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Providing Unparalleled Technology Intelligence
LEADINGTHEPACK
Financial services company PPS chose Knotion to deliver an
Enterprise Architecture solution to help support its IT strategy.
The firm used developed infrastructure to deliver on conceptual,
logical and physical levels.
ISSUE 23 // www.intelligentcio.com
AFRICA
PUBLICATION
A
PROJECT LATEST | INTELLIGENT CABLING | INTELLIGENT DATA CENTRES
GOING
GREEN
Morocco is competing to
be the renewable energy
leader in Africa
DRIVING
INNOVATION
How technology is being
used in the banking and
finance industry
PRIORITY
FOR2019
Two industry experts
look at what the CIO’s
priority is for 2019
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3www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO
CONTENTS
ISSUE23
NEWS: Latest news round-up from across Africa.
LATEST INTELLIGENCE: NETAPP: NFLEX:
Fulfilling the Promise of Converged Infrastructure
and NetApp AFF vs. Pure Storage FlashArray//M
56 34
47
TRENDING: New McAfee report reveals data in the
cloud more exposed than organisations think
PROJECT LATEST: Latest updates from
Zimbabwe, South Africa, Egypt and Tunisia
INFOGRAPHIC: Nutanix announces findings of
annual global Enterprise Cloud Index
EDITOR’S QUESTION: What steps should you
take to prevent your digital identity being stolen?
TALKING BUSINESS: Powerful data is shared
data – conquering the silo sprawl
38
FEATURE: Understand cloud’s new essence; drive
the business forward
CIO OPINION: Aiming to connect the unconnected
COUNTRY FOCUS: Competing to be the
renewable energy leader in Africa
FEATURE: Going virtual with SaaS
CASE STUDY: PPS leading the pack
through EAaaS
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4 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com
CONTENTS
ISSUE23
61 INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES
INDUSTRY WATCH: Hyper-availability: The
competitive edge for digital banks
INTELLIGENT VERTICAL: Building and securing
5G networks of tomorrow
TECH TALK: Geographic Information Systems in
supply chain and logistics
GET TO KNOW: Doros Hadjizenonos, Regional
Sales Director at Fortinet in South Africa
FINAL WORD: Leveraging intelligent technologies
to help Kenyan government connect better
69
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NEWS
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NEWS
Action achieves results at AfricaCom
Testament to the growing influence and importance of the entire
digital ecosystem on everyday life, the 21st edition of AfricaCom
attracted close to 14,000 record-breaking attendees at the CTICC in
South Africa, with the most diverse and informed, audience ever.
One of the elements in preventing Africa’s rapid progression is a
critical lack of appropriate skills. The importance of this was reflected
in the number of E-Learning solutions and deployments on display in
the Connectivity Hall and the Technology Arena.
As pointed out by several speakers, the Fourth Industrial Revolution
is now not so much about the technology itself but how to use it to
enable advancement.
The Internet of Things (IoT) will have a transformative impact on
both African business and African society. And this year’s IoT World
Africa proved it by providing a platform for the burgeoning IoT
ecosystem to get together and share their expertise, industry insights
and transformation stories.
Also disrupting and changing the status quo is the increasing
prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AfricaCom 2018 played
host to the first staging of the AI World Summit in Cape Town.
“The buzz around the entire AfricaCom precinct was tangible, as
those attending and participating in shaping Africa’s digital future
appear to agree the time has now come for less talk and more action
in order to get things done,” said Tom Cuthell, Event Director at
KNect365, organiser of AfricaCom.
/////////////////
RCS-Communication launches new
Ka-Band service in South Sudan
RCS-Communication, a leading ISP in
South Sudan, has established the first
site for Avanti’s HYLAS 4 high-speed satellite
broadband service in the country. Following
successful beam testing in Juba, the new
Ka-Band service with high throughput speeds
of up to 35Mbps download and 4Mbps upload
is now available to RCS-Communication’s
customers. RCS-Communication partnered
with iWayAfrica, an Avanti Master Distributor,
to bring the service to South Sudan.
“We have a long-standing relationship of
almost 10 years with iWayAfrica for the
provision of high throughput volume capped
VSAT services and are pleased to extend this
to the new HYLAS 4 service that offers much
improved speeds,” said Flippie Odendal,
Managing Director, RCS-Communication.
“RCS is always on the lookout for suitable
technology and services that increases
options to our clients and enhances their
user experience. We focus on the enterprise
and SME market, and with the HYLAS 4
broadband service, we see SME clients
across South Sudan benefiting from high
speeds and a selection of volume options at
affordable rates.”
Michèle Scanlon, Managing Director,
iWayAfrica, added: “We have been working
with RCS since May 2009 for VSAT
broadband services in South Sudan.
“It is the leading ISP in its market with
an excellent service reputation. Now with
HYLAS 4, we can bring Avanti’s service
to South Sudan and enable our partner
RCS to deliver even faster download and
upload speeds.”
Close to 14,000 people
attended this year’s
AfricaCom event

NEWS
Temenos establishes South
African “Bank of the Future”
Think Tank
Banking software company Temenos
has announced the launch of its South
African ‘Bank of the Future’ think tank.
The venture aims to address domestic
and global challenges and opportunities
facing financial institutions in the country.
Over 60 experts from 30 banks and
financial institutions are expected to
take part in the initiative over the coming
year, promoting knowledge creation and
sharing as well as actively responding to
the complex opportunities and challenges
of today’s banking environment.
Jean-Paul Mergeai, Managing Director
Middle East and Africa at Temenos,
said: “An important part of what we
do at Temenos is to create and foster
a community within the banking and
fintech ecosystem. Our clients, partners
and our MarketPlace technology
providers form the most dynamic banking
technology community.
“Our industry is facing structural
changes right now in terms of customer
expectations, regulatory requirements
and new entrants, as well as a genuine
technological revolution. Through this
think-tank, we are creating a forum where
leading bankers from South Africa can
come together to share knowledge and
address the challenges and opportunities
they face on a day-to-day basis. With
some of the world’s most innovative
and technologically advanced financial
institutions coming from South Africa, this
seemed like the perfect country to lead
this conversation on what the Bank of the
Future will look like.”
Global Voice Group (GVG) has announced
that a Common Platform (CP), using
its state-of-the-art technologies, has been
officially launched by Nana Akufo-Addo,
President of Ghana.
Delivered by Ghana-based firm Kelni-GVG,
with the technical assistance of GVG, the
mCP will be jointly used by the Ghana
Revenue Authority (GRA) and the National
Communications Authority (NCA) to support
and optimise their respective activities
with respect to telecom and mobile money
oversight and taxation.
In his inaugural speech to the launch,
President Akufo-Addo presented the CP
as ‘an essential building block for the
realisation of the government’s vision of a
digitised Ghana.’
For GVG’s CEO, James Claude, this perfectly
defines the very nature of the project.
“The Common Platform is indeed all about
digitisation,” he said.
“It aims at replacing the old paper-based
ways of doing things by cutting-edge
technologies of the digital age that can really
increase efficiency and enforce transparency
in important sectors of the economy such as
telecoms and digital financial services.”
The telecom and mobile money markets
of Ghana have a lot in common with those
of other countries where GVG successfully
implemented similar platforms over the last
few years, such as Tanzania, Uganda and
Rwanda. They are characterised by an overall
lack of transparency, high vulnerabilities to
important risks such as revenue leakages, tax
erosion, unfair competition from Internet-
based OTTs and proliferation of international
grey telephony. The CP is expected to have
an immediate and lasting positive impact in
all these regards.
Cutting-edge
platform
launched to
boost telecom
regulatory in
Ghana
Temenos has
launched its South
African ‘Bank of the
Future’ Think Tank

NEWS
IT identified as a future-orientated
business in South Africa
Research shows that South African SMEs
are estimated to represent 90% of
formal businesses, provide employment
to about 60% of the labour force and
contribute approximately 34% of the
country’s GDP.
To further grow this sector and boost a
struggling economy, J.P. Morgan has been
supporting several companies to conduct
in-depth research into the SME sector.
The research aims to establish the impact
of SME-development projects, what the
challenges are and where the opportunities
lie within this vital sector.
The companies supported by J.P. Morgan
include Catalyst for Growth, GIBS
Entrepreneurship Development Academy,
Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA)
and Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct.
The four companies shared findings on how
small and medium business can bolster
growth in future-oriented industries such
as IT and the green economy, as well as
a general look at the role and success of
current business incubation.
“At the heart of all four research studies
is a burgeoning optimism regarding the
potential of both the IT and green economy
/////////////////
Industry demand for Intelligent Data
Management continues at pace
Veeam has announced its Q3 2018
results, marking the company’s 41st
consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
Locally, the Africa South region’s bookings
grew 30%, licence and upgrade bookings
are up 19% year-over-year and the region
added 105 new customers during the
quarter. This growth is mostly driven by SMB
and commercial customers. The quarter also
saw 264 Veeam Cloud and Service Provider
(VCSP) transactions up 27% year-over-year
in Q3, which can be attributed to mid-
market businesses adopting cloud services.
The region added 43 VCSP partners and
it was a notable quarter for one of the
existing partners, Silicon Sky, which achieved
platinum status, the highest level for a
reseller and the first to achieve it in the
region of Middle East and Africa.
Kate Mollett, Regional Manager for Africa
South, said, “Businesses are using the cloud
as a second home for data as part of a
disaster recovery plan because the expense
of having a second physical site is too high in
South Africa.
Lesley Williams, CEO of Tshimologong
sectors,” said Sifiso Ndwandwe, Executive
Director, Catalyst for Growth.
“The joblessness of a large majority in South
Africa is a growing concern and prompted
these partners to focus more heavily on
future-orientated industries. There is a
definite opportunity for the country to
leapfrog based on experiences of other
countries in these sectors. Our research
presents an analytical overview of the role
of business development support in terms of
SME performance and sustainability.
“In Africa, one of the key drivers behind this
is the ubiquity of mobile. The continent has
long been labelled a mobile-first environment.
Some might even say that it is mobile-only
given the challenges of rolling out fixed-line
infrastructure to remote and rural areas.
Irrespective, with a mobile penetration rate
of 43% and expectations that there will be
more than 690 million smartphones in sub-
Saharan Africa by 2025, the positioning is
clear – mobility must be an essential part of
any data management strategy.”

