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Volume 18, Issue 4 2017

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futurewave BusinessIT Contents
FUTUREWAVE BUSINESS IT
Tomorrows business today
+27 (0)11 781 0370/1/2/3
www.business-it.co.za
2 Columns
Cyber insurance set to soar
EXECUTIVE EDITOR The SME opportunity in Africa
Kathy Gibson kathy@futurewave.co.za

DESIGN AND PRODUCTION

4 Innovation
Vanessa Bentley vanessa@futurewave.co.za Cognitive computing improves security
Human 2.0: is it time for the Three Laws?
MAIN CONTRIBUTORS Business can no longer ignore the impact of AI
Mark Davison, Kathy Gibson Where to next for the apex primate?
A rethink of Africas employment is needed
CONTRIBUTORS Big data, cognitive computing drive innovation
Simon Campbell-Young,
As AI rises, collaborate rather than compete
Edward Carbutt, Simon Carpenter,

Kevin Hardy, Robert Janssen, Leonard Kore,
CK Lu, Dr Don Page, Ankur Prakash,
Ronald Ravel, Dr Joseph Reger,
Daniel Schwartzkopf, Kriti Sharma,
Carey van Vlaanderen, Johan Walters
SALES AND ADVERTISING
Bjon Venter bjon@futurewave.co.za
Simon Gotley simon@futurewave.co.za
SUBSCRIPTIONS AND BACK ISSUES
Allan Davison allan@futurewave.co.za
PUBLISHER
Kathy Gibson
Future Wave Media
P O Box 3242, Pinegowrie, 2123,
South Africa
Tel: (011) 781 0370/1/2
kathy@futurewave.co.za
PRINTED BY
United Printing Works
..........
THE LEGAL BIT
While every effort is made to ensure accuracy the
publisher and editor cannot accept responsibility
for supplied material. The opinions of contributors
are not necessarily those of Futurewave BusinessIT.
Copyright is strictly reserved and no part of this
magazine may be reproduced in whole or in part
without the written permission of the publisher.
18 Mobile Computing
Spotlight on Panasonic
Lenovo MEA Innovation Summit Report-back
Mobile could solve many of Africas issues
Good security practices key to realising mobile potential
Mobile freedom through device management
Mobile changes the way we do business
The rise and rise of mobile
Number of enterprise mobile apps stagnates
Balancing mobility risk with data availability
Smartphone competition heats up
37 IT in Government
Government can save costs while improving citizens lives
38 ITSM
ISO20000: a quantifiable measure of ITILs success
ITSM key to driving efficiency, innovation and growth
Core principles of developing AI for business
ITSM is a matter of culture
42 Interview
Oracle is serious about Africa
44 Inforum Report-Back
Infor introduces artificial intelligence
Infor expands into the commerce network

46 Business 2020
Fujitsu quick off the blocks
Intel unveils Xeon Scalable
FuturewaveBIT Lenovo simplifies the data centre

50 Security
BusinessITAfrica Governance, ethics and your data
What about social media and security?
Employees cover up cybersecurity incidents

futurewave-businessit
 Cyber insurance
set to soar
C
yber insurance cant protect
a business from falling victim
to a security breach, but it
can help it recover quickly,
and remain financially secure should one
occur.
A cyber insurance policy, or cyber risk
insurance, is designed to help a business
mitigate risk exposure by offsetting the
associated costs of a cyber security
breach, and with the number of security
incidents we read about daily, it is an
industry that is set to soar.
Cyber crime is a huge business, and
no company is safe, irrespective of size
or type. Cyber insurance helps to cover
for loss of revenue or fraudulent activity,
because a threat actor has breached
your system, caused an outage, or
infected you with a virus or other piece of
malware.
It will cover costs related to first parties
as well as third-party claims, such as
any forensic investigation that is needed
to find out what happened, how to fix it,
and how to stop it happening again. It
will reimburse business losses, including
financial losses. Some policies will
also cover tasks such as notifying any
affected parties or customers, which are
mandatory in many countries, as well as
monitoring the credit of any clients who
might have had their data exposed.
Another area where cyber insurance
gives peace of mind is legal coverage.
This will take care of the expenses
incurred with the exposure of confidential
and proprietary information, legal
settlements and fines imposed by
regulatory bodies.
Cyber insurance is, relatively speaking,
in its infancy and is set to evolve,
particularly as the landscape changes so
often and becomes more sophisticated
and complex. Moreover, companies who
have fallen foul of cyber crooks are less
than enthusiastic about revealing all
the facts, as they are afraid of negative
publicity, loss of confidence and trust.
2 futurewave BusinessIT
Because of this, underwriters work with
limited data and far from the full picture
when it comes to correctly assessing the
financial impact of a breach.
When looking for a cyber insurance
provider, do your homework, as cyber
insurance coverage varies with each
provider, and with each policy.
Find out if they cover all the
elements discussed above, and ensure
you understand any special limits or
circumstances. Ask questions about
the types of policy offered: Are they an
extension to a current policy, or stand
alone? If the former, find out if it is as
comprehensive. Ask if the policy can
be tailored to your companys specific
needs, and whether it covers first and
third-parties. Find out if it covers targeted
attacks only, or any attack that your
company might suffer, including activity
by malicious company insiders, social
engineering and phishing attacks. Asking
these questions will help ensure you get
the coverage you need.
Every business should seriously
think about ensuring they have
budget for cyber insurance. Attacks
against organisations of every kind are
increasing, particularly in light of the
plethora of personal devices that are
plugging into the company network.
The attack surface is huge, and the
opportunities for cyber criminals
practically limitless.
Start by creating a cyber risk profile for
your organisation, and drawing up a list
of costs you would need to have covered
should a cyber incident occur. From that
point, the business can get a ballpark
idea of what third-party costs might be.
Look at different providers, ask around,
and do your research carefully to find
the right partner for your business. Being
prepared and knowing you are covered
brings peace of mind in this volatile
security climate.
f Simon Campbell-Young is the MD
of Intact Software

The SME
opportunity
in Africa
Telcos must be ready to
evolve to achieve success,
according to Leonard Kore,
senior analyst: telecoms and
media at IDC East Africa
T
elcos in Africa are beginning to
realise the massive potential of
SMEs and are continuously creating
strategies to target the segment.
However, the vast, complex nature of
the segment, which is compounded by the
numerous local nuances and cultures across
countries in Africa, presents a difficult
situation. Telcos have thus been forced to
revise their strategies and differentiate their
products and services, all while changing
their service delivery models.
While digital transformation is a priority
for large enterprises, the fast-growing
SME segment is also eager to transform
to improve operations. IT spending in this
segment is, however, hampered by tough
business environments, poor access to
credit and high loan rates.
Africas SMEs are also not homogeneous,
therefore market size, revenue and ICT
needs must be considered. This presents an
opportunity for telcos to completely revise
their approach to SMEs in order to harness
the huge revenue opportunities that exist.
Cost remains a major issue for African
SMEs and this has resulted in increasing
price wars amongst telcos. As offerings
become increasingly commoditised, telcos
must now differentiate themselves by
July - August 2017
highlighting their superior networks, higher
quality of service and excellent customer
care and support.
It is therefore crucial that telcos
investigate innovative pricing models to
make their solutions more affordable and
accessible to SMEs. With access to credit
remaining a challenge, the telcos that
embrace opportunities to assist SMEs with
credit solutions in partnership with other
institutions will play a key role in solving
this issue for smaller companies, which
should reduce churn and boost customer
stickiness.
Customer service remains one of the
biggest challenges for telcos looking to tap
into the SME market. Telcos are traditionally
structured to provide enterprise clients with
larger revenue potential with dedicated
service through account management
teams. This is not the case with SMEs and
results in slow responses to requests and
high customer churn.
That said, it is difficult to justify the cost
of dedicated account managers due to the
high numbers of SMEs and their typically
limited budgets. Those telcos that hope to
entrench themselves in the SME market
will have to introduce new channels that
encourage stronger and closer customer
COLUMNS
relationships with small businesses.
Telcos continue to see relatively slow
SME uptake of their cloud solutions, largely
due to a lack of trust. End users often prefer
to use other IT players such as system
integrators, vendors and partners due to
their perceived expertise in cloud services.
White-labelling of vendor cloud solutions
has also not achieved much traction.
While many telcos already offer SME in
a box solutions, they must guard against a
one size fits all approach and ensure that
they research and customise these solutions
for local markets.
They also need to ensure that they have
compelling value propositions to maximise
profitability. Telcos must also remember that
SMEs do not usually have an IT department
and, so, buying decisions mostly lie with
the business owner. They must, therefore,
communicate in non-technical ways and
focus on selling solutions rather than
technologies.
Finally, revising SME strategies around
ensuring simplicity and affordable pricing,
choosing the right channel, differentiation
and innovating their products and services
while changing their service delivery models
will all be crucial for telcos targeting this
segment. n
3
 INNOVATION
Cognitive computing
improves IT security
By Kathy Gibson
C
ybercrime is out of control, it
is a systemic problem and it
is getting worse. In fact, it is
estimated that about 4-billion
records were breached last year because of
cyber attacks.
But why is it happening, asks Kevin
Skapinetz, director of strategy and
product design at IBM Security: If you
look back to how people stole things in
the past, it was about grabbing a weapon
and taking what they want, he says. Over
time, attackers became more organised and
smarter and we saw organised attackers
looking for that one train that was carrying
money.
As technology advanced even more,
telephones became a way for organised
criminals to social engineer people out of
their information and money.
But nothing is like cybercrime right now.
Criminals have given up their guns in favour
of sitting behind their keyboards.
It is estimated that the cybercrime
economy is worth as much as $445-billion;
and the vast majority of cybercrimes are
carried out by organised criminals.
The Dark Web has become the
marketplace for cybercriminals to buy
and sell information or malware. These
marketplaces have become so sophisticated
they are rated, and even offer support for
malware.
Skapinetz explains that botnets are still
used to gain access to information, and
there are literally millions of machines
around the world that are infected with
malware.
The average cost of each breach is a
massive R46-million, according to IBM and
the Ponemon Institute. In South Africa it
comes in at a little less R35-million.
This includes the cost of detecting
and containing an infection, the cost of
reputational damage, and legal costs.
Out of all the countries surveyed, South
Africa has the biggest risk of a major
breach, losing millions of records, within the
4 futurewave BusinessIT
next 24 months.
In South Africa, it takes an average of
199 days to detect and contain a breach
144 days to detect it, and often it is another
company that actually detects it; then 55
days to contain it.
What if you could reduce that time?
asks Skapinetz. If you could get it down to
three months, you could save R5-million.
Technology is available to do this, he
adds. When theres a security breach,
security analysts have to examine masses
of data literally having to go through
terabytes of data.
Out of all the countries
surveyed, South Africa
has the biggest risk of
a major breach, losing
millions of records, within
the next 24 months
This is also an enormous skills base,
Skapinetz says. There are simply not
enough skilled people in the area of
cybersecurity. Its estimated there will be
1,5-million unfilled security jobs by 2020.
A tremendous amount of time gets
wasted in following false positives, he adds,
with literally millions of dollars wasted.
All of this creates huge opportunities
for companies, Skapinetz adds. We have
combined the power of Watson and IBM
Security. We have spent a lot of time
identifying where Watson can help us with
cybercrime.
At least a year was spent teaching
Watson about cybersecurity, to help people
to make smarter, faster decisions.
To do this, Watson had to learn the
language of cybersecurity, and learn to
recognise whats going on beyond the
words, Skapinetz explains.
The next step was to add structured
threat feeds to this unstructured data,
adding 10-billion elements initially and
another 4-million per hour, building a
massive corpus of knowledge.
Coupling Watson to Q-Radar Advisor
enriches the context that security analysts
work within. This increases the speed that
analysis can happen at, allowing analysts
to investigate 60-imes faster than using
complex manual systems.
It is more accurate as well, simply
because there is more information. Adding
10-times for actionable indicators means
analysts can uncover new threats.
This kind of thing still needs a human,
but the human has to be smarter and have
access to more information, Skapinetz
says. This is what Watson does, adding
intelligence to the analysis.
Weve had customers who have enriched
data with Watson; not only has it confirmed
the attacker, but has also uncovered other
threats. That allows companies to eliminate
the threat fully.
Importantly, Watson will increase its
corpus of knowledge over time, and will
become more accurate and more valuable,
Skapinetz adds.
A big issue facing the chief information
security officer (CISO) is the number of
security tools as many as 85 from 45
different vendors they have to work with.
That in itself is a security risk,
Skapinetz says. You have to drive
integration.
IBM has been working to make security
a connected immune system. The Han
immune system is a multi-layered intelligent
system.
IBMs integrated and intelligent security
immune systems has cognitive analytics
at the centre to connect all the different
systems together, and add the human
element as well.n
 .

