Author: Contributor

By Staff Writer JSE and Nasdaq-listed tech firm Datatec announced on Tuesday that its subsidiary Logicalis and its Indonesian partner Metrodata have agreed to buy a majority stake in Packet Systems Indonesia, an ICT systems integrator and service company. The tech firm said in a statement that Logicalis will buy 54% shareholding of Packet Systems Indonesia and Metrodata to acquire a 14% stake. The remaining 32% interest will continue to be held by Packet Systems Indonesia’s management shareholders. Logicalis will pay R88.1 million ($6.8 million) in cash to buy the stake and will be funded from its existing bank facilities.…

By Brett Parker, managing director: SAP Africa With the impending impact of machine learning and robotics on a range of traditional job roles and occupations, and Africa’s on-going digital skills shortage, the matter of skills development is again taking centre stage during Youth Month. Africa’s youth have a great opportunity to shape and influence the digital economy across the continent. With the digital skills shortage weighing heavily on the minds of African business leaders, it is critical that we jointly develop solutions to build the skills capacity that will drive Africa’s economy in the coming years. With so many traditional…

By Kantar Millward Brown Kantar Millward Brown’s Best Liked Ads list celebrates South Africa’s favourite TV commercials. These are the ads that have been rated as the best liked by the South African audience whom we believe to be the most important critic – the person who ultimately chooses to buy your brand or not. Samsung In number one spot is the Samsung ad, Sister. The ad tells a universal story that can connect with viewers from around the world. Instead of leaning into technical jargon to highlight the phone’s innovations, the team from Leo Burnett in Chicago focused on a central narrative…

By Steve Tzikakis, SAP president EMEA South 25 years ago, I went to work for the first time with a hand-held device in my hand: a Casio calculator. I thought I was the man. Today, the new generation of workers turning up for their first day often have a better grasp of technology than senior management. That scares some companies. Me, not so much. I’m excited – because I believe there’s a huge opportunity waiting for companies that start viewing their enterprise technology the way millennials do. Most companies I talk to today either have a strong technology stack, or…

By Staff Writer Huawei is recording impressive sales in South Africa for its flagship P-series devices. The first month of sales of the P10 and P10 Plus have seen a 68% increase as compared to that of the P9. The devices seem to be most popular in Gauteng, with more units sold in this province. In contrast to the latest figures released by the International Data Corporation (IDC) that indicate a 13.6% decline in smartphone shipments in South Africa for Q1 2017, Huawei has recorded an improvement in the sales of its flagship P-series devices. “We have seen four times…

By Staff Writer South Africa’s 35 million plus mobile consumers are set to benefit from a next generation SMS (Short Message Service) service which can replace the two-decade-old USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Data Service) and zero-rate it to boot. Archer Digital’s SMS+ is already in commercial use by one of South Africa’s big four banks and is currently being trialled by a leading multimedia company. “SMS+ has the potential to completely replace USSD. This means over 35 million people needn’t pay 20 cents per 20 seconds to interact with old-style USSD menus. That’s an incredible saving to local consumers who now…

By Reshaad Sha, Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Director at DFA For those who are into science fiction, the term ‘machine learning’ immediately conjures up images of computers taking over the world, either to send murderous terminators from the future to our present or to place us all inside the Matrix as living power batteries. Fortunately, the truth about machine learning is not only far more prosaic, but also much more promising for the future of the human race. Basically, machine learning uses algorithms that iteratively learn from data, meaning that it enables computers to find hidden insights without being…

By Rishal Hurbans, Solutions Architect at Entelect | Founder at Prolific Idea I hit a bird with my car the other day. I felt terrible. I don’t know why I felt that way. Some people might not be at all affected by the death of a bird. Why is that? What makes us respond the way we do in certain situations? What makes us think and act the way we do? The short answer is: No one knows for sure. No one understands exactly how the human brain works or what quantifies intelligence. Humans think they’re intelligent because they’re the…

