Private cloud, data sovereignty, cost shape infrastructure decisions in Africa
For much of the past decade, the advice to African organisations was to put as much as they could into the public cloud, and many did. When the large global providers opened data centres in South Africa, that became easier still. Businesses now want to know where each...
Nvidia CEO Huang affair could hand investors a rare buying opportunity
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair, which has already wiped billions off the world’s most important AI company, is likely to be seized on by savvy investors as a rare chance to buy into the chip giant at a discount, says Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group. Green’s...
The real value of batteries lies not in storage, but in flexibility
South Africa’s energy transition is no longer judged only by how many megawatts of clean capacity are added to the grid. What’s equally important now is how effectively the energy being generated matches demand. By Ian Burger, MD of SOLA Group Batteries offer a proven...
US data centre fears underscore the need for SA investment
The AI and Big Tech rout in the US last week, fuelled by concerns that the Democrats’ victory in the congressional mid-term elections could threaten much-needed data centre development, comes amid growing investor scrutiny of the financial viability of the global...
The hacking tools being used against enterprise infrastructure
Recent statistics compiled from detection alerts within Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack (KATA) reveal the hacking tools most often used for lateral movement across enterprise infrastructures. Investigations into cyber-espionage groups show that attackers increasingly...
What the Binance hack tells us about how crypto really works
Now that the dust is settling around the Binance hack we can start to make sense of what happened, writes Dr Wiehann Olivier, partner and global co-head of digital assets at Forvis Mazars. And the story is more revealing than the headline that $6,4-billion of...
You can’t change culture without changing how the business works
Organisations talk about culture constantly, yet it can still be hard to pin down. We measure it through employee surveys, engagement scores and experience data. We compare teams, track whether scores are moving up or down and look at external benchmarks to understand...
Africa’s youth can reshape the future of energy
Arica’s next generation has a vital role to play in shaping the continent’s energy future through fresh thinking, innovation and technical skills. This holds true in a time when the continent’s grid continues to evolve with the advent of distributed and decentralised...
AI’s effect on customer service headcount
Despite widespread expectations that AI will significantly reduce customer service headcount, a Gartner survey of 275 service and support leaders has found that only 21% said their organisations had reduced human agent headcount because of AI. Among organisations that...
Before an AI agent gets authority, make it pass a failure test
A customer-service AI agent handles a refund correctly during a demonstration. It finds the order, checks the policy and prepares the payment. Dr Pierre Le Roux, MD of MOYO The result looks convincing. But what happens if the customer submits the same request twice,...
The future success of mining will be shaped by intelligence, not scale
For over 140 years, South African mining has been a story of extraordinary scale. The Witwatersrand Basin alone has yielded more than 1,6-billion ounces of gold, helping establish South Africa as one of the world's great mining nations. By Saleh Al-Nemer, regional...
The hidden productivity tax sitting inside your business
South African businesses could be losing millions of rands a year to a cost that rarely appears on their financial statements: the time employees waste working around technology that was supposed to make them more productive. By Glen Lumley, CEO of Learning Curve...