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 Human 2.0: is it time for the Three Laws?
By Johan Walters
H
umankind has always relied on
its artists and authors to imagine
the future for us. While Isaac
Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke gave
older generations a glimpse into a fantastical
future, their imagined realities are not only
here, but already have some questioning if
were moving too fast.
Most of the work we do with companies
is based on the purely commercial side,
and how to use new technologies like
augmented, virtual and mixed realities to
attract and retain new customers.
There is, however, a new drive to explore
how these new techs (along with AI and
machine learning) can help organisations
and individuals tap into potential new
superpowers to benefit society.
Imagining a human 2.0
Work in Singapore allowed me the
opportunity to visit the Singapore Art Science
Museum, where the exhibition Human +
has been set up to ask some of the deeper
questions around new technology and how
humanity is interacting with it.
Being human in a world of artificial
intelligence, robotics and genetic
modification brings with it some deeply
confounding questions. Ethical, social
and environmental questions probe just
how far we could and should be going
when it comes to human advancement,
augmentation and even increased longevity.
Using VR headsets, visitors could
experience the world as a different gender,
race and even species.
This concept of the empathy machine was
discussed at the recent Augmented World
Expo 2017. In fact, a large part of the three-
day conference was based on how we could
be using tech to further evolve ourselves and,
through this, build a better world.
From a practical point of point of view,
embracing this kind of technology could
be put to excellent use in the world of the
NGO. So much of the work done by our
not-for-profit organisations depends on
shifting perceptions, and thereby, shifting
behaviours or reactions to various societal
challenges.
If we could take a virtual experience
and allow people to actually experience
6 futurewave BusinessIT
the lived reality of a different gender, race,
sexuality, generation, or even species, the
hard work of getting people to support
projects, initiatives and organisations would
be infinitely easier.
The applications of this in terms of
battling xenophobia by allowing people to
virtually experience life across borders is
also something which holds vast potential.
A key opportunity which transcends both
social and economic benefit is in the area
of training and education. Vast amounts of
research has been published about how
people retain skills better by doing, rather
than just learning. Bringing mixed realities
into training spaces could see markedly
improved success rates in a far shorter
space of time.
Stepping into the slightly more esoteric
space, the notion of truthfulness may even
become something which technology will
address. Developed in 2013 already, the
mood sweater uses LED lights to display
basic emotions of the wearer. Taken a step
further, this could also use nanotechnology
to show if a person is telling the truth or not.
While this may not be welcome in
boardrooms or a G20 Summit, applications
like this may give the online dating space a
new way to match-make far more effectively
and efficiently.
From AR glasses to commercially
available exoskeleton suits, technology is
already allowing us to physically augment
senses and abilities in our day-to-day
existence. Improvements in nano and
biotechnology will now also bring extended
longevity into stark focus.
How far is too far?
While all of this holds immense opportunity
for NGOs, enterprises and humanity in
general, it is also giving rise to a new
existential conundrum.
How do we make sure that we are using
technology for the betterment of society,
and not charging forward without giving
thought to how the rise of the machine may
impact us all?
Artificial intelligence has been cause for
the most vocal cautionary voices. Some
of the finest minds have begun warning
companies that we need to start rigorously
applying ourselves as to how to regulate the
advancements in this area.
The non-profit OpenAI, funded by Elon
Musk and others, is focusing on how to
ensure open collaboration, but also check that
AI is being used for the benefit of humanity as
well as protect us from potential risk.
This may sound alarmist, but the
conversation around how technology could
contribute our ultimate downfall is being
spearheaded by the likes of Stephen Hawking.
For public and private organisations, pausing
to see how their tech forays can be used to
maximise benefit rather than simply focusing
on profit, is going to become an increasingly
important board-level conversation as the
ethics of IT takes off.
For the local digital professional, working
with a technology partner who has
considered the ethics of how technology
is used will also become increasingly
important. While the greater global
conversation is still somewhat esoteric,
from a very practical point of view,
many agencies that are crafting AR and
VR experiences for brands are not even
considering these issues.
Whether its a retail storefront created
entirely in AR format, or a complex VR
game making use of AI to adjust to the
gamers strategy as things progress,
agencies must be aware of not stepping
over ethical boundaries.
We may not be at the stage of
implementing Asimovs Three Laws of
Robotics, but being in a position to advise
clients on ethical issues will be what sets
agencies of the future apart. n
f Johan Walters heads up NMPi Labs
(previously C2C Labs)
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 Business can no longer ignore
the impact of AI
D
iscussions around artificial
intelligence (AI) have proliferated
and will continue to over the next
year. Businesses are beginning
to see its value in a wide range of sectors,
while a different report is released every
day that instils a fear that AI will replace
workers jobs.
Simply put there is no hiding the
explosion of AI and its applications; in the
UK, Durham police have begun trialling a
system that will classify suspects as low-,
medium- or high-risk and help officers
review their sentence.
As AI, automation and machine learning
push the boundaries in almost every single
industry, businesses will have to embrace
the technology and understand that it is
8 futurewave BusinessIT
By Dr Joseph Reger
a force for good. This article explores the
perception around AI, the practical uses of
the technology and the overall objective that
businesses should be preparing for.
AI will completely revolutionise
businesses, but is crucially a force for good
While its true that AI will change how
businesses operate, business leaders should
consider it with optimism and positivity.
A PwC study found that AI would help
global GDP gain a huge $15,7-trillion, a
14% rise from 2016 to 2030. The detailed
analysis found that the business impact
of AI was so vast that productivity would
improve dramatically. 2030 might seem like
a long time away, but in the business world
preparation is key to everything.
As artificial intelligence becomes more
and more integral to daily work processes,
the benefits will become much clearer.
Automating simple tasks frees up the
workforce to focus on more intricate and
exciting aspects of their role.
Take, for example, innovative law firm
Berwin Leighton Paisner. The UK-based
company developed an entirely different
business model that relies on an AI system
to work on certain property disputes.
The system extracts the raw data and
checks the basic details needed to serve
legal notices to the corresponding property.
The cost savings are clear, but the sheer
difference in time is quite substantial a
task that would usually take workers weeks
now can be done in minutes. And this using
a simple process automation approach

to AI; future systems will do much more
comprehensive tasks.
As businesses of all kinds look to invest
in AI, the field itself will rapidly evolve,
making it almost impossible to keep up
with ongoing developments. Leaders should
instead focus on their business and look
to analyse how artificial intelligence could
benefit their organisation.
What AI can do right now and
advances are coming all the time
The application of AI is quite broad and
its technology is positively developing,
possibly quicker than businesses would
have predicted. From the sorting of
information, to automated machines in the
manufacturing process, the capabilities are
clearly broad enough that businesses are
wasting no time to invest.
Our own recent AI engine, Zinrai, has
been used by Japanese company Kawasaki
Geological Engineering to accurately detect
and prevent underground sinkholes before
they manifest.
The technology uses deep learning
technology to analyse and process the
volume of radar images collected with
underground radar probe equipment.
Businesses and governments could
benefit from increased operating
efficiency, spot cavities in the road before
they manifest and be able to ultimately
prevent sinkholes. Another fantastic
example is a conversational tool that
can be used to analyse the sentiment of
customer calls, therefore enabling the
host to tailor each conversation to the
customer.
Whats clear is that AI is developing at a
significant rate. However, we remain at a
relatively early stage and businesses must
recognise that the true potential wont
be achieved without advancement in the
underlying technology.
For example, improvements in
imagification (the process of converting
business data into images) will be vital in
turning data into digestible problems that
machine learning can process. A rapid
acceleration of the computational power
available, to support the training phase of
machine learning, remains a priority as well.
July - August 2017
Why businesses should be planning
for AI right now
The future is coming quickly and business
cannot afford to ignore artificial intelligence;
its as simple as that.
Technology will continue
to disrupt businesses and
AI will similarly impact
every single industry.
Whats crucial is how
prepared businesses are
for artificial intelligence,
and that means giving it
consideration now
Technology will continue to disrupt
businesses and AI will similarly impact
every single industry. Whats crucial is
how prepared businesses are for artificial
intelligence, and that means giving it
consideration now. It is imperative that
businesses become digitally mature
immediately, because only with digital, well
curated business data can the promise of AI
be realised.
The implementation of smarter, AI
supported business processes is an enabler
for the business, and will free up workers
to focus on more complex and intelligent
tasks. Highly qualified staff are the
backbone of any business and these people
should spend as little time as possible on
repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
AI systems can complete (or mostly
complete) these tasks more efficiently
and even more accurately. Its all about
identifying where people can create the
most value, then supporting other tasks
or parts within machine learning systems.
Ultimately, the AI needs to become a
member of the team, allowing their human
colleagues to focus on specialist activities.
The economic benefits are clear; AI could
INNOVATION
not only offer huge efficiency savings,
but unlock never before seen business
capabilities. Improving the quality of
working lives and job satisfaction wont
only increase the businesss operations,
but allow them to focus on innovation by
automating routine processes.
Whats clear is that to thrive, businesses
need to prepare their organisations for
artificial intelligence now. Upskilling
the workforce, providing the monetary
investment and working with technology
experts will be the only route to success.
The latter will be of vital importance as
technology becomes trickier and more
complex, and understanding how, where
and why to apply AI solutions will become
even more imperative for each business.
AI is not a solution that can be delivered
shrink-wrapped. It requires specialist skills
in both AI and in the business.
The role of AI is far too significant
too ignore now
AI & Automation is too frequently perceived
as bad for business processes, when the
focus should largely be on highly repetitive,
time-consuming jobs. Releasing workers
from boring tasks actually enables them to
focus on more important aspects of their
job. There is no denying that automation
is quickly approaching, and with the right
preparation staff will be freer to focus on
more complex problems in the business.
Businesses will have to adapt and
embrace digitally driven ideas that prepare
them for the future which will be technology
driven. But we need a societal debate
about the consequences of a large scale
AI deployment and must agree on a set of
rules and frameworks that we, as a society,
apply to AI. In particular education on all
levels, re-skilling the existing work force
and developing an agreed plan to make
sure that productivity can be transformed
into a higher net value, not just for single
businesses, but society as whole, will be
crucial.
AI is growing at a rapid pace and the
benefits are clear; after all a failure to
prepare will only lead to failure itself.
f Dr Joseph Reger is the chief technology officer
of Fujitsu EMEIA
9
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SIMPLICITY things simple
 Where to next
for the apex primate?
By Simon Carpenter
P
erhaps its because I have less
runway ahead of me than behind
me or perhaps its because
of being in the IT industry for
three and half decades, but I find myself
marvelling at, and sometimes bewildered
by, the exponentially accelerating pace
and scope of advances in science and
technology.
Lately, in response to alarming headlines
about job destruction and artificial
intelligence (AI) getting away from us, Ive
been wondering where its all heading for
the apex primate humankind
It is this human brain and its astonishing capacities that
keeps us alive on a daily basis, that enables us to dominate
other animals, and that accounts for all human progress
and the massive impact we have had on the planet despite
having been here for only 0,00004% of the earths history.
A brief history of mankind
When you look at the mammal that is
Homo sapiens in the context of geological
time, the 200 000 years we have been
around is a tiny, tiny amount of time a
mere 0,00004% of Earths existence.
And yet here we are, living in the
Anthropocene epoch (recently named
for us by climatologists and geologists).
This epoch is so named because, for the
first time in the 4,1-billion-year history of
life on Earth, we humans, as a species,
are changing what happens to and on
the planet, rather than simply being the
observers and subjects of natural forces.
In that 200 000 years since Homo
sapiens first emerged in Africa and spread
across the planet we have evolved to
become a reasonably smart apex primate
at the top of the food chain in a closed
system called planet Earth (although we
12
have already made our presence felt in
other parts of the solar system).
You could argue that were only
reasonably smart because while we
are sentient, have consciousness, self-
awareness, intellectual capacity, language,
moral reasoning and the ability to create, we
havent yet figured out how to live without
degrading our own environment through
pollution, over-population, over-exploitation
of natural resources and species extinction.
Only reasonably smart because while
we create great art, music, literature,
food, science and technologies and new
industries, we havent yet figured out how to
stop warring with each other, to transcend
tribalism and racism, or to curb the greed
and corruption whereby the few predate
upon the many.
Only reasonably smart because,
although weve made great strides in
medicine and healthcare, we have not yet
figured out how to cure dread diseases,
prevent obesity, build equitable, inclusive
economies or provide universal healthcare.
The greatest show in the universe
These reasonable smarts come to us
courtesy of arguably the most amazingly
complex thing in the universe the
human brain. With its estimated
86 000 000 000 to 100 000 000 000
neurons and 3 440 000 000 000 000
to 4 000 000 000 000 000 synapses it
accounts for roughly 2% of our body mass
yet consumes around 20% of the oxygen
and energy we take in.
It is this human brain and its astonishing
capacities that keeps us alive on a daily
basis; that enables us to dominate other
animals, and that accounts for all human
progress and the massive impact we have
had on the planet despite having been here
for only 0,00004% of the earths history.
And it is this amazing brain that has
helped us to develop and master the various
technologies that have brought us this
far; from fire to fission and everything in
between.
Yet, despite this awesomeness, the
human brain may not be sufficient to ensure
our survival as a species. While there is
still much to discover about how the brain
works, we do know that it suffers from
the fact that it is trapped in a physically
constrained space the skull and is
subject to metabolic limitations.
The prefrontal cortex, where we do
most of our reasoning, appears to be able
process no more than five to seven discrete
pieces of information at any one time, and
the myth of multitasking is just that a
complete myth. Our individual brains, in
other words, are ill-equipped to deal with
either the size or dynamism of some of the
challenges we now face.
Thats one of the reasons we find it so
hard to execute the dictum that no problem
can be solved from the same level of
consciousness that created it (commonly
attributed to Einstein). Its hard to change
consciousness when its seat doesnt change.
The world in which our current
brains evolved no longer exists and,
per evolutionary science, it will take
somewhere in the region of 1-million years
for any significant changes in our human
capabilities. So, we will need to look
elsewhere for solutions to the many pressing
problems such as how to feed an additional
2-billion people on shrinking amounts of
arable land and how to manage traffic
congestion and safety in rapidly urbanising
futurewave BusinessIT

