”
The global expertise of Nokia Analytics Office
Services will further enable MTN Nigeria to
maximise the benefits of Nokia software.
“Additionally, they will be able to accelerate
their transformation process and adopt
new advanced capabilities, such as data
science and automation,” said Vale. “We
are currently in the adoption phase of
the project and our immediate priority is
to ensure that MTN Nigeria sees a return
on their investment. Then we can further
guide them on their digitalisation process
by helping them automate processes that
will allow them to automatically detect
VIP customer issues so that these can be
resolved proactively. This way they can
improve on the customer experience and
manage customer expectations better.”
Uche Osuji, General Manager of Network
Performance at MTN Nigeria, said: “Through
the Nokia CEM solution, we will improve our
customers’ experience, providing faster and
smoother connectivity on voice and data
services, as we create a more personalised
experience for them based on their usage
and service requirements. The solution will
also enable us to proactively identify and
resolve service impairments, respond to
complaints from our teeming customers
much faster and create a premium service
experience for them.” n
INTELLIGENTCIO 75
 INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Mobile Technology
Parallel Wireless making
ALL G network deployments
as easy as Wi-Fi
/////////////////////////////
Open RAN solution helping
to bridge the digital divide
for 800 million people
who are still unconnected
in Africa.
D
eploying network facilities across
Africa can be a costly and lengthy
exercise. However, with its world’s
first ALL G software-enabled open network
solution, Parallel Wireless is helping global
mobile network operators (MNOs) ‘connect
the unconnected’ by making ALL G network
deployments as easy and as cost-effective
as Wi-Fi. As a result, it has been welcomed
across the African continent with several
deployments and pending trials in 12
countries, which are assisting in Africa’s
rapidly advancing connectivity.
“Africa is the most digitally divided continent
with only 44% unique mobile users,” said Lux
Maharaj, Director of Sales for Parallel Wireless,
Southern Africa. “To bridge the digital divide,
people need access to technology, but it is a
commercial dilemma for the regional MNOs
given the deployment cost. Traditional 2G,
3G or 4G networks require expensive and
bulky equipment for their deployment and
operation. These hardware-based networks
are difficult and pricey to upgrade.”
Parallel Wireless enables a shift to
open, software-based, and virtualised
network architectures to overcome
these deployment challenges, while also
delivering network agility and much
lower deployment cost. The solution is
attractive to African MNOs because of easy
upgradability to any G, allowing operators
to keep building 2G networks in areas
untouched by telecom networks, while
at the same time continuing to allocate
76 INTELLIGENTCIO
resources and time to expand their 3G or
4G networks with the same investment.
Since its introduction to the African market
in 2017, the Parallel Wireless solution has
undergone trials and deployments with
multiple African operators in Nigeria, Kenya,
Uganda, South Africa, Ghana, Somalia,
Sudan and Senegal and has forthcoming
trials and deployments in Nigeria, Uganda,
Namibia, Kenya, Angola, Guinea, Senegal
and Tanzania, including:
• As presented at TIP Summit, MTN is
planning to deploy equipment based on
Facebook’s Open RAN TIP specifications,
including the Parallel Wireless solution,
as it believes it to be more cost-effective
than traditional communications
networking technology for bringing
coverage to rural and ultra-rural locations
• Parallel Wireless is engaged with
iEngineering Group, a leading end-to-
end engineering infrastructure solutions
provider to the telecommunications and
power industries across Africa, the Middle
East and Southeast Asia with operations
in 18 countries. The Parallel Wireless ALL
G Open RAN software-enabled solution
Parallel Wireless is helping
global mobile network
operators (MNOs) ‘connect the
unconnected’ by making ALL G
network deployments as easy
and as cost-effective as Wi-Fi
has been selected to bring coverage in
Africa because it can be easily upgraded
from 2G to 3G or 4G with a simple
software upgrade, hence future-proofing
the initial network investment
• Telesol is deploying Parallel Wireless
to connect citizens and businesses in
Ghana with 4G wireless services. Parallel
Wireless’ unique low-cost, low-footprint
and virtualised multi-technology solution
is easy and affordable to install, maintain,
and upgrade to any future technology
without any additional hardware
• In Uganda, Intelsat used Parallel
Wireless to bring 3G coverage. The
solution was fast and easy to install.
Godfrey Mutabazi, Executive Director
of the Uganda Communications
Commission, stressed that extending
broadband connectivity and delivering
fast, affordable Internet services to
everyone in Uganda remains one of the
Uganda government’s primary missions
Parallel Wireless was at AfricaCom 2018
in Cape Town to demonstrate its unique
solution for MNOs across Africa and other
developing and developed countries. n
www.intelligentcio.com

