FEATURE: MACHINE LEARNING
AS A CIO, YOU NEED TO LOOK AT THE
VALUE OF ADVANCED ANALYTICS AND
HOW MACHINE LEARNING ENABLES
THIS TO EXTEND OR PROMOTE
CAPABILITIES IN YOUR BUSINESS.
Getting business buy-in
Most CIOs and IT leaders have faced
resistance from their C-level peers when
securing buy-in for a Machine Learning
system deployment in their organisations.
BT’s Millard said that CIOs and IT leaders
need to ensure that the wider business
doesn’t get carried away by the hype
around AI and Machine Learning.
“They need to work with the wider business
to identify where deployment of Machine
Learning is appropriate, likely to deliver ROI
and above all deliverable. There may be a
need to completely re-engineer legacy IT
infrastructure, data and processes. CIOs and
IT teams need to engage with the rest of
the business to gauge their appetite to do
this and ensure that investment budgets are
realistic,” she advised.
Rudeon Snell, Senior Director: Industries and
Customer Advisory, SAP MENA, believes it is
imperative to lead with business value and
AI is a tool that can be used to drive business
outcomes that matter to the organisation.
“By leading with business value and
showcasing how potential solutions are
able to impact the metrics that matter to
the organisation, whether they are internal
or external AI solutions, it will provide CIOs
and IT leaders with the credibility among
their peers for how technology can drive
business differentiating capabilities that
move the organisation forward,” he said.
e4’s Tucker said taking the organisation on
a journey with the CIO together with the
entire IT team makes these more likely, but
it is never a given that everyone is going to
buy into a Machine Learning solution.
Ramamoorthy said given that Machine
Learning is a subset of Artificial Intelligence,
introducing AI in a staggered manner
would help better understanding of the
advantages and pitfalls that AI has to offer.
“Most CIOs will have the challenge of
retrofitting AI into business systems that
have existed over decades. Having an
explainable AI model would offer further
easing on the transition into Machine
Learning,” he said.
Michael Cade, Senior Global Technologist,
Veeam, believes that demonstrating the
value of these systems is paramount, as
is understanding the strategic advantage
of improving business performance by
complementing human intelligence.
“Reliability and automation, underpinned
by robust and secure software, provide a
very compelling case,” he said.
Tony Nkuna, Solutions Consultant, TechSoft
International, said that Machine Learning
is much a technology fit as it is a business
vision fit.
According to Nkuna, Machine Learning
only works when it is married with the
future view of the organisation.
“As a CIO, you need to look at the value
of advanced analytics and how Machine
Learning enables this to extend or promote
capabilities in your business. Because it is a
relatively new technology, I would suggest
companies look at what the research
giants like Gartner, IDC and Forrester have
to say about who are the leaders and who
have the capabilities you are looking for
from a Machine Learning system,” he said.
When it comes to cybersecurity, time is a
crucial element as it is important for the
security measures to work faster to keep
pace with the hackers and all kinds of
cybersecurity threats.
Ashley Lawrence, Regional Sales Senior
Manager, Africa and Israel, SonicWall, said:
“This is exactly where AI and Machine
Learning-based tools really excel. To deal
with the cybersecurity threats of the
future, businesses need to embrace AI and
Machine Learning-based tools and security
mechanisms. They also need to have
a solid understanding of how Machine
Learning-based algorithms work and how
they can enhance security.”
Mohammad Jamal Tabbara, Senior
Solutions Architect, Infoblox, added that
Machine Learning can help enterprises in
multiple aspects of the business processes,
whether directly or indirectly by adding
agility, precision and intelligence. He said
enterprises with Machine Learning embedded
in their decision-making processes have an
advantage against their competition relying
on traditional technologies.
Given the impact AI technology is having
as it continues to be widely deployed
within organisations in Africa and globally,
it can only mean that Machine Learning
technology will start seeing enterprise wide
momentum and will integrate with other
processes, tools and applications to tackle
bigger problems, introduce game changing
capabilities and accelerate a wave of
transformation in both consumer, public
service and enterprise arenas. •
Tony Bartlett, Director: Data Centre
Compute, Dell Technologies South Africa
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