NEWS
IT security at risk in the
META region, according to
Kaspersky Lab
Kaspersky Lab’s State of Industrial
Cybersecurity 2018 survey has
highlighted the different opinions
industrial and energy enterprises, as well
as transport and logistics companies,
have regarding the negative effects of
cyberattacks on their industrial networks.
However, when it comes to the issues
affecting their ability to keep networks
secure there are three key concerns
they can agree on – understaffing,
underinvestment by senior management
and the human factor. Algeria (66.2%),
Morocco (60.4%) and Egypt (57.6%)
are among the top countries that face
attacks on its ICS systems.
The consequences of employee errors
pose a critical threat to half of all
organisations worldwide and in all sectors
(49%). According to a new report from
Kaspersky Lab and B2B International,
almost 25% data breaches in Middle
East, Turkey and Africa in the past year
have led to people losing their jobs.
“Recent malware such as Industroyer
and Triton have far exploited
employee weaknesses, proving to be
malicious threats to organisations
and making it more evident that the
cyberthreats landscape is evolving at an
unprecedented pace,” said Amir Kanaan,
Managing Director for the Middle East,
Turkey and Africa, Kaspersky Lab.
“Enterprises across the region have
started to pay a bit more attention to ICS
cybersecurity issues and are evaluating
the industrial segments of their networks
and training employees. It is a good
sign, because it’s highly important for
businesses to take proactive measures in
order to avoid firefighting in future.”
dormakaba, a leading provider of bleeding
edge security and access control
technology, has all but closed the door to
competition within Africa’s burgeoning
commercial access control market. The
company – one of the top three global firms
competing for market share – has made its
Self Boarding Gates (SBG) and Boarding
Pass Control (BPC) solutions available in
Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
Airport and aviation travel is dormakaba’s
most active vertical, according to EAC and
Project Manager Hannes Nortje.
“dormakaba globally installed more than
two thousand SBGs and over one hundred
BPC gates, backed by service through 16,000
employees and numerous cooperation
partners in over 130 countries ready to assist,”
said Nortje. “Turnstiles and barrier systems is a
high growth market on the continent.”
The solutions offer African businesses
everything required for secure access to
buildings and rooms, all from a single source.
dormakaba’s SBG system consists of a
sensor barrier with automatic swing panels.
The unit features an integrated boarding
pass reader, an LCD display for passenger
instruction and a device for printing seat
assignment changes. Industry standard
barcodes can be scanned from boarding
passes printed by airlines or self-service
kiosks, personal printers and smartphones.
The company’s Automated Boarding Pass
Control system provides single-file access
for passengers with space allowance for
carry-on luggage.
dormakaba
meets Africa’s
demand for
next-gen
access control
Amir Kanaan, Managing Director for
the Middle East, Turkey and Africa,
Kaspersky Lab

NEWS

NEWS
//////////////////
Avaya showcased solutions at Cairo ICT
Avaya has participated in the
Cairo ICT 2018 conference where
it presented cutting-edge technologies
that enable impactful customer and
employee experiences.
The company demonstrated a number of
industry-first platforms that bring together
unified communications (UC) and contact
centres (CC), enabling the seamless transition
of communications between customer-facing
employees and internal teams.
Avaya also showcased the world’s first
social network for chatbots, as well as
several industry-specific use cases that
highlight innovations in workflows,
customer engagement and customer
relationship management.
Fadi Hani, Vice President for the Middle
East, Africa and Turkey, Avaya, said: “The
ICT market in Egypt is growing by leaps and
bounds as the country continues to adopt
smart, connected business solutions. At the
same time, organisations are increasingly
looking to deliver more rewarding and
consistent customer experiences through the
use of technology.
“These experiences are key to driving
customer loyalty, while also boosting
employee productivity and engagement.
Avaya’s strengths in this arena are built
upon years of experience working with
businesses of all sizes in Egypt to seize the
opportunities of the connected world.”
The technology conference took place at the
Egypt International Exhibition Centre.
Oracle accelerates Digital
Transformation in South Africa
Reinforcing its commitment to South
Africa, Oracle has announced the
opening of an Innovation Hub in
Johannesburg, a first for the company in
Africa that will help drive the adoption of
emerging technologies across the country’s
corporates, public sector and academia.
In line with South Africa’s National
Development Plan (NDP) 2030, Oracle’s
Innovation Hub is aimed at furthering Digital
Transformation in the country by raising
awareness about the impact of emerging
technologies, such as the Internet of Things
(IoT), Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence
(AI), Bots and Machine Learning (ML) to
help drive economic growth and support
the delivery of innovative and transparent
services to citizens and customers.
The new hub will act as a platform for
Oracle customers, partners and other
stakeholders to better understand the
potential of emerging technologies and co-
create industry specific innovations with top
Oracle experts.
“There is now widespread recognition that
a digital revolution is imperative for South
Africa’s socio economic growth”, said Niral
Patel, Managing Director and Technology
Leader, Oracle South Africa.
“As a leading cloud solutions company,
we are focused on supporting South
Africa’s public and private sector drive with
latest digital technologies.
“Oracle’s new innovation hub in
Johannesburg will act as a catalyst to help
drive awareness, experimentation and
implementation of transformational initiatives
that will be customised to address local
challenges and create new opportunities.”
Niral Patel, Managing Director and
Technology Leader, Oracle South Africa

NEWS
Lex Technologies announced
as reseller for Predict360
360factors, the industry thought leader
in pioneering the use of Artificial
Intelligence to empower companies to
manage compliance and risk solutions,
has announced that Namibian based
consultancy company Lex Technologies
is now a reseller for its flagship platform,
Predict360.
“We seek to partner with the best in
Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) for our clients in both
private and public sectors,” said Wonder
Mushonga, Group CEO and Co-President
for Lex Technologies.
“We believe the GRC solutions offered by
360factors will deliver on the needs of
our customers across both private and
public sectors,”
Carl L. McCauley, CEO for 360factors,
added: “We’re proud to be working
with Wonder and his team at Lex
Technologies in providing our full GRC
solutions to their customer base in Africa
and around the world.
“Our solutions will increase operational
efficiency and enable Lex Technologies
to deliver the best possible compliance
and risk management technology to
their customers.”
360factors has been developing and
implementing compliance and risk
management software solutions using
Artificial Intelligence since 2012 and
has provided solutions to companies
world-wide.
They continue to build partnerships
within the United States and around the
world to ensure more companies are
engaged in their products and services.
Financial technology business IRESS
has announced the launch of its
next-generation client portal with a
clear focus on engagement. The portal,
available through IRESS’ market-leading
financial software solution XPLAN, provides
a contemporary, simple to use, front-end
solution for financial service businesses to
engage their clients in a range of services
digitally. From launch, the client portal offers:
• Portfolio asset allocation and
performance data – presented in a
visually engaging and interactive design
that provides the end client with instant
valuable insight
• Assets and liabilities breakdown – split
by managed and non-managed assets so
the end client has a clear understanding of
what their adviser is looking after for them
• Secure messages and documents – two-
way sharing of documents and a mobile
optimised experience for use on-the-go
• Digital signatures – electronic
signing of documents by one or
more parties, enabling speedy and
straightforward document signing in line
with consumer expectations
• A range of templated website designs
– small and large businesses alike can
easily align their portal to their brand
Dr Eugene van Rensburg, IRESS South
Africa Head of Integrated Wealth, said:
“Today’s financial service businesses need
to deliver a professional and personalised
digital experience to their clients, offering an
accurate perspective of their investments and
financial life. Our new client portal provides
a secure and straight-forward way for clients
and financial professionals to engage and
communicate with each other 24/7 and can
be delivered at scale and with ease.”
IRESS
launches next-
generation
client portal
/
Namibian based consultancy company Lex
Technologies is now a reseller for Predict360