By Jackie Writing Technology has boomed into a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide, providing jobs and better access to tools like education. In Africa about 3 people in 1,000 have access to a computer, versus about 1 in 40 people on average worldwide. The numbers are looking to go up in Africa, as innovators in the region are beginning to find ways to build their own computers, and use e-waste to bring the continent into the digital age. E-Waste and Donations Despite having little or no access to modern technology, Africa certainly has quite a bit of the e-waste from developed countries lying around. It…

by Ben Dickson I think it’s totally up to me whether I decide to open an email or not. But apparently, others are not of the same opinion. That’s why they use mail tracking applications, a breed of software that will let the sender of an email know when you read their message. I find it invasive, even more offending than link trackers (most mail trackers track links as well). And as it happens, most—but not all—of the tracked emails I receive are of little value. That’s why I block mail trackers and let their users think their emails were…

By Brett Parker, MD at SAP Africa By now, I am convinced that you have heard of M-Pesa, the popular and often-cited mobile banking system that has become Africa’s innovation calling card. But do you know about the Ushahidi crowdsourcing app, also from M-Pesa’s birthplace, Kenya? Built to digitally map demographic events, it is used across the world. Today Ushahidi, which means ‘evidence’ in Swahili, is a technology company with presence in more than 20 countries. The list of African innovations, born from the need to solve specific challenges, is very impressive. For a number of years, Africa’s rise made…

By Staff Writer Today Google announced its support for a Digital Journalism initiative that will see 6 000 African journalists trained in data journalism skills by the end of February 2018. Google News Lab and the World Bank are working with Code For Africa to empower journalists in Africa by giving them the necessary support to better understand the Web and how to use the tools available to them online. The Code For Africa Digital Journalism initiative will take place over the next 9 months (to February 2018) and see 6 000 journalists trained in 12 major African cities -…

By Staff Writer First National Bank (FNB) has launched a new brand repositioning campaign with the bold message of help and how help is one of the most powerful forces known to man. The new campaign reinforces FNB’s purpose of helpfulness, cementing our position as a leader and innovator in banking and financial services. It promotes the ownership of the concept of “help”, by depicting people who are empowered to realise their dreams and take control of their lives by “helping themselves”. This campaign encapsulates where our brand is heading. “At FNB, we want to ensure that we resonate with our…

By Randy Battat, PreVeil Most business-to-business communication involves sensitive information – stuff that the parties really don’t want others to know about. Whether it’s contracts, customer communications, supplier information, dialog with consultants and contractors, or other things, there’s a lot of sensitive information that travels via plain old email. These emails really should be protected, i.e. encrypted. But the vast majority of B2B communication remains unencrypted, despite wide availability of very good technology and tools. Why? The answer is that good encryption is too hard to use – there’s too much friction involved in encrypting an email versus sending a…

By Dave Glass, founder and MD of Electrum Every month, South African retailers receive billions of Rands in payments from their customers. Behind the scenes, payments technology plays a critical role at retailers, ensuring a fast and smooth shopping experience for consumers like you. It’s a crucial part of our financial backbone, that most of us take little notice of, even though we interact with it daily at stores, online and on our mobile phones. Here are top retail payments insights: Get ready for new payment methods Tech savvy consumers are demanding quicker, more convenient and more engaging ways to…

By Cameron Beveridge, Director: Cloud, SAP Africa  The future of business is in the cloud. That is the message from global analysts as the latest IT sales figures show a marked shift away from hardware. The shift to cloud services and other Digital Business solutions has slashed Gartner’s global IT spending growth forecasts by half: a cut of $67bn for this year alone, with data centre growth predicted at a modest 0.3% in 2017. This is not necessarily bad news, depending on where you are with your digital transformation journey. The same Gartner report expects growth in enterprise software spending…

By Staff Writer The BMW Group has unveiled its vision of zero-emission urban mobility on two wheels: the BMW Motorrad Concept Link at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este 2017. The electric scooter is inspired by the BMW Motorrad Vision Next 100, the design study unites digital connectivity with the demands of urban mobility on two wheels. The new and emphatically function-driven architecture provides a high level of riding pleasure due to the E-drive. The BMW Motorrad Concept Link is ideally suited to meet the requirements of modern urban mobility with fast acceleration and easy handling. Inspired by the BMW Motorrad…

