EDITOR ’ S NOTE
Greetings to the readers of Intelligent CIO Africa . In the first week of May , Lynchpin Media , publishers for Intelligent CIO Africa , staged its inaugural Intelligent ICT Awards Africa . The event took place in Johannesburg and showcased success stories from CIOs , CISOs , channel chiefs and the regional IT industry . The awards , were sponsored by Open Access Data Centres , TP-Link , Netcore Cloud , Africa Data Centres , First Distribution and Microsoft , and recognised winners across six categories .
Close to 200 nominations were submitted for the awards , and were reviewed and scored by an independent jury panel . Arthur Goldstuck hosted the event that was held on the same day that 18 teams headed to the Country Club Johannesburg for a corporate golf day , also hosted by Lynchpin Media . As a publisher , Lynchpin Media expanded into Africa in 2017 with the launch of Intelligent CIO Africa .
The inaugural event attracted 250 attendees , 180 nominations , 46 winners , and total of 176,081 online impressions .
A partial list of award winners from the African IT industry includes First Distribution , Red Dot Distribution , Tarsus on Demand , Accenture , Project Portfolio Office , Netcore Cloud , Zoho , Workstatz , Helm , CRS Technologies , Puzzlcat Software , Altron Digital Business , CommScope , Nutanix , Vertiv , Open Access Data Centres , KnowBe4 , Eskom , Palo Alto Networks , Check Point , Orange Cyberdefense .
Turn these pages to glimpse an overview of the event in our 12 page , post event , special supplement .
Elsewhere in this edition Microsoft Africa ’ s Lillian Barnard , remains bullish about the future of African fintech companies , as the next bright spot for Africa after the adoption of cloud . Building on the progress enabled by cloud , Africa is undergoing a wave of transformation driven by AI and businesses do not need powerful computers to benefit from technology , with most of the compute power available through cloud providers , Barnard points out .
In our feature section , we describe how South Africa ’ s defence acquisition expert , Armaments Corporation has adopted Qlik Sense and Qlik NPrinting to boost its data integration , data analytics , and data reporting capabilities for its financial operations . Local Qlik implementation partner Direct Insight Consulting provided the technical support . As a state-owned company , visibility on finances is essential for Armscor ’ s stakeholder reporting .
Elsewhere , as African enterprises begin their transformation from legacy on-premises and monolithic applications to cloud based , agile architectures , what are the recommended solutions and best practices for adoption ? Executives from Nutanix and Commvault respond to this Editor ’ s Question .
Wishing you the best of business success in the month ahead .
Arun Shankar Managing Editor arun @ lynchpinmedia . com
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