Author: Gugu Lourie

European Union (EU) lawmakers have laid out their first-ever legal framework on artificial intelligence (AI), which addresses the risks of AI, facial recognition and positions Europe to play a leading role globally. The lawmakers today proposed new rules and actions to turn Europe into the global hub for trustworthy AI. The proposals aim to guarantee people and businesses’ safety and fundamental rights while strengthening AI uptake, investment, and innovation across the EU. The proposed rules include prohibitions on a small number of use-cases considered too dangerous to people’s safety or fundamental rights, such as a China-style type of AI-enabled mass…

Massmart, the owners of Game, Makro, Builder’s Warehouse and CBW, has revealed plans to pilot a standalone liquor store format. The new liquor store format will be powered by Makro. Massmart, which is owned by the world’s largest grocer, Walmart, revealed its plans for the standalone liquor store format in its latest integrated annual report. “We are prioritising the merchandise categories of bulk food, liquor, general merchandise, and DIY and the customer segments in which we are market leaders,” the company said in the report. “Our wholesale integration will be further enhanced by the unifying of IT systems and the enhancement…

Pick n Pay announced today that it paid R33 million to buy on-demand, online grocery service Bottles. In November 2020, Pick n Pay said it purchased the application system infrastructure and the related intellectual property relating to the Bottles on-demand mobile application for a purchase price of R33 million. “No goodwill arose from this transaction as the fair value of the underlying assets purchased equated to the consideration paid,” the company disclosed today. In addition to expanding its scheduled delivery service, Pick n Pay extended its Click n Collect offer and repositioned its one-hour liquor delivery partnership with Bottles into an…

Cell C seems unperturbed by losing close to 2 million customers in the 2020 financial year. The struggling mobile phone operator disclosed that its subscribers dropped by 13% to 12,5 million in 2020 versus 14,4 million in 2019. Losing a customer impacts a business in several ways; loss of a sale and future sales, reputational damage if a dissatisfied customer tells their friends or broadcasts it on social media, and loss of valuable referrals. But Zaf Mahomed, Cell C chief financial officer, said the company’s results reflect a business in transition. “We are starting to see the impact of our…

Pan-African cloud-based digital service provider inq. has announced that they are now a strategic managed security services partner of Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack. The aim of the partnership is to meet the increasing need for cybersecurity solutions in Africa and provide customers with security for connectivity and application tools to minimise their risk. “inq has benefited immensely from implementing Elastic’s security solutions across all of our operations in seven countries. We now want to enable our customers with the same tools to provide them with visibility across their networks, servers, security and advance their threat…

Cool Ideas now has the fastest fixed broadband speeds in South Africa, a report by speed test service Ookla said Friday. Speedtest Intelligence reveals the ISP was the fastest fixed broadband provider among top providers in South Africa in Q1 2021 with a Speed Score of 37.80. Cool Ideas was the fastest fixed broadband provider in South Africa with a Speed Score of 37.80, followed by Afrihost at 31.32 and Webafrica at 30.87. Calculating mean latency for top fixed broadband providers in South Africa during Q1 2021, Cool Ideas had the lowest latency at 10 ms, said Oookla. The ISP was started in…

New research from credible network speed-testing services has put MTN ahead of rival Vodacom in terms of the speed available on their respective networks. The reports from Ookla reveals MTN was the fastest mobile operator among top providers in South Africa in Q1 2021 with a Speed Score of 54.38 on modern chipsets. MTN also came up tops in the highest 4G Availability in the country with 90.5%. “Examining the percentage of an operator’s known locations where a device has access to 4G LTE service, we found that MTN had the best 4G Availability in South Africa during Q1 2021 at 90.5%,” said Ookla. “We…

IT giant IBM has acquired myInvenio, an Italian startup that builds and operates process mining software. myInvenio provides customers with a comprehensive AI-powered automation portfolio for business automation – including process mining, robotic process automation (RPA), document processing, workflow, and decisions – all built on Red Hat OpenShift. Process mining software can help organizations easily capture information from enterprise transaction systems and provides detailed — and data-driven — information about how key processes are performing. With the acquisition of myInvenio, IBM will help companies overcome the challenge of streamlining business processes that are cumbersome or create bottlenecks, slowing down innovation and…

Dell Technologies announced plans to spin off its 81% equity ownership of VMware, forming two standalone public companies. The tech firm acquired VMware as part of the $67 billion (R963 billion) EMC acquisition in 2015. Under terms of the planned spin-off, VMware will distribute a special cash dividend of $11.5 – $12 billion (R172 billion) to all its shareholders and those of VMware. VMware will continue to use Dell Financial Services to help its customers finance their digital transformations. “By spinning off VMware, we expect to drive additional growth opportunities for Dell Technologies as well as VMware, and unlock significant value for stakeholders,” said Michael Dell, chairman and…

Vodacom has launched VodaLend Voucher Advance, which allows its customers to buy food and appliances on credit through VodaLend. Through Voucher Advance, Vodacom customers can choose to ‘pay now’ and buy vouchers at a discounted rate or get an advance and ‘pay later’. Qualifying Vodacom customers can access an interest-free advance on a Nando’s voucher starting from R25, or an R250 advance on vouchers from Hirsch’s. Hirsch’s is the biggest home appliances store in South Africa with branches nationwide. Once a voucher has been issued, customers will have 30 days to pay back their Voucher Advance.  Vouchers are valid for…