NEWS
Funke Opeke, founder and CEO of MainOne
MainOne’s ‘Nerds
Unite’ raises the bar for
Nigerian IT professionals
For the third year, MainOne has
organised the Nerds Unite IT
conference, Nigeria’s biggest
customer event for networking and
data centre professionals. The 2017
edition witnessed a convergence of
global IT professionals, to network
and share ideas on the latest
technology trends.
The one-day programme delivered a
wealth of content on best practices
in connectivity, cloud, managed
security, and small and medium
enterprise solutions. There were also
leading experts from MainOne and its
partners, including Microsoft, Cisco,
Radware, Signal Alliance, SAP, Huawei,
and Samsung facilitating sessions
to further enlighten the audience on
these latest developments.
Delivering the keynote address on the
future of content in Africa, Michuki
Mwangi, Regional Development
www.intelligentcio.com
Manager at the Internet Society
(ISOC), emphasised the role of
locally relevant content as the key
to disruption and stimulating the
demand for online services.
Mwangi shared ISOC’s 80/20 vision
for the Internet in Africa, stressing
that by 2020, 80% of the African
Internet traffic must be locally
accessible, while 20% is international
traffic. According to him, this will
significantly increase participation of
local operators, improve local content,
increase value for Africa and expedite
Internet penetration on the continent.
Speaking during his presentation,
Principal Group Manager at Microsoft,
Roberto Di Bennedetto, shared the
company’s vision for a fully connected
world enabled via cloud technology,
describing it as a big shift from the
traditional infrastructure-dependent
IT approach.
He demonstrated Microsoft’s
HoloLens and Internet of things
with different examples of how such
technologies could be applied in a
mobile-first cloud world, in industries
as varied as healthcare, technology
and oil and gas, among others.
Other highlights included the
executive panel session where leading
technology executives from Nigeria
discussed how their companies were
adopting disruptive solutions to grow
their business.
Speaking on disruption for customer-
facing businesses, Vice President
at Konga, Adeyinka Aderombi, said
businesses need solutions to be
optimised for mobile phones. He
highlighted his company’s use of
Progressive Web Apps which has
improved the performance of their
website across devices and enables
customer’s to access content on the
Konga marketplace without incurring
heavy data costs.
According to Aderombi, mobile-
first technologies are driven by
cost-effective cloud and reliable
connectivity and these have enabled
Konga’s work in app development and
ePayment deployment in Nigeria.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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