Tapping into the evolution of
data management
Danie Marais, Director of Product
Management at Redstor
D
anie Marais, Director of Product
Management at global data
management SaaS specialist
Redstor, says businesses have an
opportunity to tap into the evolution of
data management and take advantage of
solutions that are being developed for AI,
Robotics, Machine Learning and the cloud.
As a forward-looking software developer,
Redstor has incorporated the future of
data and AI-driven commerce into its
development cycle.
“Some companies have already started
moving toward customer grade user
experiences by using things like NetApp
where they have replication technologies
built in, replicating their data in real
time to another storage system, sending
snapshots that they can roll back to and
instantly fire up when needing a restore,”
said Marais.
www.intelligentcio.com
INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Software for Business
“But this comes at a cost and that remains a
huge challenge in most boardrooms.”
According to Redstor, few businesses realise
they can achieve their data management
goals without compromising on agility.
Backup, recovery, archiving, migration
and DR can be managed through a single
web-based control centre, empowering IT
departments while reducing costs, simplifying
deployment and billing, improving security
and compliance and providing borderless
visibility of your entire data estate. Marais has
also underlined the relevance of the lifecycle
of data.
Along with key themes of driving
performance while reducing spend, how data
tiering impacts cost optimisation and cloud
integration, Marais says that, for businesses
who rely on data, reducing the costs
associated with processing and managing
can be a quick win.
“We are talking about reducing IT
management overheads, storage costs and
improving reliability as well as compliance,”
he said.
“Businesses benefit from centralised visibility
and improved data accessibility for users.”
Using AI to strengthen data value
Artificial Intelligence is now a pervasive trend
in the market. Analytics tools can provide
insight where data sits on a network and
how it can be managed more efficiently.
Redstor believes AI will bring the ability for
technology to investigate data, in all the
different silos it resides in:
• Working out how important that data is
to your business
/////////////////////////////
• How frequently it’s accessed
• If it’s high risk data or not
• Who are the users involved with the data
• Where it’s being used
• Making your IT manager’s job two
to three times easier by letting data
management technology of the future
take over the responsibility
Another reality of the data-centric market is
that it demands agility to be able to keep up.
“Technology is changing regularly and the
bigger players might struggle to move
their direction with legacy code – they are
essentially too big to make speedy changes
that scale,” added Morais.
“It takes years for them to change their
culture, train sales and presales and bring
new technologies to market. The difference
that a smaller, focused service provider
makes, is that it is positioned at the forefront
of innovation. It listens to customer feedback
and the business is just the right size to
manoeuvre easily while delivering monthly
releases to its customers.” n
INTELLIGENTCIO 77
 INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Software for Business
Solution enables to electronically
access and trade unitised funds
/////////////////////////////
S
ilica, powered by IRESS, has launched
a solution that enables users
across the IRESS product suite to
electronically access and trade unitised
funds from major South African asset
and investment managers. This solution
removes the pain of investing and drives
administration costs down for all players in
the value chain-advisers, asset managers
and end-clients alike.
The Silica IRESS Funds Trading solution
enables the IRESS community to access
the Silica platform via the IRESS SmartHub
– a global network connecting buy and sell
sides, trading destinations, vendors and
administrators using IRESS APIs or the
standard global FIX protocol. The IRESS
SmartHub integrates with Silica’s Graphite
interface, a Microsoft cloud-deployed solution
that leverages Silica’s transactional order
management utility to automate transactions
and cash movements.
The Silica IRESS Funds Trading Solution
creates an open market where investment
managers can seamlessly make their
funds available to advisers and investors.
It automates every transaction from FICA
document verification, new investments
and additions, through to fund switching,
payments, and fee, client data, and payment.
This makes the trading of funds as fast,
efficient and transparent as trading
exchange-listed securities. It also enables
advisers to offer their clients the broadest
range of funds from leading investment
managers at the lowest possible cost.
“Sixteen years ago, IRESS spearheaded
electronic order routing for exchange-traded
securities in the South African market,” said
Richard Bell, Executive Manager and Head of
Funds Trading at IRESS.
78 INTELLIGENTCIO
“Now, we are bringing the same level of
automation to the unitised sector, enabling
advisers to trade any instrument in any
market and at any time. They will have
a single view of each client’s portfolio in
real time, as well as the ability to execute
orders instantly without the delays of the
past. They will also be able to reduce errors
through electronic processing and minimise
administration through effortless electronic
account opening.”
Daniel Micali, Director at Silica, added: “For
investment and asset managers, the benefits
of the solution include lower administration
costs, improved margins and the ability to
access new distribution channels. End-
investors, meanwhile, benefit from lower
fees and a more streamlined customer
experience with less paperwork to be
completed. We want to make it as easy for
people to invest, save and grow their wealth
as it is to apply for a loan.”
The partnership enables advisers and
investors to transact electronically with
investment managers and their funds
without the need for human intervention.
C
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
Financial advisers and brokers can directly
CMY
interact with, interrogate and report on data
from investment managers’ systems. Cash K
movements can be facilitated through EFT or
direct debits.
Kruger International Asset and Wealth
Management, which provides advice and
wealth management solutions to private
clients, as well as managing funds of its own,
is an early adopter of the solution.
“Fees are coming down in the asset
management industry and it will become
increasingly difficult to compete without
using technology to streamline processes,”
said Chris Nel, analyst at Kruger International.
“This solution is already helping us to
achieve significant efficiencies and reduce
human errors in processing transactions.
We now have real-time access to accurate
data about our clients’ portfolios, as well as
the ability to scale up our business to serve
more clients more efficiently. This translates
into a better client experience and enables
us to focus on adding value rather than
processing paperwork.” n
www.intelligentcio.com
 INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Software for Business

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www.intelligentcio.com OBER-2018 79
 INDUSTRY WATCH

Hyper-
availability:
The competitive edge
for digital banks
With downtime and unavailability significantly
impacting on the reputation of a bank, fintechs are
in a prime position to embrace hyper-availability and
gain the competitive advantage over the incumbents.
Kate Mollett, Regional Manager for Africa South at
Veeam, explores the impact it is making in the local
banking sector.