NEWS
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NEWS
Nokia deploys 5G site for rain in
South Africa
Nokia has deployed its 5G site for the South African operator rain.
The launch and subsequent rollout are well aligned with the
government’s strategy to connect the unconnected and improve
the lives of citizens, and match rain’s main objective to provide
affordable broadband internet to the masses in South Africa.
The full network deployment is set to start in the first quarter of 2019
and services are expected to launch mid-2019 when standards-based
5G NR devices become available in the country.
Marc Rouanne, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “Nokia
has a long-standing relationship with rain and we are proud to work
with the company on 5G.
“Nokia believes that 5G will change the connectivity landscape
in South Africa and the entire continent. It will connect the
unconnected and reshape services such as education and health,
with the introduction of more connected things.”
As part of rain’s 5G project, Nokia will deploy its AirScale radio
access network solution in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern
Cape, Kwa-Zulu Natal and the Mangaung (Bloemfontein) regions.
AirScale offers a new modular way of building radio access networks
that deliver services with high capacity scaling and low latency. The
company will also provide professional services for the deployment of
the solution.
“We are proud to be on the forefront of 5G worldwide and working
with Nokia and other partners to connect as many South African as
possible with affordable high-speed broadband services,” said Willem
Roos, CEO of rain.
/////////////////
Hughes’ JUPITER System selected by
three African telecom firms
Hughes Network Systems, the global leader in broadband satellite
networks and services, has announced three African telecom
companies have selected the Hughes JUPITER System to power
delivery of satellite broadband services for their customers.
Botswana Telecommunications Corporation, Satcom Networks Africa
Limited (SatCoNet) and a leading East African telecommunications
company each chose the system based on its high performance,
operational efficiency and better customer experience.
“Hughes is committed to the growth of our operations in Africa and
we have tripled our dedicated sales and engineering support across
the continent to serve growing broadband demand,” said Dharmendra
Singh, Regional Director, International at Hughes.
“Our JUPITER System enables service providers to improve their
offerings and deliver a wide range of applications supporting economic
and social development across Africa – helping close the digital divide,
which is our global mission.”
Botswana Telecommunications Corporation is using the JUPITER
System to expand its high-speed business broadband service. The
first phase of deployment includes hundreds of remote terminals
connecting businesses and homes. SatCoNet, the only native VSAT
operator in Tanzania, also chose the JUPITER System to improve its
service offering for the market with improved performance, better
throughput and a better experience for their customers.
One of the largest telecommunications companies in East Africa will
implement the JUPITER System for video and broadband service in
schools. The technology refresh begins with 1,000 sites, improving
high-speed satellite performance and evolving their solution to meet
growing demand.

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NEWS
Kenya pushes for stronger
support for ICT innovations
Kenya has successfully pushed for the
adoption of a resolution that will see
stronger support for ICT innovations,
particularly in developing countries.
The new resolution titled, ITU’s role in
fostering telecommunication/ICT centric
innovation to promote development of
digital economy, was adopted at the
2018 International Telecommunication
Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference
in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
It will see the ITU play an increasingly
prominent role to support initiatives that
promote ICT innovations which have
gained recognition as being critical in
socio-economic development.
ICT innovations are the driving force
behind the emergence and growth of
digital economies.
Even though there is lack of uniform
definition, digital economy is a new
concept that is associated to digital
networking and communication
infrastructures that provide a
global platform which people and
organisations devise strategies, interact,
communicate, collaborate and search
for information.
In Kenya, the ITU is already working with
the Communications Authority of Kenya
in the review of the country’s ICT-centric
innovation ecosystem, whose output will
be useful in guiding in the development
of a framework for ICT innovations.
The resolutions that were passed touched
on various areas including the use of
telecommunications and information
communication technologies to bridge
the digital divide and build an inclusive
information society, strengthening the
role of ITU in building confidence and
security in the use of IT, International
Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs)
and issues related to cybersecurity. n
NetApp, the data authority for hybrid
cloud, has announced the integration
of its industry-leading All Flash Storage
Array (AFF) Series into leading motorcycle
manufacturer Ducati’s Information
Technology (IT) environment.
By leveraging NetApp’s cloud-connected
flash and data services, Ducati can
modernise infrastructure, bolster compliance,
strengthen performance and ensure business
continuity during the transformation process.
Ducati is a leading manufacturer of
specially designed motorcycles that
are characterised by high-performance
Desmodromic engines, innovative design
and cutting-edge technology.
“We closely collaborated with Ducati’s IT
team to understand its need for a cutting-
edge data management infrastructure,” said
Fadi Kanafani, Senior Director Middle East
and Africa at NetApp.
“The NetApp AFF series immediately
overhauls Ducati’s data management and
storage to build a powerful, modern IT
infrastructure. The solution aids the IT team
in critical decision making and implementing
operational efficiency in bike production and
other business areas.”
Through the new NetApp AFF data
management system, Ducati can now easily
manage about 200 applications and over 300
terabyte of data to grant reliable real-time
access to the world’s fastest enterprise all-flash
storage from anywhere in the world, across
multiple clouds, with full GDPR compliance.
“Our new flash systems will allow us to
guarantee a quicker response to every business
instance as well as increasing the speed of our
prototyping and go-to-market,” said Stefano
Rendina, IT manager of Ducati Corse.
Ducati boosts
business
performance
with
modernised
infrastructure
from NetApp
Kenya has successfully pushed for the
adoption of a resolution that will see
stronger support for ICT innovations

LATEST INTELLIGENCE
Download whitepaper here
Executive summary
Converged Infrastructure (CI) was full of promises.
Some kept, and some never fully realized. Today, CI
continues to provide the backbone to many data
centers and provide a natural pathway to future
hybrid cloud infrastructures.
Data center administrators have been successful
with the complete flexibility of today’s CI solutions,
but they are enamored with the promise of HCI
simplicity. NFLEX fills the gap with a Converged
Infrastructure solution designed to increase simplicity
within a framework of flexibility, with the confidence
of factory integration.
Fujitsu and NetApp are working together to deliver
premier Converged Infrastructure based on industry
standard technology leadership and unparalleled
innovation, taking advantage of over twenty years
of successful co-innovation. NFLEX is built on a core
PRESENTED BY
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THE PROMISE
OF CONVERGED
INFRASTRUCTURE
of technologies with industry-leading benchmarks in
server and flash performance.
Converged Infrastructure continues to grow and
now maintains a large share of Tier 1 application
deployments in the marketplace.
Introduction
NFLEX leverages the value of today’s Converged
Infrastructure with the added promise of simplicity.
Converged Infrastructure was designed with
efficiency in mind, both from a technical standpoint
as users looked to automate their IT processes across
components. And, from a business standpoint, CI
can deliver cost and manageability efficiency by
driving expenses down thanks to greater utilization
and decreased physical hardware needs. In addition,
the evolution of virtualized environments controlled
via a single console was intended to help drive
management efficiency for CI. n

LATEST INTELLIGENCE
Overview
Data has become the lifeblood of companies
of all sizes and across all industries.
Organizations are reinventing themselves to
unlock new value from existing applications
as well as next-generation social, mobile,
cloud, and analytics technologies.
To address these demands, businesses must
modernize IT infrastructure to accelerate
application performance, improve data
center economics, and adapt to evolving
business demands with confidence.
This document compares two all-flash
solutions that might be considered by
companies that are modernizing their
storage infrastructure to accelerate
application performance: the NetApp
AFF and the Pure Storage FlashArray//M.
The FlashArray//M family consists of four
different models: The M10, M20, M50, and
M70, each of which is an independent, non-
clustered array containing a pair of storage
controllers and SSD devices.
The NetApp AFF family is also made up of
four models: the AFF A200, A300, A700,
and A700S. Like the FlashArray, AFF storage
controllers are deployed in pairs. However,
unlike the FlashArray, as many as 12 AFF
node pairs can be combined to deliver
all-flash performance across 24 storage
controllers as part of a single cluster.
Although the FlashArray and NetApp AFF
share some similarities in design, many
critical points of differentiation exist. This
analysis examines five essential criteria to
consider when evaluating flash storage
products and compares how the NetApp AFF
and the Pure FlashArray stand up to each. n
NETAPP AFF VS. PURE STORAGE
FLASHARRAY//M
Download whitepapers free from www.intelligentcio.com/me/whitepapers/
O

ARE YOU
READY?
66%
FOR CLOUD NETWORKING
companies expect SD-WAN to help
achieve core strategic goal of
expanding cloud usage.