By Staff Writer  In a bid to make it easier for customers to access content in the most affordable way, Vodacom is working with YouTube to launch YouTube Smart Offline.  This service allows Vodacom’s Android customers to schedule video downloads overnight (between 00:00 and 05:00). With YouTube Smart Offline, customers can save on data costs by purchasing Vodacom’s lower priced ‘Night Owl Bundles’ when downloading their favourite videos. The service is currently available to Prepaid and Hybrid customers with contract bundles expected to launch in the next couple of months. “We have always emphasised that our competitive advantage lies in…

By Vimal J. Naikeny, chief technology officer for Digital & Cloud Business at Huawei Technologies The intelligent world has three defining characteristics: All things are getting digital, gradually getting connected and some are even gaining the ability to sense, that’s how fast ICT is advancing. In an intelligent world, devices are playing the role of the “feelers”, in an all-sensing environment. Networks have started connecting everything, and the cloud is becoming the source of intelligence behind all things. These three elements form an architecture that promotes seamless interaction between devices, information pipes, and the cloud. This is the era of diversification, an…

by Anton van Heerden, MD and executive vice-president of Africa & Middle East at Sage This week (25 May) at BotCon in Cape Town, South African developers and enterprises will showcase some of the ways they’re putting the newest artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to work. Some of the latest developments are a little scary, especially for those who have grown up with rogue AIs and robots in science-fiction or have read the headlines about how we’ll lose millions of jobs worldwide to automation by 2020. What does this mean for the average business builder or entrepreneur in South Africa? My…

When Chris Mulder, head of collections at The Unlimited, wanted to automate a simple process, he hit a wall. IT’s plate was overflowing and his project ranked too low in priority to get attention any time soon. Even if there was a spot, he’d have to face the daunting bureaucratic lumbering required: “If you want a technology change, you have to go through the process of business analysis, compiling business requirement documents, have a technical spec drawn up, all with a lot of back and forth. It’s incredibly tedious and, if you aren’t technical, tough to follow.” The slow age…

By Reshaad Sha, CEO at SqwidNet Along with the rest of the world, South Africa is in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, in which the smart use of information and technology is reshaping societies. One of the most apparent ways in which this is happening can be seen is in the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), where smart, connected devices are being deployed in cities and industries globally, to gather data and glean contextual insights which are used to achieve higher levels of efficiency, productivity and utilization of scarce and natural resources. The reach of IoT is…

By Staff Writer The fact that 80% of cellphone users keep their mobile devices within arm’s reach, coupled with growing acceptance of preteen mobile use, means parenting in the age of always-on connectivity has taken on a decidedly digital edge. That’s the word from South Africa’s Wireless Application Service Providers’ Association (WASPA) which adds that the solution and the challenge of protecting children from digital threats are two sides of the same mobile coin. “Parents cannot hope to be ‘always-on’, standing ready to guide their children as they navigate social media, over the top (OTT) messaging platforms and the mobile…

By Hans Geldenhuys, managing sales director at Intelsat Africa is projected to be one of the world’s fastest-growing television markets over the next decade. To cement that position, cable distributors are banking on population surges in some of the continent’s largest cities, and fresh, new content that resonates with the indigenous culture. It goes without saying that viewers are drawn to programming with storylines, characters and even real-life scenarios they can relate to. Intelsat has been part of the television fabric in Africa for many decades. We were the first satellite operator to provide connectivity to educational networks and to…

By Staff Writer JSE listed Capital Appreciation Limited announced on Wednesday that it has acquired 100 percent of Synthesis Software Technologies for R132.1 million. Synthesis is a specialised financial technology company that provides software development, consulting and integration services to financial institutions. Current clients include blue chip financial organisations such as Investec, Absa, Standard Bank, Capitec and Nedbank. It will remain independent, operating as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Capital Appreciation. Synthesis will continue to grow as a specialised financial technology provider with access to capital and other resources within Capital Appreciation to further invest in the business and expand its…