|
By Daniel Reinhold-Shor
With the FIFA World Cup transforming South Africa’s infrastructure with high-speed rail systems, better roads and state-of-the-art power systems, now is the time for African businesses to also take economical advantage of the other benefit of the tournament - online technology.
This year's CIO Africa summit promises to be the best to date with over 50 of the leading CIO’s and senior executives in the African region including Tanzania, Kenya, and Zimbabwe coming together for the future of the countries industry. The meeting is to take place in Nairobi, Kenya from tomorrow where the CIO of FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee, Mr Phumlani Moholi’s discussion focusing on the technical challenges since the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The meeting will end on Thursday.
Mr Richardt Human, business manager from Cloud Services at Business Connexion will be running a workshop at the CIO Africa Summit on Cloud computing which is revolutionising the way businesses run their IT departments and use the technology available to them now. Cloud computing is a new approach which leverages efficient pooling of on demand in a managed virtual infrastructure environment.
“In the current economy cloud solutions offer some compelling advantages. These include cost savings, scalability and business agility. These benefits are also driving increased market demand with customers increasingly seeking mature, reliable and leading-edge technology solutions,” says Human
South Africa’s, not to mention the rest of the continent’s, internet systems saw major investment during the build up to the World Cup but a new trend in cloud computing does away with the software problems, everything happens on demand "in the cloud".
Outside investment from the Middle East is especially prominent in Tanzania at the moment where most recently Ekgaon Technologies has shown interest.
With such technology being harnessed, businesses are now able to look forward to future planning. Representatives including Mr Phumlani Mohoil, CIO of the FIFA World Cup 2010 Organising Committee, Hennie van Wyk, group head of Technology for ABSA bank, George Munyua, general manager for Equity Bank limited and Morgen Mufowo of Econet Wireless are already announcing their plans to increase revenue while taking advantage of a pre set infrastructure.
The benefits of Africa being connected to the rest of the world will be one of the topics discussed at the CIO Africa Summit (hosted by GDS International). Today CIOs need better business insights. Now they have been provided with the Business Intelligence tools and processes to deliver reliable, current, and secure data and accessible information they wish to discuss real tangible strategies that will help develop more effective performance.
With the installation of a new undersea fibre optic cable and an infrastructure securely in place, now is the time for Africa to truly embrace business online in order to bring down costs while boosting employee efficiency and innovation.
Mr Reinhold works with Next Generation Online, an online news organisation.
Email :
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