New research from McAfee has revealed that sensitive
information stored in the cloud, SaaS collaboration and
IaaS/PaaS configuration mistakes, along with cloud
threats, are at all-time highs – creating significant risks
to enterprise data.
M
cAfee, the device to cloud
cybersecurity company, has
released its Cloud Adoption and
Risk Report, which analysed billions of events
in anonymised customers’ production cloud
use to assess the current state of cloud
deployments and to uncover risks. The report
revealed that nearly a quarter of the data
in the cloud can be categorised as sensitive,
putting an organisation at risk if stolen or
leaked. Coupled with the fact that sharing
sensitive data in the cloud has increased
53% year-on-year, those who do not
adopt a cloud strategy that includes data
loss protection, configuration audits and
collaboration controls will endanger
the security of their most valuable asset
– data – while exposing themselves to
increased risk of non-compliance with
internal and external regulations.
The study found that while organisations
aggressively use the public cloud to create
new digital experiences for their customers,
the average enterprise experiences more than
2,200 misconfiguration incidents per month
in their infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and
platform-as-a-service (PaaS) instances.
Cloud service providers only cover the
security of the cloud itself, not customer
data or customer use of their infrastructure
and platforms. Companies are always
responsible for securing their data wherever
it is, hence highlighting the need to deploy
cloud security solutions that span the whole
cloud spectrum, from SaaS (software-as-a-
service) to IaaS and PaaS.
“Operating in the cloud has become the
norm for organisations, so much so that our
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// TRENDING
NEW MCAFEE REPORT
REVEALS DATA IN THE CLOUD
MORE EXPOSED THAN
ORGANISATIONS THINK
THE REPORT
REVEALED
THAT NEARLY
A QUARTER OF
THE DATA IN THE
CLOUD CAN BE
CATEGORISED
AS SENSITIVE,
PUTTING AN
ORGANISATION AT
RISK IF STOLEN
OR LEAKED.
“

TRENDING
employees do not think twice about storing
and sharing sensitive data in the cloud,” said
Rajiv Gupta, Senior Vice President of the
Cloud Security Business, McAfee. “Accidental
sharing, collaboration errors in SaaS cloud
services, configuration errors in IaaS/PaaS
cloud services and threats are all increasing.
In order to continue to accelerate their
business, organisations need a cloud-native
and frictionless way to consistently protect
their data and defend from threats across
the spectrum of SaaS, IaaS and PaaS.”
Cloud collaboration a blessing and
a curse
Cloud services bring a momentous
opportunity to accelerate business through
their ability to quickly scale, allowing
businesses to be agile with their resources
and provide new opportunities for
collaboration. Cloud services like Box and
productivity suites like Office 365 are used
to increase the fluidity and effectiveness of
collaboration. However, collaboration means
sharing and uncontrolled sharing can expose
sensitive data. Findings of McAfee’s research
demonstrate that:
• A total of 22% of cloud users share files
externally, up 21% year-on-year
• Sharing sensitive data with an open,
publicly accessible link, has increased by
23% year-on-year
• Sensitive data sent to a personal email
address also increased by 12% year-
on-year
To secure sensitive data in cloud storage,
file-sharing and collaboration applications,
organisations must first understand which
cloud services are in use, hold their sensitive
data and how that data is being shared
and with whom. Once organisations have
gained this visibility, they can then enforce
appropriate security policies to prohibit
highly sensitive data from being stored
in unapproved cloud services and provide
guardrails that prevent non-compliant
sharing of sensitive data from approved
cloud services, such as when data is shared
with personal email addresses or through an
open, public link.
IaaS and the risks of misconfiguration
With SaaS, securing data, user identity and
access to data is primarily the customer’s
responsibility. With IaaS, customers
take on a much larger share of security
responsibility that includes data, identity,
access, applications, network controls and
host infrastructure.
While this provides customers with an
opportunity to have greater control over
their cloud infrastructure, it also increases the
organisation’s surface area for security risks
and their responsibility for the same.
IaaS providers, like Amazon Web Services
(AWS), provide several infrastructure and
platform services, each having deep and
complicated security settings. Magnifying
the IaaS/PaaS security challenge is the fact
that organisations use multiple IaaS/PaaS
vendors running several instances of each
vendor’s product. The research found:
• A total of 94% of IaaS/PaaS use is AWS,
but 78% of organisations using IaaS/
PaaS have both AWS and Azure
• Enterprise organisations have an average
of 14 misconfigured IaaS/PaaS instances
running at one time, resulting in over
2,200 individual misconfiguration
incidents per month
• A total of 5.5% of AWS S3 buckets have
world read permissions, making them
open to the public
McAfee recommends that organisations
continuously audit and monitor their AWS,
Azure, Google Cloud Platform and other
IaaS/PaaS configurations as a standard
security practice, while protecting data
stored in IaaS/PaaS platforms.
IaaS/PaaS use is growing rapidly as an
alternative to on-premise data centres.
Businesses need to get ahead and address
their security responsibilities – data
protection and threat defence as they would
for SaaS cloud services and configuration
compliance and workload protection for
IaaS/PaaS cloud services – before they
experience a security incident.
Compromised accounts and
insider threats
Most of the threats to data in the cloud
result from compromised accounts and
insider threats. The average organisation
generates over 3.2 billion events per month
in the cloud, of which 3,217 are anomalous
behaviours and 31.3 are actual threat
events. In addition:
• Threat events in the cloud, such as a
compromised account, privileged user,
or insider threat, have increased 27.7%
year-on-year
• A total of 80% of all organisations
experience at least one compromised
account threat per month
• A total of 92% of all organisations have
stolen cloud credentials for sale on the
Dark Web
• Threats in Office 365 have grown by
63% year-on-year
To get ahead of comprised accounts
and insider threats, organisations should
understand how cloud services are used.
They should also identify anomalous
behaviour, such as when the same user
accesses the cloud from disparate locations
simultaneously, which could indicate a
compromised account threat.
McAfee advises that, as a first step
towards protecting data in the cloud, cloud
access security brokers (CASB) should be
implemented. CASBs are cloud-native
services that enforce security, compliance
and governance policies for cloud services.
They help organisations leverage and
extend their existing security controls where
appropriate and define and deploy new
cloud-native ones where appropriate to
enable enterprises to consistently protect
their data and defend from threats across
the spectrum of SaaS, IaaS and PaaS. n
Rajiv Gupta, Senior Vice President of the
Cloud Security Business, McAfee

RANSOMWARE
4000+
6 workstations
12 hours12 hours
2 servers
3-5 bitcoins
$3500-6000
DAILY
INFECTIONS
AVERAGE
RANSOM
AVERAGE IMPACT
AVERAGE
REMEDIATION
AVERAGE
DOWNTIME
Loading...

INFOGRAPHIC
INFOGRAPHIC
Nutanix announces findings
of annual global Enterprise
Cloud Index
N
utanix, a leader in enterprise
cloud computing, has announced
the findings of its first annual
global Enterprise Cloud Index, measuring
enterprise plans for adopting private, hybrid
and public clouds.
The new report found enterprises plan to
increase hybrid cloud usage, with 91%
stating hybrid cloud as the ideal IT model,
but only 18% stating they have that model
today. In South Africa, the results compared
strongly with the rest of the world, with
a total of 93% of the local respondents
agreeing that hybrid cloud is the ideal future
IT model, although only 15% responding
that they have this model in play.
The findings also revealed that application
mobility across any cloud is a top priority
for 97% of respondents – with 88% of
respondents saying it would ‘solve a lot of
my problems’.
Additionally, the report found public cloud
is not a panacea; IT decision makers ranked
matching applications to the right cloud
environment as a critical capability and
35% of organisations using public clouds
overspent their annual budget. In South
Africa this figure was 41% – a fair bit higher
that its global counterparts – highlighting
that cloud cost management remains a
problem locally.
When asked to rank the primary benefits
of hybrid cloud, interoperability between
cloud types (23%) and the ability to move
applications back and forth between clouds
(16%) outranked cost (6%) and security
(5%) as the primary benefits. Other key
findings of the report include:
• Hybrid cloud better addresses business
needs over single public cloud, including
the price tag: 87% of respondents said
that hybrid cloud as an IT trend is having
a positive impact on their businesses
with the exact figure stating the same
for South Africa, and more hybrid cloud
users reported all their needs were
being met (49%) compared to single
public cloud users (37%). Furthermore,
organisations that use public cloud
spend 26% of their annual IT budget
on public cloud and 21% in South
Africa. Perhaps most striking is the fact
that only 6% using public cloud came
in under budget with an average of 8%
in South Africa, while nearly six times as
many (35%) overspent in their use of
public cloud resources with a staggering
41% locally.
• Security is top of mind for determining
workloads: 71% of respondents surveyed
for the report ranked data security and
regulatory compliance as the top factor
in determining where to provision their
workloads, locally the figures were almost
the same at 72%. This was followed by
performance at 62% (58% locally), ease
of management at 53% (60% locally),
and cost at 52% which differed locally
weighing in at 34%.
• App developers today are circumventing
IT: 57% of respondents said their
developers are circumventing IT when
it comes to deciding where applications
run, putting the organisation at potential
risk with this number even higher in South
Africa at 77%, placing the microscope on
Shadow IT.
• Finding hybrid IT talent is difficult:
With clear benefits to a hybrid model,
respondents say scarcity of hybrid experts
is a challenge, with 54% claiming talent
retention is part of the problem, locally
this was higher at 64%.
• EMEA is expected to surpass the Americas
with hybrid cloud adoption: Regionally,
the Americas reported greater use of
hybrid clouds now (22%) with South
Africa trailing (15%) and within 12
months’ time (31% global average) with
local respondents at only 18%. However,
the two-year outlook has EMEA (43%)
surpassing the Americas’ hybrid plans
(39%) and APJ (39%) catching up.
AS A COUNTRY
OUR CLOUD
BEHAVIOUR
PATTERNS AND
CONCERNS
EMULATE THAT
OF OUR GLOBAL
COUNTERPARTS.
“

www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO
INFOGRAPHIC
INFOGRAPHIC
“As a country our cloud behaviour patterns
and concerns emulate that of our global
counterparts,” said Paul Ruinaard, Country
Manager at Nutanix Sub-Saharan Africa.
“However, where we differ is in the current,
planned and future distribution of workloads
with more emphasis being placed on the use
of the public cloud than in other regions.
It seems cost is still a primary inhibitor and
concern locally and South African business
appears to be facing significant challenges
in keeping cloud spending in check. If we drill
down into what the findings mean to South
Africa in particular, we can surmise that there
is a need amongst local organisations to get
a better handle on their cloud spend, there
is a clear gap for better cloud management
and cloud resources and talent still pose a
threat to local business.” n