80 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com

DOWNTIME IS NO LONGER
ACCEPTABLE, ESPECIALLY
IF YOUR BRAND IS BUILT
ON BEING DIGITAL FIRST.
A
nybody still questioning how
downtime can influence a bank
should take a lesson from what is
happening at Capitec. Once the darling
of the local banking sector, sporadic
downtime experienced on its digital
banking platforms has seen the bank
lose the top spot as the best digital bank
in the country. Customer satisfaction
levels are directly linked to the availability
of services. Those financial institutions
unable to meet those demands will
become increasingly irrelevant in the
world of always-on hyper-available access
to digital banking.
Locally, the banking industry is a fast-paced
environment with new banks launching
soon. The message is clear; if your services
are not available to serve customers on the
platforms and times they want, you will
see satisfaction levels drop and customers
migrate to the newcomers.
Diversifying services
The 2018 Budget Speech highlighted the
support government is giving to expand
competitive, affordable banking services
to those who previously did not have
access to it. This is where digital banking
services delivered on mobile platforms
become vital.
Already, three banking licences were
granted last year for institutions that will
have significant digital capabilities and
bring more competition and innovation
to the sector. I am excited about these
new digital banks, their offerings, and
how they are going to present it to
potential customers such as myself.
According to PWC’s report The future
of banking: A South African perspective,
non-traditional players in the South
African market are increasingly exploring
www.intelligentcio.com
INDUSTRY WATCH
new opportunities, enabling them to
challenge incumbents and continually
change the state of financial services in
the country.
And this is reflected in how consumers
use banking services. Not being limited
to visiting branches, they can bank from
their mobile devices wherever they are,
irrespective of the time of day. However,
if services are disrupted (as was the case
with Capitec), the reputational damage
is significant. And while Capitec has
borne a lot of the brunt when it comes to
accessibility of digital services, the reality is
that most of the big banks in the country
have experienced system outages and
problems at one time or another.
Becoming more intelligent
The newly arriving digital banks will
soon realise that trust is earned by
being always-on and available. They
have only one time to launch and
cannot afford downtime. Imagine the
financial implications, not to mention
the loss of customer confidence and
the damage to brand integrity they will
experience if their customers are unable
to access services. Downtime is no longer
acceptable, especially if your brand is
built on being digital first.
This is where intelligent data
management becomes a fundamental
principle as a more effective way of
managing uptime. In so far as availability
has been ‘limited’ to backup, recovery
and business continuity, intelligent data
management adds a critical component
to the mix – that of data accessibility and
how it is delivered to stakeholders.
It is this approach that is driving forward-
thinking institutions to prepare themselves
INTELLIGENTCIO 81
 INDUSTRY WATCH
Kate Mollett, Regional Manager for Africa
South at Veeam
for a more connected business environment
that fulfils all customer requirements.
Take BankservAfrica as an example. To
maintain the reliability and robustness of
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Payments in Africa
driving innovation
Demand on the continent
for geographically
dispersed, less expensive
and more efficient
local and cross-border
payments systems is
accelerating development.
T A GREAT
he future of payments ecosystems
is taking shape in Africa as the
continent paves the way for
innovation that brings together retail,
banking, financial services and mobile
82 INTELLIGENTCIO
///////////////////////////////////////////
the South African National Payment System
(NPS), it invested in state-of-the-art data
centres and disaster recovery strategies.
Moreover, it modernised the way it protected
its data by taking an integrated approach to
its systems and services. For BankservAfrica,
it is all about delivering continuous services
and having round the clock availability.
This should be a valuable lesson for other
financial institutions in the country. Hyper-
availability requires the continuation of
services in the event of a disaster as well
as having the capabilities to intelligently
manage the data at one’s disposal.
Improved insights
When it comes to intelligent data
management, banks can use the information
at their disposal to better understand
customers and their preferences, optimise
sales channel strategies to fit their current
needs, provide improved service, and retain
customers. Looking at business growth