societies, how to provide sufficient energy
for economic development, or manage
epidemics, or maximise corporate profits
without harming society, and so on.
The digital brain
Help is at hand. We now stand at the dawn
of a digital revolution, one which promises
socio-economic upheaval as profound as
that which followed previous agricultural
and industrial revolutions.
Whereas the plough, the steam engine
and the production technologies of yester-
year augmented our physical capabilities,
this new digital revolution, with its data
generation, information processing and
communication technologies, is about
augmenting our mental capabilities.
Pre-eminent among the multi-faceted
technologies that underpin the digital
revolution is AI.
As we embed sensors in more and more
things in the world (including ourselves)
and this cyber-physical world creates
unprecedented volumes and velocities of data,
we must use AI to make sense of it as our
brains are simply not up to the task of dealing
with the velocity and volumes of data.
Unlike our brains, and courtesy of
Moores law, we can scale up silicon-based
capabilities in a largely unrestricted fashion
its not bound by the physical limitations
of the human skull or by the metabolic need
for sleep and this is enabling us to deliver
AI capabilities that were the stuff of science,
fiction only a few years ago.
There is much debate as to when (and
whether) AI will exceed human intelligence,
with futurists such a Ray Kurzweil (who
claims an 86% accuracy rate for the 147
predictions he has made since the 1990s)
positing 2045 as the year when the
singularity will occur. The singularity being the
point in time at which AI leads to machines
that are smarter than human beings.
But, you may say, AI is not new and
for every success there have been many
failures and its nowhere close to
matching human general intelligence.
So what is different this time? Well, your
assertions would be right on all counts, but
the answer to your question is: plenty.
Advances in technology
The last few years have seen spectacular
improvements in capability and affordability
on several fronts that feed into AI. The pace
of this digital revolution has no historical
precedent we can refer to; advances in
science and technology are combinatorial
and exponential in nature, intersecting in
ways we battle to anticipate and because
July - August 2017
Simon Carpenter
of which jobs, industries and societies are
being disrupted.
There have been improvements in
computing technologies, especially graphics
processing units (GPUs), to the point where
supercomputing and massive memory is
affordable and therefore widely available,
significant improvements in algorithms
(not least of which is deep learning) and
massive sets of data on which to train new
AI models using techniques like machine
and deep learning.
And all of this is set to accelerate as the
Internet of Things (IoT) takes hold allowing
us to create and feed realtime data into
Digital Twins that will represent all sorts
of artefacts from the real world (including
humans). The possibilities are endless and
limited only by our imaginations and ethical
considerations, the ramifications can be
scary, and the process is unstoppable.
It is now up to us as individuals, workers,
parents, managers, leaders, companies,
governments and societies to understand
and evaluate these trends and technologies
and to ask how can we ensure this new
technology serves us? How will we apply
it to help make the world run better and
improve peoples lives? competitive capabilities.
The (narrow) usefulness of AI
The answer lies in understanding that
todays AIs are very narrow they can do
certain specific tasks, but only those tasks,
astonishingly well.
So its about picking the most valuable
use cases, understanding that for certain
tasks, where efficiency, repeatability,
neutrality, speed and big sets of data are
INNOVATION
the norm, the narrow intelligence of todays
AI is often superior to humans when it
comes to getting a job done.
Its also about having a mindset of
embedding these new tools into both
existing or new business processes and
models in such a way that we can take the
work out of work and free our people up
to do the things that only humans can do;
imagining, empathising, relating, creating
and solving complex problems.
This last point is worth emphasising:
AI cannot envision, it cannot innovate, it
doesnt empathise, it cannot synthesise
new solutions to complex problems. What
it can do is tackle the routine, mundane,
dangerous activities that make work a less
than stellar experience for millions of people
so that those people can bring their
talents to bear on the worlds challenges in
a more engaging fashion.
It is about taking tools such as machine
learning and applying them to the data you
already have (or will generate through new
capabilities such as social listening, IoT or
visual processing) to generate new insights,
to make life and work safer, easier and
more productive, and to design innovative
As we stand at the beginning of a new
age for humanity, one where we can use
AI for good, it is up to us to explore ways to
make sure technology serves us well. We
dont yet know where it will take us, but we
do know that we must get started.
Have you asked yourself how your
organisation is using AI today? n
f Simon Carpenter is chief technology advisor
of SAP Africa
13
 A rethink of
Africas employment
is needed
By Daniel Schwartzkopff
T
he Fourth Industrial Revolution
will dramatically reshape the
world of work and force us to
rethink our approach to our
careers, our lives, and our aspirations.
With a global market estimated to reach
$70-billion by 2020, machine learning
is driving fundamental change in the
way every industry operates. Learning
algorithms are already pioneering advances
in customer service, manufacturing,
healthcare, auditing, legal counsel,
and insurance underwriting, with more
industries to follow.
Old notions of job security have all but
disappeared: the thought of working for the
same company for 40 years until retirement
is laughable. In 1965, corporations
remained in the S&P 500 Index for an
average of 33 years; by 2012 this had
already shrunk to 18 years. With the rapid
pace of development bankrupting and
displacing large behemoths like Kodak and
Blockbuster, no one should be under the
illusion that a company is too big to fail.
Rise of the machines
In PwCs latest report on the impact of
automation, up to 38% of jobs in the
US are at risk, with Germany (35%)
and the UK (30%) not far behind. And
its not manual labour that is most in
peril: accountants, lawyers, call centre
agents, machine operators, and insurance
underwriters are at, or near, the top of lists
of jobs most likely to become redundant
thanks to machines.
In response, it is likely that governments
will start implementing policies to protect
an already fragile job market. However, the
commercial benefits of automation are vast
and far-reaching. In an example recently
cited by the World Economic Forum, a
14
Chinese factory in Dongguan City replaced
90% of its workforce with machines,
leading to an incredible 250% boost in
productivity, with defects reduced by 80%.
Governments need to take a more
forward-looking approach and find
innovative ways of incentivising and
equipping people to educate themselves.
Learning the types of skills unlikely to be
replaced by machines in the coming years
is critical especially here in Africa.
Governments
need to take a more
forward-looking
approach and find
innovative ways of
incentivising and
equipping people to
educate themselves
SA and Africa most vulnerable
South Africas latest unemployment figures
paint a bleak picture: the official rate is
27,7%, or 6,2-million people who want to
work but cant find employment. A closer
look, however, will reveal that the vast
majority of the unemployed are without a
tertiary education. Among graduates the
unemployment rate is a mere 7,3%.
To help stimulate job creation,
government and industry have worked
hard at establishing a business process
outsourcing (BPO) industry as a key
job creator and economic driver. One
industry body claims the sector already
employs more than 30 000 people, and
aims to grow this to 80 000 by 2021.
Considering most of the outsourced jobs
are in call centres and customer service,
it is alarming that so much effort is being
put into industries that are most at risk of
automation.
Across the continent, explosive
population growth is expected to bring
a further 122-million people into the
workforce by 2020. Due to shortcomings
in the continents education sector, these
workers are likely to be overwhelmingly
unskilled or semi-skilled. Absorbing
122-million people into formal economic
activity will be paramount to the continents
on-going development and prosperity.
We need an urgent change in how we
approach skills development and work.
Rethinking our approach to work
Those wishing to future-proof their careers
should stop relying on traditional notions
of work. Many of the skills required for
the future such as data science and
machine learning are not yet formally
offered at university level, and even where
they are, the industry changes so quickly
that by the time a student exits a four-year
degree much of their knowledge is already
outdated. In response, we should all aspire
to a lifelong approach to learning.
Developing skills in the STEM (science,
technology, engineering and maths) fields,
as well as arts and humanities where
machines will struggle with replicating
design, creation, empathy, and problem-
solving thought represents workers best
defence against automation. Taking up
online courses in specific fields that teach
you marketable skills, for example, is one
cost-effective way of empowering this new
futurewave BusinessIT

wave of jobseekers.
Encouragingly, many modern tech
companies no longer look solely at
academic transcripts and qualifications
as the main benchmark of your
employability. Instead, practical tests are
given that gauge a candidates actual
ability to complete work-related tasks and
think creatively and laterally.
We need an
urgent change in how
we approach skills
development and work.
Those wishing to
future-proof their
careers should stop
relying on traditional
notions of work
New skills for new jobs
This shift in skills development and
training may pose severe challenges
to those job-seekers who are unable
to pursue self-learning opportunities.
Government, schools, and universities
should therefore modernise their approach
to training and education to ensure our
immense talent pool is not left under- or
unutilised.
It is certain that some jobs will
be disrupted even eliminated by
automation. Workers will need to
develop a new mix of skills to meet the
demands of entirely new job functions
created in the course of our technological
progress. Opposing progress to preserve
automatable jobs is futile - it would
not be wise to be remembered as the
Luddites of the 21st century.
On a positive note, 94% of executives
surveyed in a recent study agreed that
when administrative tasks are automated,
the demand for jobs that require soft
skills such as creative problem-solving,
collaboration, and communication will
grow.
Its high time we overhaul our
education and skills development sector.
The alternative millions of unemployed
and unemployable people is too
frightening to contemplate. n the data, and do something different.
f Daniel Schwartzkopff is the co-founder
of DataProphet
July - August 2017
, cognitive computing
drive innovation
By Kathy Gibson
T
here is a huge opportunity for us
to use technology, coupled with
human ability, to drive innovation
to make everyones lives better.
The World Bank reports that, over the
last 30 years, natural disasters including
severe weather have taken an estimated
2,5-million lives and cost more than
$4-trillion.
At the same time, we are having to
re-invent our cities, says Shane Radford,
industry innovation and solutions leader
at IBM South Africa.
We have technology: we have the data
and can analyse it. We have the ability for
man and machine to exponentially make
a difference, Radford says. The ability
to innovate to stay relevant is of primary
important, he adds.
Sustainable growth is a big issue. If we
dont drive the right collaboration, and use
the stimulus that is available, we are not
going to drive change.
Paul Walsh, a director of the Weather
Company, explains that weather has a
tangible effect on everyone. You check the
weather forecast because you are planning
your life.
In fact, he says, weather is the primary
driver of consumer behaviour. We need
to understand what is happening in our
environment.
Weather can have a massive effect on
businesses as well, Walsh adds. Extreme
weather has obviously effects, but even
something like a warm winter can have a
major impact on a retailers bottom line.
If you have access to weather
information, you can make a new plan.
We need to use weather data proactively
anticipate what is going to happen, leverage
For example, a global CPG brand
increased its sales by 24% compared to
INNOVATION
the previous years. It did this by identifying
what weather resulted in a bad hair day,
and proactively triggered mobile shampoo
advertising.
The Weather Company is working with
Teva Pharmaceuticals to help users of
asthma inhalers if they will need additional
medication because adverse weather
conditions are forecast.
The Weather Company leverages data
from 250 000 personal weather stations. It
records 200-million mobile app downloads
and serves 750 TV stations globally,
180-million consumers, 5 000 businesses
and 140 airlines.
Walsh explains how the company
invested in making sure weather forecasts
are as geographically available and
accurate as possible in order to cater for an
increasingly mobile user.
To do this, it deploys what he calls an
Internet of Things at scale, pulling in
data from a variety of devices that include
weather stations, but also cars, phones and
aeroplanes.
By doing this, we are able to create a very
dense network of weather data. And this lets
us use an intelligent combination of forecasts
from 162 sources that produces the best
result that is as accurate as possible.
This system also allows for updates every
15 minutes to ensure the best possible
accuracy of forecasts. More than 20-billion
forecasts are served via mobile devices
every day.
Now the Weather Company is also
delivering weather forecasts using mesh
networks that dont rely on the Internet.
Instead, the technology connects nodes,
allowing devices to pass information to one
another.
This technology could be crucial when
natural disasters occur, or in geographies
where Internet is limited or non-existent. n
15
 As AI rises,
collaborate rather
than compete
By Ankur Prakash
T
he fields of artificial intelligence
(AI), robotics, process automation
and heuristics are all developing
at a rapid pace. While we dont
yet know exactly how they will affect our
lives, these trends will forever reshape
society, business, and potentially even the
very nature of humanity.
The inevitable debate thats raging is how
automation, AI and robotics will replace
human effort. The right approach is to
consider how one can practically leverage
AI tools (both as an individual and in
business), to elevate ourselves into higher-
value activities, and to add more value to
our customers or stakeholders.
It seems likely that the most repetitive or
physically-exhausting tasks will increasingly
be handed-over to AI-powered robots as
the costs of this migration continue to
drop so re-tooling ourselves for the future
becomes an urgent necessity.
But this is just the first rung on a very
long ladder. The more exciting applications
involve AI and human intelligence blending,
achieving unprecedented outcomes.
AI driving profitable innovation
AI doesnt just make it possible to reduce
costs or find new efficiencies. In fact, it has
the power to completely change the nature
of the services that we create.
For instance, one could use an app thats
installed in their car or on their phone,
which automatically adjusts ones insurance
premium based on the way that they drive
with information flowing in real time and
in very granular detail. Once designed, a
solution like this could scale limitlessly.
16
In this case, AI isnt simply improving
the way that insurers model their risk, but
is entirely changing the risk assessment
frameworks. While this may not seem like
a dramatic change, these kinds of services
will tend to have a ripple effect, where more
applications for AI come to the surface.
Solving critical global issues
Some of the most interesting applications
for AI are for those businesses and
organisations that are here to solve some
of societys most critical challenges - such
as the planets sustainability, or access to
healthcare, education, or other basic rights
that are still out of reach for most of the
developing world.
Powered by the right data-sets, with AI
we can forecast when diseases are likely
to break out, share forewarnings on natural
disasters. To some extent, we can start
taking steps to prevent disaster before it
strikes. Another example is timely medical
support that can be delivered remotely in
developing countries by adding mobility
and computer vision to AI, speeding up
healthcare services where desperately
under-resourced.
Changing the workplace
While AI will ultimately become infused
into every process and system within the
organisation including the areas of human
capital management there will always be
the need for judgement, strategic thinking,
and the ability to weigh and contextualise
emotional dimensions to any decision.
In fact, in an increasingly AI-saturated
world, these uniquely-human traits will
become all the more important. Instead
of seeing strategic decision-making as a
competition between the humans and the
robots, we should see AI as a supportive
layer to inform greater clarity of thinking
and decision-making by the organisations
leadership.
What about the dark side fears?
But some people fear that AI will herald
a dystopian era, where powerful armies
of bots are activated by malicious forces,
ultimately destroying society. But these
dark visions may be a little too alarmist.
As we grow comfortable with new AI
technology, well come to realise that, like
anything, it can be used for good or for
bad. Philosophically speaking, the world
operates on the premise that theres more
good than bad.
Consider that even our most basic
concepts such as money are an
essentially positive thing, but can also
be used for destructive purposes (money
can turn to greed, for instance). Or, in the
technology realm, weve seen the dark side
of software with the recent widespread
malware attacks, which were orchestrated
to affect millions of users.
AI will be no different.
Theres a responsibility that lies with all
of us, from the ordinary user, to technology
firms. We must ensure that we create the
systems that will contain the dark side
of AI, self-regulating ecosystems that
ultimately mean we use AI for good, rather
than for bad. n
f Ankur Prakash is vice-president: new growth
and emerging markets at Wipro
futurewave BusinessIT
TOUGHBOOK CF-31

The fully rugged, full-size

notebook that delivers desktop
performance.