PROJECT UPDATE
LATEST REGIONAL
PROJECT UPDATE
SOUTH AFRICA
A solar power plant will be constructed in Pofadder,
Northern Cape, South Africa. Xina Solar One is a
100-megawatt (MW) parabolic trough plant with a five-
hour thermal energy storage system using molten salts. The
plant will produce enough energy to serve more than 90,000
households and will prevent the emission of more than
398,000 tonnes of CO2 per year when compared to a natural-
gas plant. The plant will use parabolic trough technology
and a superheated steam cycle with a storage capacity
of 1,650 MWh configured to be used during the
South African peak load demand.
ZIMBABWE
A 100-megawatt solar plant is underway at Chertsey Farm,
Gweru, Midlands Province, Zimbabwe. The project will also
include the construction of a 0.2 kilometre of a 132-kilovolts
line from the Midlands solar plant to the existing Chertsey
132-kilovolt (KV) substation.
www.intelligentcio.com26 INTELLIGENTCIO

PROJECT UPDATE
TUNISIA
A 7.5-kilometre railway line is to be constructed in Tunis.
Capable of carrying 9,800 passengers per day, the project
will improve the capacity and quality of urban rail transport
with a net reduction of pollution, enhance the urban and
economic development of Soliman, support the modal shift
to rail transport and contribute to the decongestion of the
Greater Tunis especially during peak hours. The project
includes acquisition and installation of rails, construction
of stations, electrification and traffic signs.
EGYPT
A 32-megawatt hydropower plant will be built in Assiut,
Egypt. The new barrage will be constructed 400 metres
downstream of an existing barrage and includes a sluiceway
with eight 17-meter-wide radial gates, a hydropower plant
with four 8 MW turbine-generators, a double-chamber ship
lock, a road bridge, an 11-meter-tall embankment dam and
rehabilitation or replacement of the Ibrahimia canal head
regulator. A section of the River Nile will also be deepened in
order to mitigate any potential increase in groundwater
levels in Assiut city and neighbouring areas.

A
new study from Kaspersky Lab has
revealed that while our identity
may not be worth a lot in terms of
dollars, it is a significant asset to criminals in
other ways.
The research uncovered an appetite
among cybercriminals for data stolen from
popular services – including via social media
accounts and remote access to gaming
websites. User confusion about what their
data is worth could result in a haphazard
approach to security, making it all too easy
for thieves to steal data and commit crime.
Data stolen due to people’s lax security may
have limited resale value but can be put to
many uses. This can cause huge problems
for an individual victim, who may lose money
and their reputation, find themselves being
chased for debt that somebody else has
incurred in their name, or even suspected of
a crime that somebody else has committed
using their identity as a cover. Kaspersky Lab
investigated Dark Web markets to find out
how much personal data is worth and how it
is used by criminals.
The company’s researchers found that
criminals can sell someone’s complete digital
life for less than US$50; including data
from stolen social media accounts, banking
stolen data funds many social evils,” said
David Jacoby, Senior Security Researcher at
Kaspersky Lab.
“Fortunately, there are steps we can take to
prevent it, including by using cybersecurity
software, and being aware of how
much data we are giving away for free –
particularly on publicly available social media
profiles, or to organisations.”
People can avoid such risks by taking several
security steps:
• To stay safe from phishing, always check
that the link address and the sender’s
email are genuine before clicking
anything. A robust security solution will
also warn you if you attempt to visit a
phishing web page
• To avoid one data leak harming all
your digital identities, never use the
same password for several websites or
services. To create strong, hack-proof
passwords and remove the struggle
of remembering them, use a specific
password manager application, such as
Kaspersky Password Manager
• To find out who has your personal data,
use services such as PrivacyAudit.me that
automatically search for a user’s data
across a large number of sources
details, remote access to servers or desktops
and even data from popular services like
Uber, Netflix and Spotify.
Meanwhile, researchers found that the
price paid for a single hacked account is
lower, with most selling for about US$1
per account, and with criminals offering up
discounts for bulk-buying.
The most common way criminals steal
this sort of data in the first place is via
spear phishing campaigns or by exploiting
a web related security vulnerability in an
application’s software.
After a successful attack, the criminal gets
password dumps which contain a combination
of emails and passwords for the hacked
services. And, with many people using the
same password for several accounts, attackers
might be able to use this information to access
accounts on other platforms too.
Interestingly, some criminals selling data
even provide their buyers with a lifetime
warranty, so if one account stops working,
the buyer will receive a new account for free.
“It is clear that data hacking is a major
threat to us all and this applies at both
an individual and societal level because
EDITOR’S QUESTION
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
WHAT STEPS
SHOULD YOU TAKE
TO PREVENT YOUR
DIGITAL IDENTITY
BEING STOLEN?

EDITOR’S QUESTION
B
anking as we knew it is on its way out,
with a bold new world of seamless,
cardless, cashless financial systems set
to change the way people live and transact
forever. But this next level banking depends
entirely on the ability to create a trusted link
between the physical and the digital world.
Innovation in banking is taking hold around
the world and South African financial
institutions are not lagging. Major local
banks and financial services firms are rapidly
moving to use next generation technology
to innovate and improve the customer
experience, harnessing facial recognition,
voice recognition and biometric scanners to
verify customer identity and authenticate
transactions; as well as Blockchain systems
to secure and track transactions. In future,
consumers will enjoy ‘ERA’ – effortless,
reliable and accurate – authentication,
with no need to remember their identity
document, bank card and proof of residence
in order to transact.
These developments are bringing consumers
new levels of financial services and greater
convenience through mobile banking,
cashless banking, self-help kiosks, cross
border payments and faster inter-bank
transfers. With any innovation comes a
certain level of risk, but since innovation
drives a competitive edge, this progress
cannot – and should not – be slowed.
Banks may be taking the lead in this brave
new world, but soon, digital identity will
become the key to unlocking all transactions,
services and government processes.
Digital identity will ultimately enable
everyday life, promising convenience, lower
cost and greater trust in processes. But this
can only be achieved when digital identity is
effectively linked with physical identity and
underwritten by an oracle who maintains
this trusted identity, to ensure that the
processes of engaging is seamless, trusted
and accurate.
As digital identity becomes the most critical
factor in unlocking a world of services
and transactions, it becomes increasingly
important to ensure that this digital identity
is a trusted one.
Ensuring that there is a trusted link between
the physical and the digital identity
depends on an Identity 4.0 environment,
in which world-class, infallible biometric
systems accurately capture biometric data,
impenetrable algorithms ensure this data
is secured and trusted custodians serve
to safeguard the data and authenticate
identity, so facilitating transactions with an
approved acquirer.
Identity 4.0 therefore seamlessly
establishes trust by linking the identity
owner, the acquirer and the issuer in a
single on-chain transaction. There can be
no room for error, since once captured and
authenticated, flawed identity data could
exist within financial services Blockchain
environments forever.
The growing importance of digital identity
as a valuable asset is reflected in moves
internationally to call for sovereign identity,
in which individuals seek to establish and
‘own’ their identity in the digital world.
MARIUS COETZEE,
CEO OF IDECO
Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A+Q+A
///////////////////

EDITOR’S QUESTION
JOHN MCLOUGHLIN,
MANAGING DIRECTOR,
J2 SOFTWARE
A
s we live in a globally connected
world, almost all our personal
information – a virtual expose of our
lives – exists online and we need to ensure
that our digital identities are protected in the
same way that we care for ourselves and our
physical property.
Here are a few practical tips to help you keep
your digital identify safe.
1. Passwords: The world still relies on
passwords for security. Please make
sure that your password is not easy
to guess, it must not be your name
and do not include your birthdate. You
do need to ensure that you do not use
the same password for every online
portal and wherever possible, use two-
factor authentication
2. Antivirus and applications: While
Antivirus struggles to identify many
modern threats, it is still important to
ensure it is running, up-to-date and has
the latest updates at all times. The same
must be applied to your applications,
whether they are PDF readers, Java or
Office applications. You need to ensure
they are patched and up to date to
prevent exploits.
3. Always check your security and
privacy settings: On every online
platform on which you engage, you
need to be careful to keep your security
settings up-to date. Check these
settings regularly to guarantee that your
information and identity is secure
4. Think before you post: Before you put
anything online, think about whether
you are comfortable having that
information in the hands of a stranger.
Share personal, company and family
information only with those who need
to know about it. Telling the whole
world that you are on holiday and out
of the office can give a cybercriminal
the opportunity to trick your colleagues
into falling for a cyberattack. Consider
everything that you post is public, do
they really need to know?
5. Get rid of your friends: Ok, not the real
ones. Make sure you do regular reviews
of your connections and friends. If you
do not know them, cull them.
6. Stranger danger: If you do not know
the person you are speaking with,
approach with caution. Do not click
on their links and do not open their
attachments. It takes a few seconds to
do some verification. A few seconds can
save you a lot of money.
7. Monitor everything: Whenever there is
a deviation or an anomaly, investigate.
Nothing is 100% guaranteed and you
need to monitor in order to identify
problems. Look out for strange activity
on your bank statements. Ensure you
can see strange behaviour across your
network. A sudden change is a good
indicator of compromise.
8. Use common sense: If you did not
enter a competition or have never been
to Italy, you did not win their lottery. As
exciting as it seems, there is nothing in
this world that is free. Obviously, never
tell strangers your identity number or
bank pin codes.
9. It is not just about the company: We
see too many compromised businesses
because they do not monitor behaviour
of all connected equipment. Your email
security platform may be great for
corporate email. This does not help if
your user is compromised through their
free email service, accessed from their
work PC.
10. Talk about it: The biggest contributor
to rising cybercrime statistics is
ignorance. People are generally not
taught what to look out for. Users are
not engaged in awareness campaigns
and do not understand technical
jargon. Conversation and awareness
training is required for the technology
users and in a manner they can relate
to and understand. Above all never
stop monitoring, responding, adapting
and improving.
//////////////////