prospects, this data can be used to find ways
to cross-sell to customers and deliver new
digital services and experiences.
Of course, this is not without its challenges
as banks need to not only manage and
technology. It’s being fuelled by a drive
for financial inclusion – new ways to bring
consumers, merchants and entrepreneurs
into the formal economy.
“A huge advantage is that in Africa, mobile
technology is already a given and a great
enabler for payments,” said Hannalie Marsh,
General Manager of Wirecard South Africa.
She says there is a great demand in Africa
for cross-border payments and a need
to regulate the payment industry on the
continent while at the same time opening it
up to include non-banks.
mine the data they produce themselves,
but also ensure there is an always-on
digital experience for customers. The EY
annual FinTech Adoption Index Report
2017 forecasts a 71% growth in fintech
adoption for South Africa, with the
country ranking third in future growth
behind only China and India.
Globally, fintech adoption is predicted
to reach 52%. And according to the EY
report, this adoption by digitally active
consumers in emerging markets (that
include Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and
South Africa) average 46%, considerably
higher than the global average of 33%.
Looking ahead, fintechs and banks alike will
need to examine how they are prepared for
an always-on environment using a hyper-
availability strategy that is reflective of the
competitive environment in South Africa.
The new digital banks need to design
their systems from availability down
instead of from the platform up.
Availability should no longer be seen
as part of the last mile, but rather the
starting point. Hyper-availability has
become the norm and everything else
is unacceptable. n
A HUGE
ADVANTAGE
IS THAT IN
AFRICA,
MOBILE
TECH-
NOLOGY IS
ALREADY A
GIVEN AND
ENABLER FOR
PAYMENTS.
www.intelligentcio.com
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Hannalie Marsh, General Manager of
Wirecard South Africa
“Across the world, the payments industry is
being compelled by regulation to become
more inclusive,” said Marsh. “Retailers and
fintech organisations, for example, are being
encouraged to provide services historically only
associated with banks.
“Traditional banking is expensive and
alternatives that keep costs down have to
be found, particularly in developing and
emerging economies.”
Marsh believes a combination of technology,
banking and retail on a single, consolidated
platform, would solve many challenges.
“Already we are seeing a collaboration
between some banks and innovative fintech
companies,” she said. “Banks are just not agile
enough to tackle rapid tech development
and a large continent like Africa on their own.
This is one of the reasons retailers have been
so successful in the remittances space – they
have outlets in places in remote regions that
will never see a bank branch. All these parties
are fairly protective of their own space but
by contributing what they have – a wide
physical outlet network, technology and
payments systems, for example they can
collaborate. This way they reach more
people and reduce costs. The mobile
component is also a significant factor
because of its ubiquity on the continent.”
www.intelligentcio.com
INDUSTRY WATCH
She adds that another big drive globally “We get to showcase all the things that
is for a single digital platform to provide happen here in Africa which can seem a
multiple services using the same technology daunting place to others, but we are taking
and infrastructure. some of that to the global stage through
partnerships and by exposing what we do
“The minute you can offer multiple services off locally. We are able to develop and improve
the same infrastructure you can reduce costs payment technologies in Africa and apply
dramatically. We have the ability to provide that expertise elsewhere in the world.” n
solutions to both individuals and businesses on
the same platform which means we can give a
set of diverse services to both parties.”
BANKS
“It’s particularly relevant in African
economies. Take the example of an
ARE JUST
informal trader; a single system that offers NOT AGILE
ENOUGH
them the ability to accept and make
payments solves not only their payment
challenges but also those of the supplier
and customers – everybody wins. The TO TACKLE
single source – typically accessed by mobile
devices – helps build trust around payments
RAPID TECH
and innovation can be applied everywhere
those conditions exist.”
DEVELOP-
MENT AND
Marsh says there is lot to be learnt from
Africa around technology and innovation A LARGE
and how to overcome difficult environments
and situations.
CONTINENT
“Just as much as we consume the innovation
LIKE
and expertise we glean from global
colleagues, so we too we bring expertise to
AFRICA ON
the rest of the world,” she said. THEIR OWN.
INTELLIGENTCIO 83
 INDUSTRY WATCH