Panasonic South Africa (Pty) Ltd

Block L North, Central Park, 400 16th Road, Midrand
P.O. Box 32332, Kyalami, 1684
Tel: +27 11 312 7015
Fax: +27 11 312 7020
Cell: +27 63 333 3941
E-mail : m.kruger@za.panasonic.com
 MOBILE
S P E C I A L F E AT U R E

Panasonic invests
in SA, explores
new opportunities

P
anasonic has operated a sales office
in South Africa for the past two
years. Recently, Hide Kaneko has
been appointed as the MD of the
local operation. He shared some thoughts
on how Panasonic aims to address new
opportunities within the market.
What is your new role in South Africa
and Africa; and the role Panasonic has
within the ICT sector in South Africa?
My role, as MD, is to re-establish the
Panasonic brand and re-penetrate the South
African market.
The company had to revise its distribution
channel strategy in 2009 and we made a
few restructuring efforts at the time.
However, in 2015 we established a legal
subsidiary in South Africa to accelerate
the penetration into the market both in the
business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-
to-business (B2B) sector.
While Panasonic has a very strong
B2B presence globally, the company
originally started as a consumer brand,
so it is extremely important that we keep
strengthening the B2C or consumer
presence and awareness so that our brand
name is kept relevant in the B2B arena.
So my role here in South Africa is to
execute this strategy and ensure that both
B2C and B2B businesses leverage each
other as we evolve as a company.
Additionally, my role is to expand
awareness of our brand strength and
quality.
Panasonic has been a leading company
with an extremely strong business portfolio
in the ICT arena. We also have significant
market presence globally in various
categories such as PBX, Toughbook (our
rugged laptop), and office automation,
among others.
You may not know this, but one in six calls
made by small businesses globally are routed
through a Panasonic telephone system.
We have also played a very important role
in developing the ICT business in South Africa
over the last 20 years or so and, in order to
accelerate the speed for market penetration,
in April 2016 Panasonic South Africa in
Johannesburg formed a dedicated business
solutions team which focuses on providing
solutions to various market sectors, inclusive
of the ICT sector here in South Africa.
I am working to ensure that you will see
our activities more often.
How has Panasonic grown in the mobile,
particularly as regards the Toughbook?
Toughbook is a strategic category which
Panasonic South Africa is focusing on
I believe we actually started various
marketing efforts roughly 10 years ago.
Panasonic enjoys a very significant presence
globally in various niche market areas such
as government, law enforcement, corporate,
education, hospital and others. Here in
South Africa, I believe there are unique market

Committed to making life better for all

Since Panasonic was founded in 1918,
the company has aimed to make life
better for people.
This strategy is not going to change
in the future, as the company continues
to provide a wide variety of products,
systems and services ranging from
consumer electronics products to
industrial devices, building products,
and housing.
We have always carried out all
of our activities following our basic
management philosophy, which
commits us to making a contribution
through our business operations to
improving the lives of people around
the world, and to the further progress
of society, according to Kazuhiro
Tsuga, president of Panasonic.
Always making people central to
our activities, and thereby focusing
on peoples lives, we will continue to
provide better living for our customers.
This is the unchanging commitment
we at Panasonic have had over many
years, he says.
And what we are aiming for now
is to keep on providing better living
everywhere, meeting the needs of each
individual customer.
In a variety of spaces where our
customers go about their lives, spaces
ranging from inside the home, the
office, the store, the automobile, and
the airplane, as well as the town, we
will provide not only single pieces
of hardware, but also total solutions
including software and services.
We will pursue the concept of A
Better Life, A Better World, meeting
the needs of each individual customer.
To do this, Tsuga says, Panasonic
will leverage the strengths that have
been developed within the consumer
electronics business, together with
the strengths of business partners who
have in-depth expertise in each space.
We will work to combine these
strengths pursuing cross-value
innovation. In this way, we will create
new value, value that has never been
seen before.
This is the new and challenging
task we are now addressing, Tsuga
adds. Going forward, as we continue
to carry out these activities, we
will aggressively move forward and
become a new Panasonic.
All of us at Panasonic will strive
hard moving in this direction.

18 Special Feature

segments that we have not yet cultivated
which could take advantage of the values and
benefits that Panasonic could bring forth.
For example, Toughbook/Toughpad is
exceptionally suitable for use in tough/rough
environments such as the mining industry,
public and private security enforcement,
utility work, hospitals, insurance
surveying, warehousing and transportation
management, to name a few.
We will keep our focus on the rugged
and high-end mobile IT. Here I wish to
underscore for the reader Panasonic s
extraordinarily stringent safety and quality
standards, which are applied throughout the
entire product development and engineering
processes.
This is what differentiates us from our
competitors and makes it possible for our
products to be the rugged-est of the
rugged.
Where does Panasonic expect to see
growth as regards the boardroom and
security industries?
Panasonic also has a significant Smart
Office portfolio for the boardroom.
Our wide range of products include
videoconferencing (HDVC) and smart
office products such as projectors and LED
flat panels, as well as high-density LED
boards: a range of products which allow
for customisable solutions and answer the
needs of both small and large corporations.
The security business is one of the
strategic areas that we are focusing on
growing in the next few years.
Our security camera product portfolio is
substantial, and our products are compatible
with various high-quality, advanced
technologies, - and engineered for use in
many different environments and conditions.
Panasonic provides both individuals
and corporations with security solutions
for housing, city halls, malls, public
transportation, retail, and commercial
warehousing, among others.
Of the many use cases, Ill share one
example: Panasonic supplied the largest
quantity of security cameras in the history
of the Olympic Games when they were held
in Sochi, Russia in 2014.
Particularly where there are constant
terror threats, it is an honour for a company
to be given such a business opportunity and
to be able to ensure enforcement of public
safety.
In South Africa, where the crime rate
is rather high, I believe that our product
lineups, which boast the highest level of
quality, reliability and durability, are best
suited to ensure public safety.n
August 2017
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Panasonic Toughbook engineered
for the extraordinary
The Panasonic Toughbook 33 is the first as brightest 2-in-1
fully-rugged 2-in-1 detachable laptop that display in the industry.
features a 3:2 display. The combination
Inspired by the hard-working mobile of an infrared
professionals who have relied on the webcam and the
Toughbook brand for two decades, the Windows Hello
Toughbook 33 2-in-1 detachable laptop application allows
delivers rugged mobility in a highly- customers to use
customisable package along with a facial recognition, iris
generation of backward compatibility for scanning or fingerprint
mobile professionals. scanning for user
Designed in consultation with Toughbook authentication1,2.
device users from a number of demanding The Toughbook 33
industries including police, fire, government 2-in-1 laptop is built
and enterprise professionals, the 12-inch for maximum mobility
fully-rugged 2-in-1 detachable laptop is with two twin hot-
designed to meet MIL-STD-810G and IP65 swappable batteries
standards to perform in even the most that provide 10 hours
gruelling and extreme conditions. of life based upon
The Toughbook 33 2-in-1 laptop comes MobileMark 2014.
with a 3:2 display that makes it easier to In addition, the
handle, and ideal for workers viewing business optional Long Life
applications like law enforcement officers Battery configuration
using Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD). doubles battery life
Other benefits of a 3:2 over a widescreen to 20 hours for the
include less vertical scrolling, an aspect most demanding
ratio that better approximates the feel of mobile professionals.
an A4 sheet of paper and less interference The Toughbook 33
around airbag zones for better vehicle- laptop provides six flexible usage modes
occupant safety. and offers two keyboards to choose from to
An evolution of the best-selling Panasonic accommodate the unique needs of different
Toughbook 31 and Toughbook 20 product mobile professionals.
lines, the Toughbook 33 2-in-1 laptop is As for vehicle installations, the
powered by 7th Gen Intel Core i5 and i7 Toughbook 33 device is available with
processors and Windows 10 Pro, delivering two different vehicle docks for new
incredible performance. deployments: the first is a tablet vehicle
Working to address customer concerns dock; the second is a 2-in-1 vehicle dock
about their Windows 10 migration, the which utilises the Premium Keyboard and
Toughbook 33 device will also be available can be mounted either in laptop (clamshell)
with a Windows 7 Professional downgrade or convertible mode.
powered by 6th Generation Intel Core For Panasonics large customer
i5 and Core i7 processors. This ensures installation base of Toughbook 31 vehicle
compatibility with existing deployments docks, Panasonic is offering a drop-in-
thereby helping customers plan for a replacement 31 Vehicle Dock Adapter (VDA)
smoother transition to Windows 10. with removable Lite Keyboard that offers
The 1200 nit QHD screen incorporates a investment protection for customers who
15% larger display than any other device in wish to reuse their installed vehicle docks to
its class and is the highest resolution as well save precious time and resources. n
19
 MOBILE
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Lenovo has successfully re-invented itself from a PC and laptop vendor to an end-to-end
computing and IT product and solutions provider. It has done this not only by investing
in both mobile and data centre products, but through unrelenting innovation, focus on
customer needs and attention to detail; backed up by a solid services infrastructure. The
company lifted the veil on some of these elements at the recent Lenovo MEA Innovation
Summit in Cape Town. Kathy Gibson reports

Innovation guides Lenovos vision for the future

S
till a young company, Lenovo has
had an interesting journey so far
and its not finished changing and
adapting yet.
The company has its roots in the PC
industry, says Marc Godin, vice-president
and GM of Lenovo MEA. Since then we
have expanded into new technologies and
new markets.
This move started with the acquisition of
Motorola devices to form the mobile business
group, and has more recently included the
acquisition of the IBM X server business to
form the Lenovo data centre group.
The Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group
is the area less well known, Godin explains.
This is our venture capital arm. We
invest in startup companies dealing with
new technologies. And we also speed
up technologies coming from the Lenovo
research teams.
Overall, Lenovo is now a global
corporation, operating across the world,
serving customers in 160 counties.
We have become a global IT company,
Godin says. But we aspire also to be
balanced and diversified.
To this end, revenue is spread quite
evenly across the geographies; and is more
diversified in terms of technology and
product offerings than in the past. The non-
PC business is now about one-third of the
business and growing fast.
Godin shares some highlights across the
various business groups.
In the last fiscal year we achieved record
market share in the PC space, and have
established a solid position in this market.
We delivered the latest edition of our
flagship product, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon
this is the lightest 14-inch business laptop
in the industry.