EDITOR’S QUESTION
MAYLEEN BYWATER,
SENIOR PRODUCT
MANAGER AT VOX
///////////////////
O
ur cyber footprint is increasing daily as technology improves
and evolves. This statement seems to strike fear in to our
minds. So, how do we protect our identity and the data that
is created? Digital identity theft is on the increase and for this reason
we stress the importance of and implore with our clients, both as
individuals and as a business, to take the correct measures in order to
ensure that sensitive information is secured.
What is our digital identity? Digital identity encompasses
characteristics, or data attributes, such as username and password;
online search activities, for example electronic transactions; date of
birth; ID number; medical history and shopping history or behaviour.
A person’s digital identity is linked to one or more digital identifiers,
such as an email address, URL or domain name.
It’s the business’s responsibility to make sure that it adopts the
correct measures and keeps the following top of mind:
• Ensure that your network has the correct perimeter security
• Consider whether the emails you are receiving and sending are
properly protected, this will safeguard that your organisation is not
sending out harmful viruses that may be hiding on your network
• Are you aware of the endpoints utilising your network and who
has access to your data?
• Do you have policies in place to ensure that you are protecting
the details of your clients?
• Make sure that you share policies and best practices with
your staff, insist that security forms part of their training and
continuously enforce policies
• Run regular checks on your systems to identify vulnerabilities
• Back your data up to ensure ease of restoration and
business continuity
All these points lead to a solid security posture but will require constant
evaluation and checkpoints. Remember that policies are only effective
when they are communicated, enforced and kept updated.
There are so many different aspects to digital data and information
storage to consider. We recommend using a managed service
partner to assist businesses to manage their environments. This will
take the security headache away and allow them to spend more time
on innovation and focus on growing their business.
The threat landscape is continuously evolving; therefore, it is
important for a business to have a firm understanding of its data
and its people. Simulate, educate and create a culture of awareness
in terms of cyberthreats. After all, the reputation of a business is its
most valuable asset. n

EDITOR’S NOTE

EDITOR’S
NOTE
Providing Unparalleled Technology Intelligence
LEADINGTHEPACK
Financial services company PPS chose Knotion to deliver an
Enterprise Architecture solution to help support its IT strategy.
The firm used developed infrastructure to deliver on conceptual,
logical and physical levels.
ISSUE 23 // www.intelligentcio.com
AFRICA
PUBLICATION
A
PROJECT LATEST | INTELLIGENT CABLING | INTELLIGENT DATA CENTRES
GOING
GREEN
Morocco is competing to
be the renewable energy
leader in Africa
DRIVING
INNOVATION
Looking how technology is
being used in the banking
and finance industry
PRIORITY
FOR2019
Two industry experts
look at what the CIO’s
priority is for 2019
Intelligent
Phishing Partner
Intelligent
Education Partner
Intelligent
Cabling Partner
Intelligent
Intelligent
Intelligent
Security Partner
Intelligent
Supporting Partner
Intelligent
Software Partner
Intelligent
Energy Partner
Global
Cooling Partner
H
ello and welcome to the latest
edition of Intelligent CIO Africa. This
month’s cover story focuses on how
financial services company PPS has utilised
an Enterprise Architecture (EA) solution from
Knotion to boost its IT strategy.
Established in 1941, the PPS Group is the
only mutual financial services company
in South Africa focusing exclusively on
graduate professionals. The firm provides
tailor-made insurance, investment and
healthcare solutions to its members and
is an exclusive organisation of graduate
professionals.
Despite its IT team participating in a training
programme, they lacked practical experience
to develop the EA on their own.
The Knotion approach aligned with its
strategic requirements given the changes
that were taking place inside the company
and has had a massive impact.
According to Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda
Survey, the role of the CIO is changing, with
industry leaders in the region spending more
time focused on business leadership and
becoming more open minded, showing a
greater capacity for change.
In our feature on what the CIO’s priority
is for 2019, we hear from Niral Patel, the
Managing Director and Technology Leader
for Oracle and South Africa, who says it is
imperative for business leaders to ensure
their organisations are future-ready and
that they reskill their workers for the tidal
wave of change.
Craig Freer, Executive Head: Cloud at Vox,
also provides detailed analysis, stating that
some companies are not fully aware of the
challenges faced with moving to the cloud.
Morocco is this month’s Country Focus,
where we learn how Masen is leading the
way in its renewable energy sector. The aim
is for the kingdom to achieve 52% of its
energy mix from renewable sources by 2030.
Meanwhile in Industry Watch, we look at
how technology is being used in the banking
and finance sector.
The magazine is again packed with plenty of
other features and news stories from across
the continent.
I hope you’ve had a great year and look
forward to your contributions in 2019. You
can email me at paul@lynchpinmedia.co.uk
Paul Rogers
Editor

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////TALKING
business
‘‘
Powerful data
is shared data –
conquering the silo sprawl
James Petter, VP, EMEA at Pure Storage argues that, if organisations are to innovate
and survive in a business environment that is increasingly data-driven, they must
design their IT infrastructure with data in mind and have complete, real-time access
to that data.

35INTELLIGENTCIO
////////////////////////// TALKING
business
‘‘
A
ccording to IDC, spending on data-
intensive AI systems in the Middle
East and Africa (MEA) region will
grow at a CAGR of 32% between 2016 and
2021, reaching US$114.22 million in 2021.
Projects range from automated customer
service agents, shopping and product
recommendations to health and safety
use cases such as automated cyberthreat
detection and AI-powered medical research,
diagnosis and treatment.
Some have referred to this opportunity as
the Fourth Industrial Revolution. That’s a
massive understatement. The last industrial
revolution was driven by the assembly line –
a feat of strategic engineering that helped
build a car faster. Today we’re talking about
feats of engineering that allow cars to drive
themselves. It’s less apples to oranges and
more apples to atoms. A new generation of
tools, fuelled by an ability to ingest, store and
deliver unprecedented amounts of data, are
driving a tidal wave of innovation, previously
relegated to the realms of science fiction.
Data’s role in the future of business
cannot be overstated. According to a
survey conducted by MIT Technology
Review, commissioned by Pure Storage,
an overwhelming 87% of leaders across
MEA say data is the foundation for making
business decisions and 80% believe that
it is key to delivering results for customers.
But acknowledging the importance of data
and putting data to work are two separate
things. To put the latter in perspective, a
recent study conducted by Baidu showed
its dataset needed to increase by a factor
of 10 million in order to lower its language
model’s error rate from 4.5 to 3.4%. That’s
10,000,000x more data for 1% of progress.
All this research points to one thing –
to innovate and survive in a business
environment that is increasingly data-
driven, organisations must design their IT
infrastructure with data in mind and have
complete, real-time access to that data.
Unfortunately, mainstream storage
solutions were designed for the world of
disk and have historically helped create
silos of data. There are four classes of silos
in the world of modern analytics – data
warehouse, data lake, streaming analytics
and AI clusters. A data warehouse requires
massive throughput. Data lakes deliver
scale-out architecture for storage. Streaming
analytics go beyond batched jobs in a
data lake, requiring storage to deliver
multi-dimensional performance regardless
of data size (small or large) or I/O type
(random or sequential). Finally, AI clusters,
powered by tens of thousands of GPU cores,
require storage to also be massively parallel,
servicing thousands of clients and billions of
objects without data bottlenecks.
As a consequence, too much data today
remains stuck in a complex sprawl of silos.
Each is useful for its original task, but in a
data-first world, silos are counter-productive.
Silos mean organisational data can’t do
work for the business, unless it is being
actively managed.
Modern intelligence requires a data hub – an
architecture designed not only to store data,
but to unify, share and deliver data. Unifying
and sharing data means that the same data
can be accessed by multiple applications
at the same time with full data integrity.
Delivering data means each application has
the full performance of data access that it
requires, at the speed of today’s business.
Data hub is a data-centric architecture
for storage that powers data analytics
and AI. Its architecture is built on four
foundational elements:
• High-throughput for both file and
object storage. Backup and data
James Petter, VP, EMEA at Pure Storage
www.intelligentcio.com

