EDITOR ’ S NOTE
Greetings to the readers of Intelligent CIO Africa . While countries in Africa lag many of their Western and Eastern counterparts in macroeconomic parametres like GDP and per capita income , in terms of pressure on business to modernize , their appears to be little difference . African institutions in banking and finance are interconnected with their global counterparts and are compelled to follow their modernisation process .
Africa is investing significantly in efficient fibre and submarine cables interconnecting primarily countries that are positioned along the coast line and especially the Western side today . And this interconnectedness is progressing inwards into the central parts of Africa as well . Upcoming benefits include better Internet and leased networking connections for business .
Agility , speed , scale , efficiency built up in the Western world , will eventually arrive in Africa , especially for businesses that are interconnected like banking and finance . Another sector that is surging forward because of the vast array of interconnections with Africa and outside , is telecom and e-commerce , but that is a subject for another day .
In this month ’ s lead feature we consider how Nigeria ’ s Coronation Merchant Bank had reached the end of business life for its legacy systems and had to consider a massive technology infrastructure and application architecture upgrade in order to remain competitive for its corporate and high net worth customers . The Bank has chosen to partner with Nutanix since 2019 and the vendor will continue the transformation process till 2024 .
Previously , the bank ’ s disaster recovery exercises revealed a stark disparity in recovery times between applications on different infrastructures . Post migration to Nutanix , the bank ’ s ability to failover non-core applications in less than 30 minutes during testing is testament to the robustness of the solution . A significant milestone on the horizon is the upgrade of the bank ’ s core banking application , expected to deepen the engagement with Nutanix .
To read more about digital and business transformations taking place across Africa turn these pages .
And in this month ’ s Editor Question we ask what are the areas of innovation , disruption , and transformation expected across the African IT industry in 2024 and beyond ? Which markets segments and which skills are likely to be impacted in Africa ? Top executives from Logitech , Juniper Networks , Darwinbox respond .
Wishing you the best of business success in the ongoing summer season .
Arun Shankar Managing Editor arun @ lynchpinmedia . com
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