20 Special Feature

Four years ago, Lenovo created the
multi-mode category with its Yoga PCs, and
continues to innovate in this area, Godin says.
We have also extended the Yoga
franchise into the commercial space with
the ThinkPad X1 Yoga.
We are not only defining new categories,
but continue to lead in these categories.
Lenovo also challenges the status quo,
Godin says. Last year we introduced a
product no-one had ever seen before
the Yoga Book, that redefines the tablet
category.
In the data centre space, Lenovo is also
innovating, according to Godin.
We have announced a complete
new portfolio of products and solutions,
including the ThinkAgile portfolio.
This not an ordinary platform, it is a
range of pre-configured an trusted solutions,
ready to be deployed in an effective way.
In the smartphone space, the company
has launched new designs, Godin says.
We introduced the combination of
Moto Z and Moto Mods, allowing users
to customise their phones by snapping
accessories on.
No-one had ever done this before, and
we have reached about 3-million users in
a year.
The Moto G5 is also breaking sales
records across the world, he adds.
Looking into the future is always an
interesting exercise, Godin points out.
Our vision is to lead in two fundamental
areas: we want to be a leading provider of
smart or smarter devices; and we aim to be
a leading provider of future generations of
data centre that are more agile and more
flexible to power users workloads.
The strategy is what Lenovo calls the
three-way strategy.
This involves maintaining our leadership
position in the PC space, Godin says.
The key priorities in this area are to better
understand customers; raise the bar on
capabilities and efficiency; invest in high-
growth segments; and capitalise on industry
August 2017
consolidation opportunities.
The second leg is to build the mobile and
data centre groups into new growth areas.
In the data centre, cloud, big data/
analytics and solutions are the key
priorities.
Cloud involves working on private, hybrid
and public models to offer on-demand
delivery of resources and applications via
the Internet.
Big data/analytics focuses on the data
organisation have to analyse and define
actionable business intelligence.
Solutions aims to accelerate deployment
and reduce the time to value by deploying
pre-tested infrastructure that is ready to run
customer workloads.
We are ready, Godin says. We are
ready to support you, and to address these
priorities.
To fulfil the vision, Lenovo delivers
performance, reliability and flexibility in
the data centre infrastructure and cloud
services.
A software-defined infrastructure makes
sure a flexible system can respond to
business demands.
We are ready to help you tackle the
most complex business problems by helping
you define ultra-dense complex business
infrastructures, Godin says.
We have dedicated teams ready to work
with customers who are planning for the
future and building massive data centres.
The third leg of the strategy is about
investing in smart devices and the cloud
model.
There is a lot of aspiration in this,
Godin says. It is about inventing the future,
inventing new devices to take advantage of
cloud capabilities.
There is a two-pronged approach that
starts with already-known devices and form
factors.
Our vision is that artificial intelligence
coupled with cloud services will enable
smarter devices that can understand how
different each of us is, how differently we
MOBILE
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use our devices and the applications on
it. And a smarter device should be able to
adapt to provide a customised experience,
Godin explains.
It should know not only its location,
but its environment, and react differently.
The critical points and the big difference
of a smarter device, is to start making
suggestions, to advise us, to guide us
and maybe to take action without us having
to ask, because it is learning by how we
use it.
That is what we are working on.
The second approach to this is about
building a completely new generation of
devices: devices that have never been seen
before, that deliver new applications and
services through new experiences.
This might sound vague, but it is about
the future.
Lenovo grounds its vision of the future
in the belief that the world is entering the
fourth industrial revolution, Godin says.
This new era is fuelled by powerful AI,
coupled with almost infinite computing
power provided by the cloud, accessible
everywhere via ISP networks.
These technologies will fundamentally
disrupt businesses, change societies,
change the way we work, and change the
way we live.
We believe these technologies will
enable smarter devices.
We believe this revolution will require
further advancement in data centre
technology, adding even more agility and
flexibility.
We want to become leaders in this new
world. we have a strategy that will guide us
through that. We are putting in place the
execution plans.
But now, more than ever, at the core of
the strategy, is our belief that different is
better, Godin says. This is the mindset that
got us here, and will guide us into the future.
It guides a different approach to how
we do business, how we develop products,
how we work with our customers. n
21
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Adapting to the
millennial workplace
B
y 2020, millennials will form 50%
of the workforce and most of
them will prefer jobs that give them
workplace agility.
Millennials are refusing work at
companies because of the type of device
they provide, and the time those devices
take to operate, says Dilip Bhatia, vice-
president: worldwide PCSD marketing,
user and customer experience at Lenovo.
Peoples expectations are led by the
always-on world.
Companies around the world are thinking
of ways to redesign their workplaces to
meet the needs of the modern workforce.
The workplace of the future will be a
product of technology and space, Bhatia
says. People used to work in cubicles, but
that is going away. Nowadays, companies
are looking for workers to collaborate, so
you are seeing the concept of the huddle
room instead of cubicles and big conference
rooms.
Customers are all changing their
workplaces, and the focus is on making the
meeting place more efficient.
Lenovo is investing in solutions to make
the conference room of the future smarter.
We are working with Microsoft on some of
these solutions, Bhatia says.
These smart office solutions are not yet
available, he adds, and will represent a new
class of technology that Lenovo believes will
be a big growth area.
Some examples of concepts include
always-on and cable-free devices that will
help meetings to start on time.
22
Other technology could address the room
itself, for instance, to dynamically schedule
room occupancy depending on actual usage;
or to monitor temperature and lighting.
We want to make the conference room
smarter and increase the productivity of
employees.
For hot-desking, systems like USCB and
Thunderbolt already make it easier for users
to work seamlessly. Built-in microphones
help to improve remote meetings and
conference calls, and technologies like
Cortana make users more efficient.
Lenovo has a history of inventing new
devices and innovating in the technology
space, consistently winning awards for
innovative and exciting products.
Very few brands survive a long time, he
points out. But we are celebrating the 25th
anniversary of the ThinkPad and we have
shipped 100-million ThinkPads this year.
Customer-centricity is a big focus for
Lenovo, Bhatia says. We need to delight
customers.
Customer experience is important, he
says, and will soon overtake price and
product as the key brand differentiator.
Companies that are brand-centric are
all about themselves. Customer-centric is
about user pain points, about their issues.
We can become customer-centric if we
observe our customers in everything they do
and come out with great products.
Key to this is to understand customers,
identify the customer experience lifecycle,
and most importantly listen to
customers.
The company has a number of tools to do
this. It listens to customer sentiment in the
market and this is used to develop products.
We do customer experience surveys,
customer experience channel surveys,
product ownership consumer surveys and
use enterprise feedback tools, Bhatia says.
Customer-centricity is so important that
every Lenovo employee is urged to make
customer-centricity one of their main focus
areas.
Technology innovation is not a new thing
at Lenovo. If you line up ThinkPads from
the last 25 years, you will see they are
created with form following function. We
aim to create a great experience.
Within this, there is consistency in the
ThinkPad design and usability. The power
port is always top left; the trackpad is
always dead centre there is consistent
behaviour from generation to generation.
From a user experience viewpoint,
ThinkPads include a few details that make a
significant difference to the user experience.
Touchscreens are becoming prevalent,
making sense with the adoption of Windows
10.
But how annoying are the fingerprints
on the screen? We are bringing out anti-
smudge ttouchscreens to mitigate this.
Some of the keys on ThinkPad keyboards
in the past developed shiny keys, but the
new keyboards from Lenovo retain their
matt finish.
Users all want to have special keys, so
Lenovo has introduced user-defined keys
so customers can set up their own keys as
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 MOBILE
S P E C I A L F E AT U R E

they prefer to work.

The blue screen of death is an issue that
annoys all users. We want to significantly
reduce the number of crashes, Bhatia says.
AI will keep the system updated so crashes
are less likely to occur.
Going forward, technology is not about
the personal computer anymore, Bhatia
says.
The number of devices per person is
growing all the time, and the number of
digital assistants is also growing apace.
But the number of identical digital
wardrobes is zero, Bhatia says. This
means that every user has different needs
and wants. There is no common digital
wardrobe everyone has a different set of
devices.
Companies like Lenovo have to find ways
to reset their focus.
The fundamental question we need to
ask is: what matters? Bhatia asks.
The top issue is that time is precious, he
point out. Users want their devices to help
them streamline tasks.
The second issue is flexibility the
comfort and freedom to move. Users want
more flexible devices that dont make them
compromise.
The last issue is about human
connections. Customers want solutions
that better focus on shared experience and
human connection.
As personalised computing evolves,
users are looking for offerings that are not
only different, but focus on issues that
matter, he says.n Dilip Bhatia

August 2017 23
 MOBILE
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In pursuit of the
future data centre
C
IOs around the world share a
number of challenges: the need
to do more with less, a need
to perform analytics, and the
dilemma of how to move to the cloud.
Wilfredo Sotolongo, vice-president
and GM: data centre group and global
accounts at Lenovo MEA, points out that
the industry has been trying to address the
problem of greater agility and performance
with less cost for at least 10 years.
24
We have addressed it by virtualising
everything, he says. This started with
server virtualisation, moved to storage with
hyperconvergence; and now embraces the
full software-defined data centre.
Until you virtualise every aspect of the
data centre, you dont get the true value
of the cloud model, Sotolongo says. Our
strategy is to push the envelope, creating
SDDC strategies with every platform so the
customer can deploy a flexible infrastructure
Wilfredo Sotolongo
on-premise that allows them to burst to the
cloud quickly and flexibly.
Lenovo has shipped 20-million
servers. So we have a long heritage of
understanding the heritage of the data
centre and understanding your needs,
Sotolongo says.
The company has three factories for data
centre products, including one in Europe.
The company is investing in this business;
leveraging the infrastructure of the PC
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 MOBILE
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business to lower the costs.

Lenovo focuses on a number of priorities: reliability, performance and high-
end technologies, Sotolongo says. The introduction of ThinkAgile
But we havent been doing it only now. We have been doing it forever. This systems that help companies
is the team that invented blade servers, that invented in-memory technologies,
that invented warm water high-performance computing.
implement software-defined
Going forward, we are going to innovate differently from our competitors, data centres and cloud
he says. Without innovation we cannot add value. solutions are just the first to
Lenovo will try to be a solution provider to everything in the data centre,
Sotolongo adds. This doesnt work if you are invested in layers of technology
roll off the production line.
it makes it harder to change. Since we dont have a legacy it is easy to change. Sotolongo confides that future
A data centre is nothing more than building blocks of hardware that you put solutions will more than likely
skins around skins around compute, storage, networking. Then what matters
is the software you put on top of it.
focus on extending cloud
Lenovo accomplished this by partnering with best of breed suppliers. capacity to the areas of big
We are challenging the status quo; challenging you to think about the data data/analytics and artificial
centre of a few years to come and start putting the building blocks in place
now.
intelligence.
Lenovo recently added its new ThinkSystems server, storage and networking Just think about the Internet
building blocks. of Things (IoT), he says.
They are the foundation for the ThinkAgile family of fully-integrated version
cloud business models that can be installed on-premise. They include all the
There are going to be billions
necessary hardware, software and services. of devices generating data.
Two ThinkAgile systems will ship within the next couple of weeks: for Organisations will need
Nutanix hyperconvergence and for Microsoft Azure.
Lenovo is also working with VMware on hyperconverged solutions, and will
intelligence to filter this data in
offer vCloud as an appliance within a few months. realtime.
ThinkSystem includes 14 new systems with new architecture designed Other use cases would include
and built for future-defined data centres, from racks, towers, blades, mission-
critical servers and dense optimised systems.
intuitive systems, automated
They are all managed with the same common framework, XClarity, and are voice and image recognition
the same building blocks that are used in the ThinkAgile solutions. systems, Sotolongo says.
Sotolongo summarises, saying Lenovo believes the future of the data centre
is software defined.
Software-defined networking
We believe that focusing on software, and integrating with best of breed solutions will likely be the next
software, we will help customera differentiate the way they run their data area where appliance-like
centres and achieve economies of scale and agility that can currently only be
found in the cloud.
solutions would see the light.
A recent case study saw the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre deploy 3 200
nodes, creating the worlds largest cluster using the new Intel CPU and running
at 11,1 petaflops.
But this is by no mean the only massive Intel deployment from Lenovo at
least two other sites are already underway, Sotolongo says. n

August 2017 25
 MOBILE
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The future
is bright for
Lenovo SA

T
he move to expand Lenovos
operations from its traditional base
of PCs and laptops, adding the
mobile and data centre groups, has
seen the company reach new heights.
So far this year, the company has grown
ahead of the market, and new opportunities
are presenting themselves all the time,
according to Thibault Dousson, GM:
southern Africa at Lenovo.
Yes, its been a tough year, he says.
But the IT market is seeing positive growth
at about 10% and conditions have actually
been pretty stable.
Lenovo is confident about the future,
he adds, especially with the additional
opportunities afforded by the new business
divisions it has brought on board.
We invested in the mobile business
group, which has been led by Graham
Braum in this region since last November.
The company has also made a big
investment in the data centre group, and
that is starting to pay dividends.
Lenovos is also ensuring that the
future of its core PC market continues
to be positive thanks to the wealth of
technological innovations it has introduced
into its product lines.
Yes, the overall PC market is a bit flat,
but the business is there, Dousson says.
Overall, it is still a $40-billion a year
business so even if its contracting its
still a big market to be part of. And Lenovo
keeps on pushing through new technology.
Even if the market is not particularly
buoyant, Im confident that we are doing
well.
Customer-centricity is a big focus for
Lenovo, and its something the company
plans to make part of its DNA. We are
really serious about turning the company
into a customer-centric organisation,
Dousson says.
So far, it seems to be working, he adds.
Customer surveys show an increasing
level of satisfaction with Lenovo, while the
company is working hard to address any
issues quickly and effectively.
The South African organisation is keeping
pace with the global move to customer-
centricity with an increased focus on
services.
Business is good in the region, with
positive growth expected in the coming
months. I am upbeat about the southern
African region, Dousson says. This is
a good country to be investing in there
arent that many regions in the world
that can boast 10% growth, and the new
horizons are looking good.
He reiterates that a fair part of this
success is down to the broad range of
solutions that Lenovo offers.
Whether its the mobile, PC or data centre
side of the business, its all about innovation
and Lenovo is doing that. There are great
product, projects and innovation Lenovo is
an exciting place to be.n