84 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// INTELLIGENT VERTICAL: TELECOMS

BUILDING AND SECURING 5G

NETWORKS OF TOMORROW

“
While 5G brings the promise of new revenue
opportunities for service providers, new infrastructure
and use cases will create new risks. According to Ali
Amer, Managing Director, Global Service Provider
Sales, Cisco Middle East and Africa, the security of the
SP network infrastructure, their business and their
customers will require a holistic approach. THE 5G NETWORK
WILL BRIDGE
WIRELESS
E
very new generation of carrier network access, digitisation has become a
technology has brought forward new
business and consumer user cases.
reality leading to emergence of Internet of
Things (IoT) and cloud is now mainstream.
AND WIRELINE
The release of 3G rolled in wireless mobile NETWORKS,
data communication, while the release of 4G
brought in IP wireless data communication.
The 5G network is an enabler for new set of
possibilities and capabilities. The growing FORCING A
Both have made eCommerce, video, gaming
and social media an every-day routine on
5G momentum promises new revenue
opportunities for service providers. To pursue
MAJOR NETWORK
smartphones and mobile phones. these new untapped opportunities, they will ARCHITECTURAL
In essence, 3G and 4G networks enabled
need to ramp up their network capabilities to
support future 5G services. CHANGE FROM
mobile broadband for business and
consumers. As part of this growth, the world As we move closer towards mainstream 5G
RADIO ACCESS
is now mobile and there is huge growth in adoption, mobile networks are increasingly TO CORE.
www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 85
INTELLIGENT VERTICAL: TELECOMS
Ali Amer, Managing Director, Global Service
Provider Sales, Cisco Middle East and Africa
expected to handle more data-intensive
applications and deliver low-latency
connectivity to more devices.
The roll out of 5G networks provides an
opportunity for service providers to gain
benefits from next generation cycles in the
data centre, networks, mobility, in a multi-
vendor environment. Significant changes, such
as personalised networks are now possible
through slicing and other granular functions.
Simultaneously, 5G is about service providers
being able to exploit new enterprise use cases
and new revenue streams. In parallel, new
transient network surfaces raise additional
challenges of security and country regulations.
Some of the new use cases that 5G will
cater to include autonomous transport,
augmented and virtual reality, smart city
traffic management, rapid response services,
robotics in manufacturing, healthcare and
fitness, smart grids and utilities, smart offices,
smart homes, industrial automation, machine
to machine communications, 3D video and
high definition screens, working and play in
cloud. Other use case categories include:
5G enhanced mobile broadband
offers high speed and dense broadband
connectivity to users. With performance
of Gigabit speeds, 5G is an alternative to
fixed line connectivity services. To support
enhanced mobile broadband use cases,
the mobile core must support high density
performance, scalability and security.
86 INTELLIGENTCIO
Ultra-reliable low latency
communications: Focuses on mission critical
services such as virtual reality, tele-surgery,
healthcare, intelligent transportation, industry
automation, manufacturing robotics and
factory automation. Previously delivered
through a wired connection, 5G is now an
alternative for these use cases.
Massive IoT. Can support the number of
scalable connections required, while service
providers can use network slicing technology,
to deliver network as a service for businesses.
The 5G network will bridge wireless and
wireline networks, forcing a major network
architectural change from radio access to
core. This requires transition to cloud native
applications, monitoring and managing an
end-to-end network, including radio access
networks and packet core. It also combines
and leverages the capability of a variable
bandwidth network with mixed and flexible
access. On the flip side, this enhanced
flexibility increases the surface vulnerable
to threats.
Securing 5G networks requires complete
visibility of the stack managing a use case
and controls to take remedial action. Contrary
to traditional carrier networks, 5G networks
require visibility from the edge to the cloud
platform, to the application and across the
extended network to the endpoint.
Securing the 5G network then requires
comparison to the normal baseline behaviour
and alerts for any deviation. The key
functional aspect being to be able to measure
the network, so that it can be managed.
Continuous aggregation of near real-
time network data allows analyses of the
workflow through a security controller. Based
on predefined security policy, remedial
action and controls can be triggered.
Inbuilt machine learning capability
monitors the remedial actions and its
ability to counter threats, as an iterative
loop for further improvement and action at
a later stage.
Day zero attacks are typically where the
signature and finger print of the threat
actor, exploiting an unknown vulnerability,
are seen for the first time. These can be
detected by variation from the baseline
behaviour of the network, cloud and
applications. Remedial action is then
initiated by the security controller to
identify, isolate, and control the threat.
Day one attacks are previously identified
threats, where a series of counter attacks
have already been developed and can be
initiated with predictable results.
Applying these types of responses in
a closed loop process, where both the
controller remediation and its results can
be monitored and recorded, can help in
improving future responses.
Another way of securing 5G networks is the
advanced usage of encryption. Half of all
Internet traffic today is encrypted, and this is
expected to increase. Machine learning can
be used to build analytics from encrypted
Internet traffic increasing the visibility of
threats as close to the threat as possible.
This reduces the possibility of collateral
damage inside the 5G network.
New tools for increasing visibility inside 5G
networks include application level probes
and path computation elements. An
application probe is an automated cell that
travels across the network and benchmarks
the application performance at various
network points.
A path computation element, feeds network
characteristics at every point of the network
into a near real-time database to simulate
functioning of a network. As an example,
remedial responses to a DDos attack are
first simulated using the near real-time
network database to assess the impact
before initiation.
The nature of the 5G network creates
a widely distributed data centre and an
expanded attack surface. Such a topology
is susceptible to lateral attacks and threats.
This can be countered by segmenting
the network – right from the edge, across
gateways, applications, wireless and wireline
networks, back-haul networks and so on.
Segment routing is an important tool in
network segmentation.
By investing time and money in securing
their 5G networks, service providers can
be better assured of a predictable return
on investment. n
www.intelligentcio.com
/////////////////////////////////////////////////// t cht lk

GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
SYSTEMS IN SUPPLY CHAIN
AND LOGISTICS
James Kopke, Implementation Manager, Trackmatic,
says that, while other industries have been enhancing
and streamlining their operations on functional and

“
profitable levels with the use of technology, the supply
chain has drifted behind.