TALKING
business
‘‘
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
warehouse appliances require massive
throughput for mainstream, file-based
workloads and cloud-native, object-based
applications
• True scale-out design. The power
of data lake is its native, scale-out
architecture, which allows batch jobs to
scale limitlessly as software – not the user
– manages resiliency and performance
• Multi-dimensional performance. Data
is unpredictable and can arrive at any
speed—therefore, organisations need a
platform that can process any data type
with any access pattern
• Massively parallel. Within the
computing industry, there has been
a drastic shift from serial to parallel
technologies, built to mimic the human
brain, and storage must keep pace
A true data hub must have all four qualities
as all are essential to unifying data. A
data hub may have other features, like
snapshots and replication, but if any
of the four features are missing from a
storage platform, it isn’t built for today’s
challenges and tomorrow’s possibilities.
For example, if a storage system delivers
high throughput file and is natively scale-
out but needs another system with S3
object support for cloud-native workloads,
then the unification of data is broken and
the velocity of data is crippled. It is not a
data hub.
For organisations that want to keep data
stored, a data hub does not replace data
warehouses or data lakes.
For those looking to unify and share their
data across teams and applications, a data
hub identifies the key strengths of each silo,
integrates their unique features and provides
a single unified platform for business.
Think of storage like a bank, or an
investment. We put our money in banks, or
in the stock market because we want our
money to work for us. Modern organisations
need to do the same with data and they
should speak to their preferred vendors to
see how they can help. n
Driving the effective use and adoption
of information
Adriaan Hubinger,
Engagement Manager: Data,
Information and Analytics at
Decision Inc, examines how
to effectively adopt data
inside the business.
J
ust consider how much data is
available to decision-makers. In 2015,
12 zetabytes (1ZB is the equivalent
of about one trillion gigabytes) of data
was created worldwide. And by 2025, it
is forecast to increase to a staggering
163 zetabytes. Clearly, companies need
a carefully constructed adoption strategy
to capture, manage and understand the
information they have at their disposal.
Adding to the complexity of this challenge
is the fact that many existing business
intelligence (BI) tools are not being used
to their full capacity. There is a willingness
to adopt them, but there is a lack of
understanding how to integrate BI across
the organisation for all employees to benefit
from it.
Even though the financial sector has received
a lot of attention when it comes to data
analysis and information strategy adoption,
the reality is that any sector can benefit
from this. In the current difficult economic
environment, businesses are trying to keep
costs low while still being competitive and
maximising the technological solutions they
have at their disposal.
To truly achieve business value from BI
and other analytics tools, companies must
extract value out of the information they
have at hand. This is not only a South African
challenge. Local companies are on par with
their international counterparts when it
comes to adoption rates. Some statistics
show that insurance and technology lead all
other sectors in terms of BI adoption with
40% of organisations having 41% or greater
penetration of BI. It all boils down to making
solutions accessible and customisable to the
specific needs of the business.
Change management
Moving beyond the willingness to change and
having the capabilities to analyse data more
effectively, another component that needs
to be considered is change management.
It has become too easy to migrate BI and
data analytics solutions without taking into
account the people who need to use it.
Granted, costing is always a consideration
as organisations want to run as optimally
as possible. Even though it might be too
expensive to convert the entire organisation
to a comprehensive BI platform, there
are options to embrace a more modular
approach. This is not only cost-effective but
enables the organisation to train sections
of people with the solution and gauge its
impact on the organisation.
African expansion
Looking at the rest of Africa, there are
significant opportunities for businesses to
extract additional value from insights across
the continent. Data structures differ in each
country and these are not always in the
most accessible formats. By getting the data
into a usable format, businesses can gain a
greater understanding of the needs of their
target markets.
Data needs to be accessible in its simplest
form for decision-makers to gain actionable
insights. Currently, it is about transforming
innovative technologies like Machine
Learning and Artificial Intelligence into
relevant solutions that can deliver BI value
for the organisation.
The opportunities are there as is the
willingness. Now it is a matter of combining
data with tools and ensuring employees can
unlock the insights inside it. n

FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019
Understand cloud’s
new essence;
T
o mitigate potential risks, CIOs
need to break their current IT
infrastructure down to a granular
level to gain an understanding of
the business requirements and to look at the
value that IT delivers to the business. They
must obtain a view of what technologies
are in place, including a full view of the IT
ecosystem and all its dependencies.
This information can then be used
to produce a total cost of ownership
comparison to demonstrate the gains that
can be made by making the shift to cloud
computing, as a cloud architecture blueprint
and implementation roadmap that brings
together a public, private and/or hybrid
cloud solution for the business.
Managed services
Although many companies are adopting
a cloud strategy, the majority see this
as a phased approach, not a short-term
goal. This means a continued reliance on
on-site computing as their cloud strategy
evolves. Added to this is the current ICT skills
shortage in South Africa and as a result,
more companies are turning to managed
services as a business model.
This brings us to the essence of cloud, which
is not necessarily the platform but the
managed services and applications that are
enabled and made available to companies
in order to optimise their businesses and the
resources that they have access to.
Businesses need to undergo a fundamental
skills and mindset change and IT
departments under the leadership of the
CIO need to move away from a ´break and
fix´ approach to being more SLA orientated.
Investing in skills that focus less on hardware
and more on software will become a
necessity, or CIOs can consider shifting to
vendors that offer not only a cloud solution,
but also a managed services layer.
CIOs will increasingly need to think about
whether their organisations will own the
skills the organisation requires to operate in
the cloud, or if there is a vendor relationship
management model required. In each
instance, it will require a skills change across
the IT department. The CIO will need to find
a partner that not only understands how
to translate a cloud strategy into business
reality, but also the requirements and skills
for cloud transition.
The reality is that the market is moving to
cloud – with a clear split between private
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Despite prevalent
economic challenges, the
IDC says that IT spending
by organisations in South
Africa has grown at a
faster rate than GDP
over the past year, with
cloud computing and
services driving a large
part of this. Craig Freer,
Executive Head: Cloud at
Vox, says that companies
are not fully aware of the
challenges faced with
moving to the cloud.
drive the business forward

and public. A more hybrid approach is on
the cards, as the needs of the organisation
change, and depending on what cloud is
utilised for. Less critical applications and tools
will likely remain in the public cloud, while
solutions and services that differentiate the
organisation’s value proposition or means of
doing business, will move to private cloud.
A conservative estimate is that 30% of
businesses will retain onsite infrastructure,
which will drive other hybrid computing
models. As more managed services become
available, so many organisations may move
away from extensive IT resources and will
look for ways to get better value.
Evolving role
Ten years ago, all we needed from our
CIO was email and basic database and
CRM management tools. Today, our entire
business is heavily reliant on our internal IT
systems. The CIO of 2019 knows exactly
what the company’s plans are and can
highlight potential risks and inform the
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019
Craig Freer, Executive Head: Cloud
at Vox

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019
rest of the C-Suite of what changes are
possible or not with the systems the business
currently has.
CIOs should not be viewed as barriers to
progress, but rather as integral parts of the
business. When a new product, service or
division is launched, or the company wants
to make a change to any sales or operations
technical strategy, the CIO should by default
be a part of the process to mitigate the risk
to systems.
If more companies embrace a culture of
openness among the C-Suite they will likely
find that their CIO is potentially an enabler –
and not an inhibitor – in driving the business
forward. More critical though, is for the CIO to
have a vision of what the business needs and
how cloud can future proof the business. n
Autonomous IT brings
a tidal wave of change
Niral Patel, MD and
Technology Leader for
Oracle South Africa, says,
with the Fourth Industrial
Revolution upon us, it is
imperative for business
leaders to ensure their
organisations are future-
ready and that they reskill
their workers for the tidal
wave of change.
T
he time is now for local businesses
to turn to autonomous technology
to lower cost, improve efficiency,
and be more competitive – all key
business fundamentals.
According to Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda
Survey, the role of the CIO in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa is changing. CIOs in
this region are spending more time focused
on business leadership and becoming more
open minded, showing a greater capacity
for change. In South Africa, there is a new
appreciation for business leadership and a
clear understanding that it is critical to drive
collective action.
To keep pace, the most forward-looking CIOs
will need to capitalise on autonomous services.
What are autonomous services?
Today, autonomous represents a new
category of cloud services; empowering
businesses to lower costs, reduce risk, go
beyond predictive insights to suggested
action and steer innovation into the fast
lane. Offering unprecedented levels of
simplicity, self-service and security, through
being self-driving, self-securing and self-
repairing, autonomous cloud services are
setting a new industry standard for IT. The
resulting ‘autonomous enterprise’ won’t
need people to run, maintain, integrate,
develop and secure its core IT systems.
Instead, AI and automation will work
together to manage everything from
database to application development and
provide actionable insight around business
processes, all without human input.
Closing the skills gap
Keeping our region’s youthful population
in mind and the need to create jobs,
businesses should do their part to skill the
workforce for the world of tomorrow. At
Oracle, we prepare young South Africans
for employment in the ICT sector through
our Oracle Graduate Leadership Programme
that equips them with specialised IT and
leadership skills. To date, 84 students have
successfully completed the programme since
its inception in 2014.
Looking at it from a people perspective,
companies must ensure their employees
are ready for an autonomous cloud
technology-driven environment and