26 Special Feature

Modern CPUs at the
heart of innovation
I
T needs to learn about where other
industries are going and this will help in
the development of technology.
Alexei Navolokin, alliances director:
Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Intel,
points out that businesses as diverse
and unexpected as coffee shops and
agriculture are using technology in ways we
couldnt imagine just a short while ago.
The fourth industrial revolution sees the
fusion of physical, digital and biological
worlds, he adds. This has changed how
we do things and how we are going to live
in the future.
The technology megatrends enabling
these moves include cloud computing,
artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics,
and network transformation in the form
of 5G.
But we are just at the beginning of the
revolution, he says. Technologies that will
soon become mainstream and start to
change our lives include merged reality,
wearable technology, distributed ledgers like
blockchain, the widespread deployment of
5G connectivity, smart machines, cognitive
systems and 3D printing.
These technologies are enabling the
blending of transactional and digital
business models, Navolokin says.
What Intel is doing is looking at the new
applications and looking at how that will
change the technology we need.
The companys new Xeon Scalable
processors are part of this enablement, he
says.
This generation of processors was
developed from scratch. This is something
completely advanced. The CPU can go up
to 18 cores, wth significant improvement
August 2017
above previous generations.
The new Xeon Scalable platform offers
1,65-times performance gains, 2-times
security improvement, 4-times better virtual
machine capacity and a 65% lower total
cost of ownership (TCO).
These gains are enabled by the Intel
Mesh architecture developed for the Xeon
Scalable. This provides a more direct path
for data throughput than the earlier ring
architecture.
Importantly, the mesh accesses all
caches and all cores simultaneously to
radically speed up the CPUs performance.
The Intel AVX-512 also boosts
performance by offering a new level of
vector performance and doubling the
available flops per clock cycle.
But Intel isnt just innovating in the data
centre, there are also big moves afoot for
the client business.
The client computing group strategy
revolves around high-performance
processors, the development of ramp
technology platforms and the development
of new use cases.
Intel has released the 8th generation
of its Core processors, designed for
multimedia content and adding overall
performance gains of up to 40%.
The first 8th Gen Intel Core processors
will be optimised for mobile computing, and
devices will be available within the next two
weeks.
Desktop processors will follow in the next
month or so, with enterprise products due
shortly thereafter.
The mobile processors released first are
designed for thin and light notebooks and
2 in 1s.
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Editing photos or creating a slideshow is
up to 48% faster on 8th Gen devices than
those using last years processor, while
editing video footage is up to 14,7-times
faster.
The first wave of 8th Gen Intel Core
processor-powered devices featuring
quad-core i5/i7 processors will be
available September, with more than 145
designs.
The family will continue to roll out over
the next few months, and will include some
of Intels first 10nm products.
Intel Speed Shift Technology helps users
browse the web quickly, while Intel Turbo
Boost Technology 2.0 lets them work more
productively by dynamically controlling
power and speed across cores and
graphics, boosting performance and saving
energy when it counts.
With up to four cores, the 8th generation
Intel Core Processor U-series with Intel
Hyper-Threading Technology supports up to
eight threads.
The processors have been built with
immersive entertainment in mind. Built-in
media capabilities enhance the editing and
viewing experience with 4K Ultra HD video,
360-degree video, and premium content
streaming.
Integrated Intel UHD Graphics deliver
advanced, efficient performance, and the
media engine, with power-efficient VP9 and
HEVC 10-bit hardware acceleration, boosts
battery life, even with 4K UHD viewing and
content creation.
Intel and Lenovo have a long history
of partnering. We have been working on
design and marketing as a joint effort across
all the segments, says Navolokin. n
27
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Mobile could solve
many of Africas
issues
M
obile technology presents
Africa with an unsurpassed
opportunity to address its
most stubborn development
challenges: health, poverty, hunger and
education.
Thats the view of Vuyani Jarana, chief
officer of Vodacom Business, who points
out that while major strides are being made
in Africas development, equitable progress
remains elusive. For example, while Africas
burgeoning population has the potential
to be a powerful competitive advantage,
refugees continue to flee conflict, often with
tragic consequences, such as the estimated
400 young immigrants feared dead in the
Mediterranean recently.
Of the estimated 800-million
undernourished people worldwide, more
than 223-million one-third are in
sub-Saharan Africa, Jarana says. Also,
healthcare on the continent is burdened
by disease and resource constraints, while
disparities in education standards and
facilities remain.
However, Jarana believes that mobile
technology could provide a powerful
springboard in addressing these crises.
The uptake in Africa, he says, has been
little less than meteoric: around 17-million
Africans had connections in 2000 and that
has soared to more than 906-million in
2015. While that expansion is significant
in itself, it also presents tremendous
28
opportunities for social development.
Mobile technology accelerates the impact
of any social development programme
while enabling its rollout to the masses
cost-effectively. These factors combine to
produce a leapfrog effect on development.
This can be illustrated in mobile
technologys exponential effect: from 1878
to 1994, the continent had 4-million
telephones, but from 1994 to 2017, that
number increased to 50-million phones.
Jarana spells out the implications for
mobile technology for the continents most
troubled sectors, with healthcare as a
primary example. Smartphone apps enable
community health-workers and home-based
care-workers to visit patients in their homes
and collect vital information which can
immediately be assimilated centrally.
This reduces the need for patients to
visit clinics and hospitals, reducing patient
load and possibly treating ailments before
admission is required. The data can
immediately be analysed in terms of trends,
not only for the individual patient, but
across population groups, enabling targeted
information in areas that need it most.
Its a micro-level approach which, when
rolled out on a massive scale, can have a
significant impact.
Jarana says the mobile platform enables
many sources of data to be aggregated
and supplied to the Health Department, for
action.
In South Africa alone this approach could
have widespread, immediate impact: of
the population of more than 54-million,
only around 480 000 have their health
details logged by the Health Department.
The Department envisages a health worker
being able to visit every home in the
country. The system is already being rolled
out in Nigeria and Kenya.
Similarly:
Education could be accelerated
through improved school
administration, empowerment of
educators, access to digital information
and virtual reality experiments;
Agriculture could be more efficient and
profitable, through access to markets
and finance, improving food security
and boosting agribusiness as a driver
of economic growth; and
Financial inclusion can be extended
through access to mobile banking,
person-to-person money transfers,
business-to-consumer services and
international remittances.
This, says Jarana, can herald the
Fourth Industrial Revolution, following
mechanisation (water and steam-power),
mass production (assembly-lines and
electricity), computing and animation. The
fourth, cyber-physical and digital systems,
could well herald the most significant
advances of all for socioeconomic
development. n
Special Feature

Good security
practices key to
realising mobile
potential
S
outh African organisations can
drive massive productivity and
efficiency gains by mobilising
their enterprise content
management (ECM) and business process
management (BPM) systems but only if
they adopt solutions and best practices that
keep confidential corporate and customer
data secure at all times.
Thats according to JP Lourens,
software product manager at Kyocera
Document Solutions South Africa, who
says that along with the convenience
and productivity benefits of giving users
the ability to access data and documents
wherever they are, mobility also introduces
new security risks.
Mobile devices can easily be lost or
stolen, with the result that confidential
data can fall into the wrong hands, he
says. Companies that will be providing the
workforce with mobile access to documents
should ensure that they adhere to global
best practices in data protection and comply
with local laws and regulations, such as
the Protection of Personal Information Act
(POPI). This is especially important when
handling sensitive documents that contain
financial data, personally identifiable
information or contractual details.
Lourens says that a mobile ECM/
BPM solution should offer tight security
at two levels: user and administrator.
Administrators should have full control over
which features and data their end users can
access, so that unauthorised people cannot
August 2017
access sensitive information.
Some examples of the key features to
look for in a secure mobile ECM/BPM
solution include:
Data cache clean-out: The administrator
should be able to configure the app to
flush all data, including any open electronic
documents, from the device in any
situation. To continue working, the user
will need to log back into the system and
download the electronic document again if
needed.
Automatic log-out: IT should set a
policy that users must log out when they
are finished interacting with the app. A
good solution will allow the administrator
to configure a server setting enabling
automatic log-out and disabling automatic
log-in and export for all users. It is best
practice to pair these security settings
with the security features offered by
mobile devices, such as Auto-Lock and
Passcode Lock. It should be possible to
configure the app to log-out automatically
after a certain period of inactivity or when
the user minimises the app. This should
not only remove all documents from local
storage, but remove traces of the document
or folder that the user was last viewing.
These features will stop unauthorised
individuals from picking up an abandoned
iPad or iPhone and viewing the data.
Automatic log-in: Any mobile app with
access to sensitive company information
should feature an option to disable
automatic log-in. This forces the user to
MOBILE
S P E C I A L F E AT U R E
type in the user name and password each
time the app is opened. It is recommended
to disable automatic log-in when using
automatic log-out.
Data leak protection: When an
electronic document is exported from a
corporate-approved mobile app to another
app, that new app takes control of the
document. A robust platform should allow
IT to control whether sensitive documents
can be exported to other apps, from where
they can be shared with other people or
stored locally on the device.
User permissions: The app should
enable the IT department to set which
documents and system features different
groups of users can access. For example,
HR directors who need administrative
access to employee documents may have
different permissions than HR clerks who
only need to view certain documents. While
the first group is allowed to perform any
action including deleting and modifying
documents, the second group can only view
and print what their access permissions
grant them access to.
Says Lourens: In addition to using a
secure platform and configuring it correctly,
the organisation should have clear security
and capture policies in place. It is important
to educate users about the security settings
and to show them how to keep corporate
data secure. If users will access sensitive
documents outside the office, they should
also be instructed on how to set up a VPN
on their mobile device. n
29
 MOBILE
S P E C I A L F E AT U R E
Mobile freedom
through device
management
By Kevin Hardy, MD of BT in Africa
A
round six out of 10 people now
work in several different places
during the week and many
especially younger staff expect
their employer to give them tools to support
this more flexible way of working.
What all businesses need to come
to terms with now, is that this is not a
flash-in-the-pan trend. In fact, the work
and lifestyle desires to work from where
I am of the younger and millennial
generation will continue to fuel the uptake
of technologies that support this and offer
increased mobility, agility and flexibility in
working parameters.
Therefore, rather than resisting and
with this risk missing out on a potential
competitive edge, or being on the back foot
to retain talented staff businesses should
be putting serious clout into designing and
implementing their own mobile adoption
strategy.
Break the resistance to embrace new
digital possibilities
There are real benefits to be gained from
allowing technologies that employees
already know and value to be used in the
workplace - which are proving the business
and economic case for adapting to the bring
your own device (BYOD) trend. The biggest
fear causing resistance to embracing this
trend is the potential theft of confidential
data.
It used to be simple for businesses to
protect devices at work. However, mobile
working has not only added layers of
30
complexity to protecting the business and
devices at work, but it has also made
endpoint security more critical than ever.
Allowing such fear to debilitate progress in
the business by not adapting to digital and
mobile technology however, can have even
more significant and harshly felt effects on
the organisation.
Rather, with the advent of cloud
computing and the agile, mobile digital
workforce, business security controls
must protect all employees, as well as the
sensitive data that they access, across
a seeming plethora of locations, devices
and content types. Its about striking the
right balance between meeting demand for
mobility within the enterprise, while still
protecting the network, core data assets,
corporate applications and ultimately the
brand.
Hitting the sweet spot
Mobilising a business is not just about
having a network contract and the latest
devices its about how to make mobile
work better for the business. Achieving
this, relies on having a great mobile
service integrated with all other solutions
and communication tools to provide one
seamless user experience.
However, to better manage the cost and
security consequences for the business
and to ensure there isnt an uncontrolled
proliferation of personal devices connected
to corporate resources businesses must
look at deploying an enterprise mobility
management (EMM) policy and strategy.
An integrated EMM solution goes beyond
mobile device management, and looks
at helping a business extend their mobile
working, by empowering the business
to manage, monitor, secure and support
all sorts of mobile devices and remote
access points, as their employees connect
to the business internal networks and
systems. This enables employees to access
appropriate mobile tools, applications
and above all, timely support to boost
productivity but through set controls that
can reduce mobile costs and maintain
corporate security.
Such solutions also offer fail safes where
the business IT teams can remotely disable
or bar devices in the event of loss or theft,
as well as ensuring that corporate data
and security isnt compromised by staff
accessing systems on different devices.
Further to this, EMM solutions are also
designed and equipped to deal with issues
around applications employees download
and that are inappropriate for their corporate
device for instance, applications that
contain malware, or gambling apps, etc.
Enterprise mobility will certainly
continue to experience remarkable
market acceleration in the coming years.
Businesses therefore need to become as
flexible as their staff, where the business
approach to adapting to mobility must
centre on the coming together of people
and technology in new ways; resulting in
fundamental changes in people, teams
and organisational structures for better
business results. n
Special Feature
 MOBILE
S P E C I A L F E AT U R E
Mobile changes the
way we do business
By Ronald Ravel
O of mobile
ne-third of South African
employees are currently
working outside of their
company offices, and
organisations are seeing the benefit of
providing remote working access.
A recent survey by Regus states that,
since 2015, organisations are investing
8% more in IT services, specifically
software to ensure that remote working is
efficient for employees.
South African companies need to move
beyond basic employee collaboration
tools such as email, and instead embrace
a true digital workplace to drive continued
productivity and competitive advantage.
These days, mobile technologies allow
people to be productive wherever they
are. However, working practices at many
organisations have yet to catch on.
Employees tend to gravitate towards
organisations that offer them the work-life
balance, so organisations should offer
their employees the option of working
remotely or to work flexi hours.
Todays youth are exposed to
technology: they want to stay connected
at all times and their mobile phones have
become an extension of themselves.
We Are Socials annual Digital Report
states that 49% of the South African
population are active Internet users,
with 18% (10-million) connecting to the
Internet using their mobile device, clearly
proving that there is an increasing need
for South Africans to be connected.
Flexibility in the workplace and
employee productivity will drive staff
engagement and workplace satisfaction
which, in turn, will increase productivity
while making long-term cost cutting
savings.
However, CIOs are facing challenges
when it comes to flexible working, mainly
in securing corporate data, which will
continue to be an ongoing battle. Even
businesses with strong device usage
policies and management strategies have
been victims of data loss or a breach as a
direct result of working remotely.
CIOs will need to implement a security
strategy that covers remote working as
32
there is always the risk of human error
with a company device getting stolen
or employees leaving their devices on
different modes of transport.
They need to implement a secure
mobile working strategy for their business
in order to create a happier workforce by
allowing employees to work flexibly when
and where suits them the most.
The right technology for CIOs will
provide the mobility and reliability needed
to enable a flexible workforce, while
offering an advanced level of security and
peace of mind for todays businesses.
As a first line of defence, biometric
measures like fingerprint sensors and
IR-cameras can be used to prevent
unauthorised users from accessing or
unlocking devices in the event they are
lost or stolen. Security features such as
Trusted Platform Module 2.0 can be used
to prevent organisations data from being
accessed too.
Windows Hello and Intel Authenticate
can also act as an initial security barrier.
These features enhance encryption and
secure sign-in options, helping to protect
valuable stored keys and credentials.
Implementing security measures can
be time consuming, but necessary to
protect the sensitive company information
accessed by these devices. n A single subscriber streaming HD video
f Ronald Ravel is director: B2B South Africa
at Toshiba South Africa
The rise
and rise
A
massive 2,6-billion new mobile
broadband subscribers will
be added through 2022 an
average of more than 1-million
each day.
These new subscribers would be enough to
fill Africas largest soccer stadium, Soccer City
with a capacity of approximately 95 000
10 times each day for the next five years.
Africa added 9-million new mobile
subscriptions in the first quarter of 2017,
reaching a total of 985-million.
The latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility
Report indicates that the dominant access
technology will be LTE (also known as 4G)
in 2018, making it the fastest-growing
mobile technology in history.
Ericsson foresees continued rapid growth
of mobile connectivity as global mobile data
traffic increases to eight times its current
level by 2022.
This traffic is the equivalent of:
The population of Spain streaming HD
video 24 hours per day for a month;
continuously for 3,55-million years; or
Almost 31-billion hours of continuous
HD video streaming.
The June edition of the Ericsson Mobility
Report shows the highest year-on-year mobile
data growth globally since 2013, led by
massive growth in India, and highlights the
underlying need for mobile data. Nigeria is
among the top five countries with 3-million
mobile subscriptions net additions in Q1 2017.
The use of smartphones and easy access
to mobile Internet services comprise a
major part of the traffic numbers. Ericsson
analyses smartphone mobile data traffic
within mobile data traffic to illustrate this
trend more clearly. By the end of 2022,
total smartphone mobile data traffic will
have increased nine times, reaching 66
exabytes per month.
The November 2016 edition of the
Special Feature