T
he world of supply chain logistics has
been living in the past. Even today,
the biggest technology investment
from some South African supply chain
companies has been the introduction of
Microsoft Excel.
True, this software has been introduced into
operations to create a digital representation
of the department and its functionality, but
it’s hardly advanced nor is it cutting edge.
However, as more organisations realise how
their processes in supply chain and logistics
are behind the curve, they are starting to
focus their energy and resources into new
and innovative technologies and solutions.
They are recognising the importance of
www.intelligentcio.com
investing into ground-breaking technology
that can give them a competitive edge.
One arena that has seen significant THE AIM OF GIS IS
investment and attention is in the field of
Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
TO ALLOW THIS
The volume of data at our fingertips from VAST AMOUNT
modern day reporting and operations has
grown tremendously. The aim of GIS is OF DATA TO BE
to allow this vast amount of data to be
visualised in an intuitive way so that it can
VISUALISED IN AN
be interpreted intelligently. It is essential INTUITIVE WAY
that there are tools that allow us to make
sense of this data. GIS allows for this visual SO THAT IT CAN
data to be shown at speed. It represents
what is really going on in operations in
BE INTERPRETED
real time rather than delayed spreadsheet INTELLIGENTLY.
INTELLIGENTCIO 87
t cht lk
reporting that doesn’t deliver either on
immediacy or accuracy. GIS ties varies data
sources together into one usable view.
As this data is being shown in real time, it
allows for decision makers to make informed
and agile decisions on the spot. They can
solve problems, escalate issues, initiate
changes, avoid risk and make proactive
decisions designed to deliver better results.
The GIS challenge
There is a huge opportunity for companies
targeting a GIS approach to optimise their
processes at every point along the supply
chain. It has become increasingly evident
that, as key personnel become more and
more competent in their understanding
of GIS, they can accurately coordinate
their company’s processes around this
technology. They are also able to target
areas that are necessary for enhancement
or growth.
The optimisation of processes and
operations is something that every company
strives towards. It is easy to say but it is
often difficult to define. Where should
the optimisations take place in order to
achieve success? The answer lies in the
organisation’s willingness to implement
a GIS strategy and their ability to see it
through. Many companies are excited about
the idea of implementing this technology
to enhance operations but struggle with
defining how they want to use it, what their
goals are and what they ultimately hope
to learn from the technology. Often there
is quick buy-in from top management and
executives but significant resistance from the
people on the ground, the people who will be
using the systems.
Warehouse staff and delivery vehicle
drivers are the ones who make GIS
systems work. Without them conforming
to requirements and adopting the systems
completely, data accuracy will be skewed,
and this will impact the effectiveness of
the implementation. This is one of the
biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to
successful GIS data and deliverables.
The reality is that GIS needs relationships.
Executives needs to gain buy-in from the
employees and the solutions provider
must build relationships across the board
88 INTELLIGENTCIO
to ensure that everyone understands the
technology and the value it provides. The
warehouse staff, the delivery vehicle drivers,
the operations crew – these are the people
who are key to the success of any GIS
implementation. To make the process as
seamless as possible, the technology must be
as user friendly as possible. High barriers to
entry and complex systems won’t engender
trust or engagement. The technology must
be targeted at the people on the ground and
“
designed to empower them and their roles.
WAREHOUSE
STAFF AND
DELIVERY
VEHICLE DRIVERS
ARE THE ONES
WHO MAKE GIS
SYSTEMS WORK.
If you can show these stakeholders that
their roles are essential to the business’s
success in implementing new technology,
then you will break down the barriers and
drive engagement. They need to fully adopt
and utilise the systems so they become more
capable and add more value to their roles.
Customisation delivers results
It is also important that implementation
skills must be customisable to fit certain
business rules. This ensures the best fit and
the best possible results. To further ensure
that any implementation fits the business,
ensure that your service provider can provide
unique solutions that help you gain an
accurate representation of data in both real
time and retrospectively.
Another large, industry-wide problem in the
delivery process is the location accuracy of
customers and delivery points. Tools such
as Google Maps have allowed for us to
minimise this problem to a certain degree,
but manually looking up addresses is a long
and cumbersome process that employees
don’t have time for. It is also a job done by
the Fleet Controller and Dispatch Manager
at the very last second before sending the
delivery vehicle out. This job needs to be
done further up the supply chain so that
the information provided to the person
dispatching the vehicles is complete and
accurate. This is where having a reliable
team dedicated to data management and
control can play a pivotal role, ensuring that
the data given is accurate, so the deliveries
are executed effectively.
Many organisations don’t want the
responsibility of ensuring the accurate
geolocations of customers. Fortunately, there
are service providers that can take on this
role and this is of value. Outsourcing the skills
and technology required means access to
the best and the latest of both. Any team
www.intelligentcio.com
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// t cht lk
dedicated exclusively to accurate location
data is going to be ideally placed to handle
static delivery points and ad hoc locations.
This will not only streamline and improve
accuracy, but it will limit issues further down
the line.
Primary and secondary distribution are
mostly concerned with static delivery points,
for example, so a dedicated team can
work with them to establish these points
and represent them as geographically
correct. Once there is a clear outline of
what is needed, then it is possible to plot
the delivery points by drawing geofences
around the locations. By using entering and
exiting geofences as a reference point for
delivery vehicles arriving and customers
departing, you now gain accurate data that
reflects the delivery process and the timing
of its execution.
It is essential that the system is completely
dynamic to allow for the change and
manipulation of geofences already created
so that locations can be plotted accurately.
You can then take the feedback from the
delivery vehicle drivers and the dispatch
mangers to generate informative reports
www.intelligentcio.com
on where mistakes have been made and
what needs to be adjusted to show what
is accurate. This on-the-spot resolution
of problem locations helps drivers to do
their jobs more effectively, immediately,
and they look better when being judged
on their deliveries. The dispatch managers
or de-briefers also don’t need to question
driver actions.
The last mile
Final or last mile deliveries have increasingly
become the target of logistics companies as
customers are more demanding. They want
to receive their ordered goods swiftly, within
specific time limits and with accuracy of
location. Modern customers want to alleviate
the old challenges associated with shopping
by managing everything with just a few clicks
of a button. Customers have also become
impatient when it comes to lead time – the
time spent waiting from the moment of
order to receiving the products at their
door. This demand for that level of service is
daunting for the logistics industry. However,
it is something that can be achieved and is
a real growth pillar for companies that are
focusing on final mile deliveries.
We have worked with companies such as
Coricraft, Dial-a-Bed and Makro who rely
heavily on high service level deliveries to
their customers. Our dedicated team allows
us to use information captured at point
of sale to effectively assign a geofence to
each customer while ensuring that we don’t
repeat the process for returning customers.
The biggest challenge is that almost all these
deliveries are to ad-hoc locations that haven’t
been captured before and so there is no
previous information to work with. Plotting
the delivery point accurately is complex.
This is where a dedicated team and high-end
technology make a difference as the data
can be accurately captured and used to
ensure accurate delivery.
This level of engagement with clients has
helped us build very strong relationships
based on mutual respect. By doing so, we
have built unique and specific Geographical
Information Systems that fit customer
needs, while ensuring that the stakeholders
required to perform the task of delivering
accurately and to a plan can do so to the
best of their abilities. n
INTELLIGENTCIO 89
TECH TALK

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90 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
GET TO KNOW...
On the lighter side of things, we ask the
industry experts what makes them tick. . . .