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////FEATURE: CIO’S PRIORITY FOR 2019
are able to capitalise on its benefits.
Re-training existing members of staff is
critical. There are a range of options to
help organisations upskill their IT teams
through training; from government
programmes through to vendor academies,
such as the Oracle Academy. The latter
is useful for providing both the technical
skillset required and the necessary security
and compliance training.
Work smarter
CIOs don’t just want to save costs – they
want to move faster and smarter to take
the business in more exciting directions
than ever before. Autonomous will be
key to fulfilling those aims. Accenture, for
example, needed a better way to manage its
largescale professional services workforce.
Trialling an autonomous cloud solution
against its key, data-intensive HR application,
the company can get quicker and more
personalised analytics to make smarter,
faster workforce decisions.
Similarly, Hertz has used an autonomous
cloud solution to remove the pain of
administration and focus on delivering
faster projects.
Instead of setting up and tuning a server
and database, the team can invest its man
hours in innovation – delivering the right
products to market, and customers, with
more speed.
Build security resilience
By 2022, Gartner predicts that a company’s
cybersecurity rating will become as
important as its credit rating to customers,
suppliers and partners. Yet, security attacks
and breaches are increasing, and humans
can’t keep up. In fact, Gartner previously
predicted that 95% of cloud security failures
will be the customer’s fault.
With AI and automation, businesses can
automate the detection, prevention and
response to security breaches, performance
anomalies and vulnerabilities. Only by using
machines to fight machines can companies
reprioritise and rethink about how they
defend their information.
Autonomous services are precisely the kind of
technology that forward-looking CIOs in South
Africa should strive to adopt. The power of
autonomous services, capable of self-patching,
self-tuning and automatically optimising
performance while running, is just the start.
It won’t be long before autonomous cloud
services bring simplicity, self-service and
security into all areas of the business,
providing new fuel for innovation. Some
organisations are ready. What about you? n

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CIO OPINION CIO OPINION
Aiming to connect
the unconnected
T
here has been much talk about
Smart Cities, the requirements,
the connectivity, the policies
necessary and the parties that need
to come together to make it a reality.
Smart lighting and traffic system
interlinked public transit and lightning-
fast Internet connection for every
citizen are just some of the benefits
of what you get in a Smart City, but
all of it won’t be realised until more
advanced and more reliable connectivity
is adopted, with a focus on bridging the
digital divide.
What is evident however is that nations
that complement local government
initiatives with national government
support will likely lead in Smart City
development and more quickly secure
the social and economic benefits it has
to offer.
Intelligent CIO spoke to Ruckus Networks
EMEA Vice-President Nick Watson about
the connectivity issues in Africa.
“We’ve been working with a number of
cities in Africa over the last few years to
bring networking and Wi-Fi to them,”
said Watson.
“In Lagos, we’re working with Facebook
Express to provide subsidised payments
and we have a number of other projects.
It’s being driven mainly from investment
where traditionally, the over the top
providers like Google and Facebook want
to get access to people who otherwise
won’t be able to connect.
“Part of the reason is because the cost of
data using a mobile network here is still
very expensive for the vast majority of
the population, even though devices are
Nick Watson, Vice-President EMEA at Ruckus Networks
CIOopinion
//////////////////
www.intelligentcio.com44 INTELLIGENTCIO
PEOPLE MIGHT
BE GETTING EXCITED
ABOUT 5G, BUT IT’S NOT
REALLY A REALISTIC
PROSPECT.
“
According to a UN report,
around 2.2 billion people
could be added to the
global population by 2050,
with more than half of
that growth occurring in
Africa. Because there is
increasing pressure on
the continent to provide
sustainability, efficient
mobility and health and
safety, technology has a
big role to play.

CIO OPINION
relatively economic to buy. So, what you have
is that many people have got devices that can
connect to data but don’t have a realistic way
of connecting without building a Wi-Fi.”
What is the current infrastructure
like in Africa?
The big oil companies have been able to
fund Virtualised Services Assurance Platforms
(VSAPs) from various early stages and fibre
to major cities, but there’s still large amounts
of Africa where there simply isn’t any fibre
connectivity. So, a lot of the technology is
being deployed on wireless of some sort
because, even though you might have 3G,
4G has not really been rolled out anywhere.
People might be getting excited about 5G,
but it’s not really a realistic prospect even
if the standards are agreed next year. So,
when you say you want to embrace a city
and provide equal opportunities, particularly
for those that are less well off, how do you
connect them?
Well, by far the economic way of connecting
them is by using their mobile devices as a
Wi-Fi. So, you’ve got a ‘where are we today’,
which is much more primitive than I think
people realise. Opposing that you’ve got a
lot of very visible articles where people are
trying to suggest that 5G is just around the
corner. But it’s really not.
Even if you have the devices after you’ve
got the standard, who’s going to pay for
the infrastructure? But if we can bring
connectivity to people early in their lives, we
can help educate them. There’s no shortage
of roles, there’s just a shortage of people
skilled for those roles. We’re certainly able
to dramatically improve employment, but
people need to be caught early in their lives
to get them the education.
YOU ONLY HAVE
TO LOOK AT
COUNTRIES
LIKE NIGERIA TO
SEE THAT IT’S
ABUNDANTLY
CLEAR THAT
YOU WON’T BE
ABLE TO HAVE
THINGS WITHOUT
TECHNOLOGY.
“
/

Realistically, when will Africa
experience the true benefits of
Smart Cities?
South Africa is a bit of a conundrum
because, in theory we should be miles ahead.
We should be using electronic payments
and broadly able to connect. This is the only
place I go to where I turn off my mobile
data as I switch on my phone as the plane
lands because it’s so expensive. But if you
go to Lagos where are only a few hundred
access points around the city, it’s running
very well. Facebook Express is putting the
subsidy in where, even though it’s not
free, it brings everybody into a connected
world. It does require public and private
partnerships and if it was made a priority by
government, it would happen. But if you look
at somewhere like Kenya, micropayments
are abundant, whereas here we’re still in a
situation where that hasn’t happened.
The challenge is that it’s been developed to
a degree; they’ve got fibre and connectivity,
but they haven’t got wireless. There are
also multiple operators here which in theory
should be a benefit but in practice means it’s
quite difficult to enforce something. But we
are seeing change. There will be a significant
rollout in the near future, certainly in the first
half of next year around Cape Town which
will be quite transformational, and I think
that will lead the way.
With the population numbers set
to increase in Africa, what role can
technology play?
You only have to look at countries like
Nigeria to see that it’s abundantly clear that
you won’t be able to have things without
technology. People need to understand their
own health with simple devices. They don’t
need to be expensive but have to be pervasive
and we need to make sure not wasting our
resources and are proactive with metering
and loss prevention. These countries are vast,
so it’s not really practical to have cables and
connect to things. The technology of choice
is inevitably going to be a radio network of
some kind. Each device uses different radios
so it’s not as if you can use the same IP to
every device because they all have different
characteristics and requirements.
You’re not going to build dozens of radio
networks, so what you have is the equivalent
CIOopinion
of a fibre network; a radio backbone network,
which is Wi-Fi and the other networks are
connecting in. That’s proving very effective
and I think that’s a trend we will continue
to see.
What role do national governments
need to play to accelerate and
coordinate the development of
Smart Cities?
The only thing that governments can really
do is to look carefully at spectrum allocation
because what we’ve done in recent years is
giving big chunks of spectrums to the highest
bidder which of course has been extremely
helpful to the financial situation of the
country. The challenge with that though is
that it’s clear from studies done in the US, that
we will run out of spectrums if we continue
with that model. Therefore, if I continue to
give huge chunks of spectrum to the highest
bidder and I’m limiting it to some very
wealthy operators, then we are constraining
the growth of all these different devices. So
the government has a very important role to
decide how to go about that. As you go from
3G to 4G, that needs to be talked about now
before they put forward the 4G licence. n

I
n order to meet increasing energy
demand while fighting climate change,
Masen, the Moroccan Agency for Solar
Energy, is leading the way in the country’s
renewable energy sector. It is pursuing the
Kingdom’s goal of achieving 52% of its
energy mix from renewable sources by 2030
and has developed a unique model based
on five components – producing electricity
from renewable sources, applied and
pre-operational R&D backed by industrial
projects, training, industrial integration and
local development.
As well as producing electricity and raising
the necessary funds for its projects, Masen
Only 10 years ago, more than half
of Morocco’s electricity supply was
provided by coal. However, as forecasts
indicate that energy requirements in the
North African country will constantly
rise until 2050, a new law was passed
encouraging citizens to look for
ways to diversify the energy supply,
including more renewable resources.
Now, Morocco is competing to be the
renewable energy leader in Africa.
is also aiming to mobilise a competitive
economic fabric that efficiently harnesses
existing skills and helps create new ones.
Masen nurtures and encourages the
development of applied and pre-operational
R&D backed by industrial projects and the
promotion of technological innovation. At
the heart of Masen’s integrated approach,
this incentive to innovate is epitomised
by the development of a 200-hectare on
site platform at the Noor Ouarzazate solar
complex. The common thread running
through this integrated approach is the local
development strategy Masen implements,
which helps the regions hosting the projects
to achieve equality and sustainable growth.
Competing to be
the renewable energy
leader in Africa
THIS IS A
STRATEGIC
PARTNERSHIP
THAT COMBINES
LEADERSHIP
AND TECHNICAL
EXPERTISE.
“
//////////////////
COUNTRY FOCUS: MOROCCO

48 INTELLIGENTCIO
COUNTRY FOCUS: MOROCCO
www.intelligentcio.com

Intelligent CIO Africa Magazine Avsharn Bachoo

Intelligent CIO Africa Magazine Avsharn Bachoo

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