Ericsson Mobility Report showed that mobile
data traffic continues to grow in sub-Saharan
Africa, and is showing no signs of slowing
down. It is forecast to grow by around 55%
annually between 2016 and 2022.
The rapid increase in mobile data traffic
in sub-Saharan Africa is driving operators
to explore methods of optimising network
capacity, one of which is complementing
traffic on WiFi networks. Operators are
offering Wi-Fi to consumers either as stand-
alone or bundled with existing packages,
and are extending WiFi calling services
to subscribers with devices bearing this
capability.
Niklas Heuveldop, chief strategy officer
and head of technology and emerging
business at Ericsson, says: Based on
measurements made in hundreds of mobile
networks, the Ericsson Mobility Report data
truly illustrates the tremendous underlying
growth in the industry. 4G subscriptions are
increasing faster than ever, Voice over LTE
uptake is accelerating and traffic growth
has reached levels we have not seen since
2013.
I am particularly excited to see the
industrys major steps to progress network
evolution, including the approval of the
Non-Standalone 5G New Radio (NR) that
will enable early 5G deployments.
According to our forecast, we anticipate
that this will lead to more than half a billion
5G subscriptions and a population coverage
of 15% by 2022.
On industry trends, the Mobility Report
features articles on Internet for all, massive
IoT coverage in cities and remote operation
of vehicles with 5G.
In 2018, LTE (4G) will overtake GSM as
the largest access technology by number of
subscriptions. The speed with which this
technology has been rolled out and adopted
is unprecedented. It has taken only five
years for LTE to cover 2,5-billion people,
compared to eight years for WCDMA/HSPA,
or 3G. In the first quarter of this year alone,
250-million new LTE subscriptions were
added.
While LTE uptake is driven by demand
for improved user experience and faster
networks, 5G deployment will also be
driven by the need for enhanced mobile
broadband capabilities, as well as industry
solutions for efficiency and automation.
5G will be the one network to support a
diversity of use cases. More than half a
billion 5G subscriptions are expected to
be activated by 2022, not including IoT
connections. 5G is then expected to cover
around 15% of the worlds population. n as postapp technologies that belong to an
August 2017
Number of
enterprise mobile
apps stagnates
M
ore than a quarter of
organisations globally have
not built, customised or
virtualised any mobile apps
in the last 12 months, according to the
latest mobile app survey by Gartner.
This number is surprisingly high, say
Gartner analysts, but it is still down from
the year before. In the 2016 survey, 39%
of respondents said they had not built,
customised or virtualised any mobile apps
in the previous 12 months.
Many IT teams will have significant
backlogs of application work that need
completing, which increases the risk of
lines of business going around IT to get
what they want sooner, says Adrian
Leow, research director at Gartner.
Development teams need to rethink their
priorities and span of control over mobile
app development or risk further erosion of
IT budgets and the perceived value of IT
development.
According to the survey, those
organisations that have undertaken
mobile app development have deployed
an average of eight mobile apps to date,
which has remained relatively flat when
compared with 2016. On average,
another 2,6 mobile apps are currently
being developed and 6,2 are planned
for the next 12 months, but not yet in
development.
Its encouraging to see significant
growth in the number of mobile apps that
are planned, but most of this growth is in
mobile Web apps as opposed to native
or hybrid mobile apps, says Leow. This
indicates that some companies may be
frustrated with developing mobile apps
and are instead refocusing on responsive
websites to address their mobile needs.
Gartners survey reveals that 52% of
respondents have begun investigating,
exploring or piloting the use of bots,
chatbots or virtual assistants in mobile
app development, which is surprisingly
high given how nascent these
technologies are. Gartner refers to these
era where the traditional app obtained
MOBILE
S P E C I A L F E AT U R E
from an app store and installed on to a
mobile device will become just one of a
wide range of ways that functionality and
services will be delivered to mobile users.
Application leaders need to understand
the different post-app technologies that
are emerging to ensure their mobile app
strategies remain relevant and succeed.
While this response may be more
indicative of greater awareness of these
technologies than of anything else, its
still good to see that organisations have
begun to consider these technologies,
because they will grow in importance
relatively rapidly, says Leow.
According to the survey, the primary
barriers to mobile initiatives are resources
related lack of funds, worker hours and
skills gaps. Cost concerns are pervasive in
IT organisations so this is not surprising,
but it points to the need to enhance
productivity with the budgets that IT
development organisations already have.
Other barriers include a lack of
business benefits and ROI justification;
however, a lack of understanding of
customer needs may contribute to this.
In terms of spending, the survey revealed
that organisations actual IT spend on
mobile apps is consistently lower than they
forecast. Despite 68% of organisations
expecting to increase spending for mobile
apps, the average proportion of the overall
software budget is only 11%.
Those that plan on increasing spending in
2017 expect to do so by 25% over last year.
For the past few years, Gartner research
has shown that while organisations have
indicated that they will increase their mobile
app development budget spend, the reality
is that spending allocation has decreased.
Application leaders must turn around
this trend of stagnating budgeted
spend on mobile app development,
as employees increasingly have the
autonomy to choose the devices, apps
and even the processes with which to
complete a task, says Leow. This will
place an increasing amount of pressure
on IT to develop a larger variety of mobile
apps in shorter time frames. n
33
 MOBILE
S P E C I A L F E AT U R E
Balancing
mobility risk
with data
availability
Mobile devices have become an
integral component of the always-on
enterprise. But what impact do they
have on the modern data centre,
especially when employees expect to
have access to mission-critical data
from wherever they are?
This question posed by Rick
Vanover, director, technical product
marketing and evangelism at Veeam:
We are living in a connected world.
People are using a number of smart
devices to remain in touch with not only
family and friends but also with their
employers. This flexibility gives them
the ability to access vital data whether
they are in the office or watching their
children compete at school sports.
According to recent figures by the
Pew Research Centre, even the South
African market is embracing the shift
towards smartphones. With 37% of
people indicating they are using the
devices, the opportunities for the
always-on enterprise are significant.
Improvements in productivity aside,
the ability to leverage data as close to
realtime as possible means decision-
makers can gain vital insight while
in the field, giving them a crucial
competitive advantage. But with this
embracing of a more mobile way
of doing business comes concerns
around the security implications.
From a mobile security perspective,
there needs to be automated processes
implemented similar to what happens
inside the physical boundaries of
the office, says Vanover. Take for
example when a person leaves the
enterprise. Their access to the network
is automatically revoked. But what
happens to their mobile access? Often,
this is a critical step that gets neglected.
Ensuring such an authorisation
framework is active usually falls within
the responsibility of a solution like
Microsoft Active Directory which has
the most consistent authentication
mechanism in place. But for this
34
solution (and others) to work, the
enterprise needs to make certain that
the link to it is available. In keeping
with the premise of always-on, if this
is not the case, then the company is
open to serious security risks.
The moment authentication is
unavailable, an enterprise seriously
impacts the security of its data.
Despite this, mobile apps are not going
away. Enterprises need to implement
a rule set in their modern data centres
that reflect the changing requirements.
Such a rule set could also counteract
the risks of using consumer software
in the business environment, Vanover
adds.
The file-sharing phenomenon is a
prime example of what happens when
employees get comfortable in using
consumer solutions in the business.
While the enterprise might have the
best systems in place to protect their
data, not much can be done once an
employee shares that over a service
like OneDrive or DropBox.
The moment people have access
to back-end systems on their phones
they could compromise its security
by using these and other third-party
apps. In this instance, the best
strategy then would be to utilise
mobile device management as a way
to secure the link between mobile
devices and the data centre.
Features of such an approach
include the ability to remotely wipe
the data off a smart device if it gets
lost or stolen. But this on its own is
not enough. Policies and processes
need to be updated to reflect the
growing role the mobile device is
playing inside the enterprise.
All of this points to the need for
the always-on enterprise to link data
between mobile devices and the
data centre. Decision-makers need
to re-examine data hierarchy and its
importance in the context of security
and trust zones, Vanover says. n
Smartphone
competition heats up
CK Lu, research director at Gartner shares
his insight about the future of smartphone
competition, including 5G technology, artificial
intelligence (AI) and behavioural biometrics
on smartphones, and the impact of the royalty
dispute between Apple and Qualcomm on the
Chinese smartphone ecosystem
Where is the growth coming from in the smartphone market and
how is 5G going to impact it?
Gartner expects global sales of smartphones to end users
to see minimal growth in the next five years, with 5%
growth in 2017. Emerging Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan
Africa are the only two regions to post double-digit
growth in smartphone sales, at around 15% in 2017.
In a recent forecast update, Gartner included
5G-enabled phone sales for the first time. We could
see commercial products ready as early as 2019, but
significant sales volumes are not likely to be realised
until 2020. Gartner expects that initial 5G network
deployments will focus on islands of deployments and
mobile usage is not seen as the primary use case for
5G in the early years. In 2021, we expect total sales of
5G-enabled phones to reach around 90-million units
globally.
What are the hot smartphone technologies in 2017 and 2018?
AI has been the most discussed technology in the last
12 months. But for now, AI applications are still quite
limited. The early implementations are only virtual
personal assistant (VPA) types of services from limited
providers the digital giants, such as Google, Amazon
and Apple. We believe machine learning will also
improve device performance and standby time.
For example, with many sensors, smartphones can
better understand and learn users behaviour, such as
when to use which app. The smartphone will be able to
keep frequent-use apps running in the background for
quick re-launch, or to shut-down those unused apps to
save memory and battery.
The use of computer vision on photo sorting is
another AI application on smartphones. While this
might be already available in some cloud-based
services, such as Google Photo, there is a need to
enable this capability on the smartphone to address
users privacy concerns.
Security technology combining machine learning,
biometrics and user behaviour will reduce the need for
passwords for digital identification and expose users to
richer and new experiences with their smartphones.
Beyond fingerprint, new methods of biometric
authentication such as face, voice and iris recognition
are being explored. Smartphone vendors will extend
the use of biometric measurements to new ways of
authentication, like the users swipe, keystroke and scroll
patterns.n
Special Feature
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Government can
save costs while
improving citizens
lives
By Robert Janssen
G
overnments are not immune to
our world in flux. They and their
departments and organisations
and agencies experience many
of the same pressures as commercial
enterprises.
Digital disruption, the skills gap, and
political and economic upheaval affect them
just as much as the rest of us.
Governments budget constraints also
limit investments in new technologies. Yet
investing in new technology services can
be just what they need to maximise service
delivery and ultimately cut costs in the
long run.
Thats because governments, or public
administration bureaucracies, thrive
on documents and related paperwork.
Organised and consistent administration
is at the root of order that underpins
functional societies.
Yet, as technology has progressed,
governments globally are aware that they
could be doing more to improve their public
administration, according to an IDC white
paper sponsored by Ricoh.
This is no different from their
commercial business counterparts.
And one of the inhibitors to their rapid
adoption of these advanced technologies
July - August 2017
must be the austere global economy. On
the flipside is the desire to better serve
constituents.
Marrying the two could result in more
efficient services that improve the lives
of constituents and also save the public
administration costs associated with
shuffling paper.
Government organisations have a great
opportunity, like many of their commercial
counterparts, to eliminate unnecessary and
ineffective workflows associated with the
documentation they must have in order
to comply with legislation and effectively
administer the country.
But a strategic approach to cost cutting
leverages existing technology and supplier
partnerships with relatively little incremental
investment. And, as with any project of
such a nature, must rely on the three
principles of success: people, as well the
process, and technology.
Our relentless focus on transforming
organisations, helping them capitalise on
opportunity to reach their full potential,
means close partnership to leverage
opportunities to shape the future of
government services.
According to Ricohs white paper
research, only 36% of government
IT IN GOVERNMENT
respondents believe their citizen-facing
document-driven processes are efficient
and effective. By comparison, 52% of
people from commercial organisations
feel the same way. And many of those
respondents believe they could save nearly
10% of costs by improving their document-
driven processes.
The desire to improve the cost of South
Africas administration outlook is clear.
The Ministry of Finance said as recently
as June 2017 that it would seek ways to
reprioritise budgets to meet fiscal targets.
The government has also pledged fiscal
discipline.
Governments budget constraints are
typical of those around the world, yet even
modest investments in better document
workflows can recoup costs and also
provide substantial benefits for improving
capacities.
Solid document processes can correct
errors that result in late or incomplete tax
collections. Best results are gained from
strategic document process improvement
because documents typically span
numerous department or agency
processes. n
f Robert Janssen is director of direct channel
operations at Ricoh SA
37