Doros Hadjizenonos,
Regional Sales Director at Fortinet in
South Africa

What would you describe as your
most memorable achievement?
Starting my own IT security distribution
company from scratch. My company
represented many of the top security
vendors and I eventually sold it to one
of the largest security distributors of
that time. It gave me a great sense of
achievement to grow a business to the
point where it was respected and valued by
the local security community.
What style of management
philosophy do you employ with
your current position?
I believe in an open-door management
philosophy where I encourage team work,
promote individual expression and focusing
the team on the objectives of the company.
I believe that enabling employees to freely
discuss concerns or suggestions with their
management fosters a cohesive team
culture and results in better performance of
the individuals.
What do you think is the current hot
technology talking point?
I think there is a lot of talk around Artificial
Intelligence and Machine Learning. We are
seeing these technologies built into our
everyday lives.
As a security vendor, we are incorporating
these types of technologies into our
solutions to help protect our customers
against the advanced and complex attack
methods used in today’s cyberwarfare.

“
What first made you think of a
career in technology?

As a kid I used to help my dad at his work

to fix electrical appliances (TVs, video
machines, tape recorders and radios). It’s
funny to think that some people may not
recognise these devices anymore.
IT GAVE ME A
I was always fascinated how the electrical
components worked together. This got me GREAT SENSE OF
to pursue a degree in electrical engineering
during the early stages of the Internet. I
ACHIEVEMENT TO
did my masters on Asynchronous Transfer GROW A BUSINESS
Mode Networks and this ultimately got
me interested in the world of the Internet TO THE POINT
which landed me my first job as an IT
security engineer.
WHERE IT WAS
RESPECTED AND
The IT security industry evolves at a rapid
pace in order to keep up-to-date with the VALUED BY THE
latest attack methods and I think this is the
reason it has kept me excited to remain in
LOCAL SECURITY
the same field for almost 20 years. COMMUNITY.
www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 91
GET TO KNOW
How do you deal with stress and create some sort of balance between work
unwind outside the office? and play. I believe it is important to take a
break every now and then to recharge the
I am training for the 947 Cycle Challenge batteries and come back with a fresh mind.
and I find that exercise helps me cope with
the stresses of life. When I am not training, I If you could go back and change one
career decision what would it be?
“
like spending time with family and friends to
That’s a difficult question because I am
happy where I am today. I do believe the
decisions I have made in my career has
brought me to my current role. I will however
say that I did enjoy owning my own business
and I should have looked at doing that
I BELIEVE IN AN earlier on in my career to capitalise on the
Internet boom.
OPEN-DOOR
MANAGEMENT My vision is to one day be able to invest in a
technology company that I can be involved
PHILOSOPHY in the background during my retirement
period and beyond.
WHERE I
What do you currently identify as
ENCOURAGE TEAM the major areas of investment in
WORK, PROMOTE your industry?
INDIVIDUAL With many devices connecting to the Internet
EXPRESSION AND (including mobile devices, TVs, fridges, cars
and cameras) I am seeing large investment
FOCUSING THE on developing security solutions for these
types of connected devices. In addition,
TEAM ON THE as organisations move their data to cloud
OBJECTIVES OF platforms so does the spend move to security
technologies that enable cloud adoption
THE COMPANY. without compromising security posture.
92 INTELLIGENTCIO
What are the region-specific
challenges when implementing
new technologies in Africa?
Each region has its own challenges.
In some countries in Africa they
are behind the technology curve
and require a huge amount of re-
architecture and investment to deploy
the latest technology.
Once the new technology is implemented
the harder part is to ensure it is
maintained and monitored by certified
individuals and this is an area where I
feel we are lacking in the entire African
continent. The skill shortage is probably
our biggest challenge in my industry.
What changes to your job role have
you seen in the last year and how
do you see these developing in the
next 12 months?
Since I have only been in my current job
role for nearly six months, I can’t comment
on the last 12 months, but I do see my role
changing. In tough economic times we are
forced to get creative to find new business.
We need to find new markets to sell our
product to and this requires out of the box
thinking and getting the team to do tasks
that may be out of their comfort zone.
What advice would you offer
somebody aspiring to obtain C-level
position in your industry?
In the security industry I would say that a
Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
would be the C-level position to aspire to.
The best advice I can give for someone
that wants to become a CISO is to
ensure that you have a solid educational
background with knowledge in both
technology and business. An aspiring
CISO should come out of an enterprise
information security role with both
technical experience, managerial
experience and good communication skills.
I would highly recommend that this person
looks at getting some industry recognised
information security certifications such as
Certified Information Security Manager
(CISM) or Certified Information Systems
Security Professional (CISSP). n
www.intelligentcio.com
 RESEARCH

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PROVIDING MARKETING SOLUTIONS IN:

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www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 93
FINAL WORD /

Leveraging
intelligent
technologies
to help Kenya
government
connect better
Robin Njiru, Director: General Business
at SAP East Africa, looks at how
leveraging intelligent technologies to
help the Kenyan government connect
better with citizens and build intelligent
public-sector enterprises.

P
ublic sector companies are not immune to the forces that
are reshaping organisations and industry sectors around the
world. These exponential forces put pressure on public sector
organisations to rethink the way they operate to meet the dynamic
needs of increasingly sophisticated connected citizens. UNESCO
states that 61% of the world's population will live in cities by 2030,
although World Bank figures indicate that this figure will be closer to
50% for Kenya.

Rapid urbanisation places great pressure on governments and

public-sector companies to deliver the correct mix of services aimed
at improving the citizen experience. According to the World Bank,
financing of liveable, well-functioning cities is increasingly recognised
as paramount for economic growth. However, demands on public
sector spending are rising dramatically just as citizens are demanding
greater convenience and improved experiences of public services.

