Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 38 | Page 10

NEWS Sequel Support launches Hyperion to monitor databases Young Africans benefit from US$500k scholarship funding S equel Support, a Cape Town-based database support specialist, has launched an innovative tool called Hyperion to automate the monitoring of databases. Hyperion was developed in-house and is already integrated into the company’s managed services offering. Now, however, organisations that perform their own monitoring can buy the tool for a monthly fee per server. “In today’s world, data is the true competitive differentiator and so database performance has become even more important than it ever was,” said Richard Hart, Technical Manager at Sequel Support. “Hyperion allows organisations of any size to manage all their databases more effectively and reliably, while reducing the number of database administrators and consequently, their costs. The monthly per- server billing model is attractive because it is an operating rather than a capital expense, something CFOs generally prefer.” Clients can also purchase support tickets so that particularly difficult support issues get escalated to Sequel Support’s remote support desk for expert, quick resolution. Hart says the tool has been designed to alert administrators to potential issues, enabling them to have a proactive approach to problem resolution. Typically, database monitoring requires logs to be scanned manually – a highly time-consuming task that is also extremely error-prone. “Moreover, it includes the auditing of data definition language (DDL) statements for enterprise environments,” said Hart. “Hyperion makes monitoring organisations’ precious databases both easier and more accurate – something that makes good business sense.” 10 INTELLIGENTCIO G eneral Electric (GE) and the Africa Leadership University (ALU) have announced the kick-off of the third cohort of the Africa Industrial Internet Programme (AIIP) which is aimed at equipping young Africans with skills that will enable them to take part in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The 2020 cohort has enrolled 35 students from eight countries across Africa, drawn from oil and gas, transportation, power, energy, manufacturing, healthcare, telecoms and aviation industries. Over the last two years, the rigorous training programme has graduated 64 students, of which 50 were fully sponsored by GE from a scholarship fund totalling US$500k. GE will give 10 full scholarships for the current cohort. Launched in 2018, the programme has empowered participants with essential skills for building applications for the Industrial Internet, which enables machine-to-machine communication that results in systems that can collect, analyse and deliver data in real-time. “As a digital industrial company, it’s exciting to see how over the last two years the AIIP has developed an ecosystem of digital engineers that utilise data science as an enabler for their work across industries, developing solutions for the most pressing challenges,” said Farid Fezoua, President and CEO for GE Africa. “Our partnership with ALU for the AIIP is a testament of our commitment to develop the next generation of leaders that will drive solutions made in Africa for Africa in this transformative digital age.” www.intelligentcio.com