EDITOR’S
NOTE
H
ello and welcome to the latest edition
of Intelligent CIO Africa. This month’s
front cover focuses on a Namibian
financial holdings company that has
benefited greatly thanks to Nutanix.
Trustco Holdings has seen its number of
employees rise from 50 to 900 in a decade
and operates from three business segments
– insurance and investments; resources; and
banking and finance.
However, it got to the point where
the company needed to change its
whole business model when it came to
infrastructure, so it started to look at what
solutions were available in the market. After
choosing to work with Nutanix, Trustco has
recently elected to license Prism Pro and
implement Leap.
Christo Du Raan, COO IT Hardware and
Infrastructure at Trustco, says feedback –
both internally and externally – has been
positive and he has never experienced such
a high-quality support system during his 24
years of working in IT.
Our first feature is on Blockchain and how
it can enhance customer satisfaction. We
hear from Gerhard Dinhof, Blockchain
Lead at IBM South Africa, who says that
the technology creates a level of visibility
between every partner in a supply chain
www.intelligentcio.com
and effectively holds them all accountable
for their end of a production bargain.
Meanwhile, Craig Nel, Mobile and Cognitive
Experience (MCX) Leader at Oracle Middle
East, Africa and Turkey, says Blockchain can
play a key role in ensuring ethical sourcing is
a major focus area for companies. signals asset management operations, which
has seen overall business benefits. Elsewhere,
we look at this year’s AFASA Conference
on Agribusiness Transformation that took
place in Bloemfontein, Free State, which ran
under theme, ‘Farmers growing South Africa:
Creating jobs and trade opportunities’.
The global market for Software-defined
Networking (SDN) has risen from less than
half a billion dollars in 2013 to an expected
US$14 billion by 2021, making it one of
the fastest-growing in the ICT sector. But as
Ian Jansen van Rensburg, Senior Systems
Engineer at VMware, argues in feature two,
it is not getting the recognition it deserves
despite it reinventing the way companies
embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In ‘Industry Watch’, we look at how the
energy sector is shaping Africa, while in
‘Get to Know’, Wayne Human, Executive
Partner at IQbusiness, tells us what makes
him tick and what he thinks is the current hot
technology point.
The worldwide Infrastructure-as-a-Service
(IaaS) market also grew 31.3% in 2018 to
total US$32.4billion, according to Gartner.
The organisation has also said that market
consolidation will continue through 2019,
driven by the high rate of growth for the top
providers. With this in mind, we asked three
leading experts what organisations should
look for in an IaaS provider.
South Africa is our country focus this
month, where we look at how SAP mobile
technology has enabled innovative ‘Smart
City’ solutions for Cape Town. This includes
the city’s road, storm water and traffic
Lastly, to round off the magazine in ‘Final
Word’, Corien Vermaak, Cyber Security
Specialist, Cisco, looks at the current threats
affecting Cloud Service Providers.
I hope you enjoy the latest edition and
remember that if you want to get in touch,
you can do so by emailing me at paul@
lynchpinmedia.co.uk
Paul Rogers
Editor
INTELLIGENTCIO
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