There’s a need to develop a new paradigm to frame relationships

between the public sector and citizens that transforms public service
delivery into a more citizen-centric process.

94 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// FINAL WORD

“
THE CHALLENGE
FOR KENYA’S
GOVERNMENT IS
CONNECTING ITS
VARIOUS URBAN
AND RURAL
AREAS IN A WAY
THAT ENABLES IT
TO ACHIEVE THE
AMBITIONS.
www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 95
FINAL WORD
Connecting all corners of Kenya to
intelligent public services
The challenge for Kenya’s government
is connecting its various urban and rural
areas in a way that enables it to achieve
the ambitions set out in President Uhuru
Kenyatta’s Big Four agenda; namely food
security, affordable housing, manufacturing
and affordable healthcare.
According to the World Bank, agriculture and
associated industries contributed 31.5% of
Kenya’s GDP in 2017. However, a closer look
will reveal that most farmers in the country
are subsistence farmers, who rely on the
same techniques and processes that their
parents and grandparents did.
As an example, only 5% of cultivated land in
Africa makes use of irrigation, compared to
38% in Asia. This results in low productivity
and lower yield compared to countries
with more advanced or modern farming
techniques. Citizen-centric public-sector
interventions in this sector could bring
technology and modern farming techniques
to subsistence farmers to improve their
practices, open up market access, and
facilitate greater economic participation.
One example is SAP Rural Sourcing
Management, a cloud-based solution that
tracks and collects data related to farms,
farmers, cultivated plots, crops and farm gate
selling processes. Farmers access the solution
via their mobile phones to see critical
information and best practice guidelines to
improve their farming operations and then
connects them to a global marketplace for
their produce, increasing farmers' revenue
and expanding the realm of possibility
for subsistence farmers. A pilot phase
of the solution saw more than 100,000
farmers across nine African countries use
it, improving market linkages across the
value chain and increasing local production
capacity and yield quality.
Access to effective, affordable healthcare
can similarly be improved with innovative
technology use. Better tracking of accurate
data could provide insight into the real
healthcare needs of the population and
ensure government interventions are
successfully executed. For example, cancer
screening equipment meant for rural clinics
will have little positive benefits to the local
96 INTELLIGENTCIO
Robin Njiru, Director: General Business at
SAP East Africa
population if there are no available skills to
successfully utilise the equipment.
A citizen-centric technology-enabled public
sector would have access to data that
indicates whether the correct skills are locally
available or whether the government needs
to deploy additional resources to the area.
The rise of the Intelligent
Public Sector
How does Kenya’s government start getting
a clearer, more accurate picture of food
production, healthcare needs and other
citizen-centric services to improve delivery
and better support citizens, businesses and
government departments? Currently, public
sector organisations around the world are
investing in four strategic priorities to meet the
demands of greater citizen-centricity, namely:
1. Digital government management
This helps governments embrace
digital technologies, replace aging
infrastructure to transform and integrate
financial, procurement, workforce, and
asset management processes
2. Data-driven government
This equips governments with accurate
data for real-time decision-making. This
help government to improve business
intelligence by solving policy issues and
optimise the use of public funds
3. Citizen experience
This puts citizens at the centre of
policy decisions. The use of intelligent
technologies helps government to
personalise citizens’ experiences and
interactions with the communities
4. Smart cities
These employ the use of IoT sensors,
Blockchain, Machine Learning, analytics,
mobile and in-memory data platforms.
These technologies help cities to
improve service delivery, including
transportation, economy, environment,
and resource management
By leveraging digital technologies, public
sector organisations can be transformed
into Intelligent Public Enterprises that
create flexible and agile business processes
that are designed to adapt in real time
and deliver positive outcomes. Public
sector employees can also be transformed
into digitally-enabled, dynamic and
outcomes-based organisational teams,
while public sector assets can be utilised
more effectively as sensors monitor the
health of assets. This data is processed
by predictive analytics to pre-empt
potential maintenance issues. In fact, the
IDC predicts that by 2019, 15% of tax
collection, welfare reimbursement and
immigration control will be supported by
some form of embedded analytics.
What truly activates the possibilities of the
Intelligent Public Enterprise is to extend
business processes and generate greater
value through innovation platforms such as
SAP Leonardo. Predictive maintenance and
services reduce costly outages due to asset
downtime by analysing sensor data in real
time, predicting and preventing failures and
improving availability. An asset intelligence
network hosted in the cloud can create
enormous opportunity for collaboration with
internal teams and external business partners,
allowing utilities to improve safety and
compliance, reduce outages and improve the
overall operating asset efficiency.
Transforming public sector organisations
into Intelligent Public Enterprises offers
immense opportunities for sustainable,
positive impact. The challenge for public
sector organisations is how to approach this
transformation with agility and scale while
minimising risk. Here, trusted global providers
with a track record of success can play a key
role in enabling future-fit Intelligent Public
Enterprises tuned to the needs of connected
citizens and associated stakeholders. n
www.intelligentcio.com
 FINAL WORD

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 Avaya presents solutions
for Egypt’s services
economy at Cairo ICT

Trailblazers celebrated at
AfricaCom Awards show at
CITCC in Cape Town

intelligentcio.com...
Nokia deploys 5G
technology with operator
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Hughes’ JUPITER System

selected by three African
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Edge computing will

come of age in 2019, says
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