M
any organisations implement
Information Technology and
Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
practices as a project whereas
they should be considered a lifestyle,
constructed within an organisation from
a series of habits. ITIL is not something
that should be implemented, but rather
something to be adopted.
With the adoption of this lifestyle comes
a new way of doing things; a fundamental shift
in the way an organisation does business.
ISO20000, the standard used to measure
IT Service Management and to support
ITIL frameworks, provides the structure
and environment in which these habits
are created and, ultimately, converted into
ongoing best practice.
Consistency and structure
Forming the habits that an organisation
should adopt is not as difficult as perceived.
Maintaining theses habits however, can
be a tricky endeavour, one which requires
consistency and structure. It starts with
understanding the business need and
developing processes that will best serve
the organisations environment.
Through the appropriate staff training,
and leveraging ITILs framework, these
habits can be incorporated into the
organisation with minimum impact on
productivity and ease.
ITIL enables the business to identify
weak spots in the organisation, therefore
maximising the effectiveness of its
workforce. However, companies should
bear in mind that this requires structure,
38
ISO20000: a quantifiable
measure of ITILs success
By Edward Carbutt
direction and guiding the workforce towards
the same goal.
Maintaining habits within a well-
established environment is relatively
simple as there are usually set practices
for staff to follow and adopt. Yet, in newer
environments or environments where ad-
hoc projects and processes vary constantly,
maintaining habits or even forming them
may prove to be difficult.
Executing tasks successfully typically
requires a set of proper documentation, with
clear-cut instructions and methodology for
execution. It also requires a level of support
and constant reminders in order for people to
stay on the right track. However, identifying
what the right track is, what the best support
structures are, and monitoring their success,
is where the true challenge lies.
To effectively establish these habits, or
best practices, within an organisation there
should be a measure against which the
business can work an outline of what the
intended outcomes should be. ISO20000
gives organisations that measure,
or standard, as well as a structured
environment in which the consistency of
their ITSM processes can be developed.
that is measurable
On its own, ITIL, is not prescriptive. While
it outlines the best practices that will ensure
success for any ITSM implementation, it
does not define any measurable goals for
that success. Without these goals, it is
very difficult to maintain the momentum
achieved at the initial implementation.
ISO20000 means that an organisation
can establish a set of objectives intended
by the adoption of habits, or best practices,
as well as a time frame in which to achieve
these objectives. It is auditable, and it
insists on the provision of evidence to prove
the quality and success of an organisations
ITSM, for which is offers a valid certification
and annual check-ups to maintain that
certification.
Businesses demand accountability
and proof that there is governance and a
measure of control in place within an ITSM
department, or within any other organisation
with which it does business or expects a
service. ISO20000 offers exactly that a
way of holding ITSM accountable for its
governance, structure, controls, auditability
and agility. It gives ITIL the teeth it needs
to be taken seriously, for success.
ISO20000 for confidence
In much the same way as a medical certificate
on the wall of your General Practitioners
office instils confidence within you that
the good doctor knows what he is doing,
and has studied for the required number
of years in order to be in a position to offer
advice and care, an ISO20000 certification
inspires confidence in a businesss ability to
deliver on its ITSM strategy.
It stands as quantifiable proof that
the service being provided is of utmost
quality, that ITIL is being followed properly,
and that the intended outcomes will be
delivered on for both the customer and
the business itself. n
f Edward Carbutt is executive director
at Marval Africa
futurewave BusinessIT

ITSM key to driving efficiency, innovation and growth
I
mproving the end user experience
and connecting IT to wider business
objectives is a significant focal point for
IT professionals.
This is according to Ivantis survey,
conducted at this years Service Desk &
IT Support Show (SITS) in London, where
72% of respondents cited improving the
end user experience as one of their top
three strategic management priorities.
When asked about which automation and
analytic capabilities were most important
for their organisations ITSM initiatives
this year, advanced levels of workflow
automation, analytics for incident/problem
and availability management and analytics
for user experience and visibility into end user
problems were IT professionals top priorities.
The majority of respondents therefore
seem to be applying ITSM to address self-
service requirements.
Another vital concern is the need to free
up the IT department to drive business
efficiency, thereby ensuring that the impact
Core principles of developing
AI for business
By Kriti Sharma
B
uilding chatbots and artificial
intelligence (AI) that helps our
customers is the easy part the
wider questions that the rising tide
of AI bring are broad and currently very topical.
Because of this, we developed our AI
within a set of guiderails, these are the core
principles that we believe help us to ensure
our products are safe and ethical.
The Ethics of Code are designed
to protect the user and to ensure that
technology giants like Sage are building AI
that is safe, secure, fits the use case and,
most importantly, is inclusive and reflects
the diversity of the users it serves.
We are calling on big businesses, small
business and hackers alike, asking them
to bear these principles in mind when
developing or deploying their own AI.
AI should reflect the diversity of the users
it serves
Both industry and community must develop
effective mechanisms to filter bias as well as
negative sentiment in the data that AI learns
from ensuring AI does not perpetuate
stereotypes.
July - August 2017
of ITSM enables wider business objectives
to be achieved. For example, the research
shows that 52% of respondents see ITSM
reporting capabilities that place data in the
hands of key decision-makers as a core
priority within their ITSM strategy.
However, only 50% of those surveyed
saw ITSM as a tool to support crucial
security and compliance processes.
Of particular note, only 36% of those
surveyed who work in the healthcare
industry (this includes healthcare
consultancies, suppliers and practitioners)
identified security and compliance as a
point of focus for ITSM.
This is surprising given the upcoming
GDPR legislation and the amount of
personal, and highly sensitive, data
that healthcare organisations hold on to
internally.
It is also concerning given the growing
severity of external threats such as the
recent global WannaCry and NotPetya
ransomware attacks.
AI must be held to account and so must
users
Users build a relationship with AI and
start to trust it after just a few meaningful
interactions. With trust, comes responsibility
and AI needs to be held accountable for its
actions and decisions, just like humans.
Technology should not be allowed to
become too clever to be accountable. We
dont accept this kind of behaviour from
other expert professions, so why should
technology be the exception.
Reward AI for showing its workings
Any AI system learning from bad
examples could end up becoming socially
inappropriate we have to remember that
most AI today has no cognition of what it
is saying. Only broad listening and learning
from diverse data sets will solve for this.
One of the approaches is to develop
a reward mechanism when training AI.
Reinforcement learning measures should
be built not just based on what AI or robots
do to achieve an outcome, but also on how
AI and robots align with human values to
accomplish that particular result.
ITSM
Traditional hierarchies with manual IT
processes and tools, plus complex user
interfaces that do not give users what
they want, struggle to be drivers of digital
transformation, comments Ian Aitchison,
senior product director at Ivanti. When
we developed and put this survey out to the
ITSM professionals at SITS, the question on
our mind was: what are UK IT departments
doing to break the status quo and become
an enabler, rather than a barrier to business
growth and productivitivy?
Businesses require IT to help provide
technology and solutions which drive the
business forward, and not just support it.
Through simplification, integration and
automation, many tasks like onboarding
new employees, and replacing lost or
damaged phones, that used to consume
time and money can now be automated.
The process of automation allows IT to
focus on innovation by changing the way
we test, measure and create new services
and revenue streams. n
AI should level the playing field
Voice technology and social robots provide
newly accessible solutions, specifically to
people disadvantaged by sight problems,
dyslexia and limited mobility.
The business technology community
needs to accelerate the development of new
technologies to level the playing field and
broaden the available talent pool.
AI will replace, but it must also create
There will be new opportunities created
by the robotification of tasks, and we need
to train humans for these prospects. If
business and AI work together it will enable
people to focus on what they are good
at building relationships and caring for
customers. n
f Kriti Sharma is vice-president: bots and AI at Sage
39
 ITSM is a matter of culture
By Dr Don Page
I
mproved service is a critical objective
for any organisation -not only an
operational goal, but a strategic
business one as well. Improved service
is directly related to customer loyalty,
growth and the business long-term
sustainability.
Thats why many organisations are
continually looking for an impeccable, rich
and memorable customer experience. This
experience is the outcome of a simplified,
personalised and consistent service delivery.
There is only one way to simplify and
improve the service we deliver, and thats
by adopting a customer-centric culture; one
that is based on:
The continual review and re-evaluation
of our current procedures;
The identification of our weaknesses;
Being accountable and open to
improvements ;
Enabling our people to be more
effective, by providing the right tools;
and
Embracing optimised processes.
I am using the word culture for a
reason. In order for ITSM to be effective,
it has to become an integral part of the
organisations culture. Therefore, it requires
the support of the people who are actively
involved in it.
Which can be tricky, of course.
Introducing a new culture can be upsetting
for people, teams or the organisation as a
whole, since it challenges long established,
familiar procedures and operations.
Unfortunately, the businesses that need
change the most, are most likely to be less
responsive and open to change.
Furthermore, many people are reluctant
to embrace (or even follow) the new; they
need to buy in to it.
And the CIOs are required to inspire them
by communicating, clearly and repeatedly,
not just the benefits for the business, but
40
also for each team and individual; in other
words, whats in for them - or as I often
refer to it, enlightened self-interest.
So what are the advantages for people?
A clear workflow, which will help eliminate
conflicts. Increased performance, with
improved first-time fix rates. Enhanced
productivity, by using the best available
resources. Better collaboration among the
team, better insight in the teams and the
individuals achievements, recognition and
increased job satisfaction to name just
a few.
These advantages have to be explained
and discussed with people, to ensure they
realise the value and are ready to embrace
the new. If a person understands their role,
they will have a clear, holistic view of their
impact on the success or failure of the
solution.
These roles can be strengthened by
quality ITSM training, practical pragmatic
and not too bureaucratic processes, to
avoid user deficiencies and the taking of
shortcuts. The emphasis has to be on the
impact on people, whether customers or the
service desk team.
At the end of the day, it all comes
down to people, processes and, of
course, technology (in that order). Service
excellence is built upon proven processes,
extraordinary people and the technology
that helps instil within the organisation
a culture of change. This culture lies
with well-designed and successful ITSM
implementations, underpinning proven
industry standards like ITIL and ISO/IEC
20000.
ITIL is, essentially, a proven best practice.
It outlays processes and principles which
have to be embraced and followed.
ITIL can help an organisation improve its
services and meet the changing demands
of business, through well-established
processes and by identifying and addressing
areas of improvement; but lets not ignore
one of the basics tenants of ITIL: adopt,
adapt and improve.
If a process is failing dont ignore it;
improve it. If staff feel a process is not
working or adding value, change it; dont
ignore it or look for a different method or
tool to solve your own inadequacies.
To be really successful, ITIL requires
accountability: personal accountability,
accountability to colleagues, to the
department and customers.
How do you spread this accountability
across the team and the organisation?
ISO/IEC 20000 is an effective strategy
to ensuring a more accountable and
successful ITIL-based service improvement
programme.
Since it clearly focuses on continual
improvement, ISO /IEC 20000 helps
the service desk staff become more
responsible, actively engage with the
process, and measure and evaluate the
services they deliver to the business and
customers. It provides a standard against
which IT operations will be evaluated and
demonstrate to the business that the service
delivery processes represent best practice.
For me, ISO/IEC 20000 provides an
organisational quality stamp which can
be benchmarked, which the business can
use to benchmark themselves against the
competition and provide organisational,
stakeholder and customer confidence in
their service delivery team.
Adopting ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000 for
service management can be an exciting,
transformative journey for the organisation.
While embarking on this journey, the CIOs
have to lead by example, engage with all
teams involved, and employ their best
assets: their people, a clear vision and
strategy, and the right technology to make it
all happen. n
f Dr Don Page is ITSM strategic director at Marval
futurewave BusinessIT
:
:
:
:
 As digitalisation takes centre stage, agility, flexibility and the ability to offer new solutions as
customer needs change is one of the characteristics of the new world order. Its a dynamic
that is breathing new life into organisations in every industry and every geography, and
its appropriate that IT companies themselves are changing with the times. One of these is
Oracle, which has made a number of moves to ensure that not only its product set, but its
organisational structure are keeping pace with an ever-changing market. Kathy Gibson spent
some time with Cherian Varghese, MD for Sub-Saharan Africa at Oracle, to learn how things
at the company have changed

Oracle is
serious about
Africa

J
ust a couple of years ago, who
would have thought that Africa
would be one of the leading lights
in the digitalisation world?
Some exciting projects are driving the
continent forward, says Cherian Varghese,
MD for Sub-Saharan Africa at Oracle, who
says innovative and exciting initiatives are
underway in many parts of Africa.
Theres a lot of work happening in
Kigali on the Smart Africa project, he says.
Among the East African countries, Rwanda
is very proactive and showing what Africa
can do in terms of transformation, and
there are some very interesting projects
underway.
Digitalisation is key to Rwandas intention
to become a major logistics hub for the
region, with innovation being driven from
the top echelons of government.
Oracle has been present in Africa for the
last 30 years, much of that time focusing
on the South African market. In the last 10
years, the company has increased its focus
and investment across the continent.
There are now nine operational hubs in
Africa, all full-blown Oracle offices, covering
all the regions within the continent.
Significantly, while many companies
are scaling down their headcounts and
operations, Oracle is expanding and looking
to hire.
Our commitment to Africa is serious,
Varghese says. We are growing into new
markets, and growing our market share.
Weve been investing into Africa for the last
10 years and will continue to do so.
As part of this commitment, every Oracle
office on the continent is a full-blown
operation, supporting every line of business
with a full team able to meet all the
customers needs.

42 futurewave BusinessIT

The company is investing in the human
capital of the countries it does business
in, bringing talented youngsters into its
graduate programme and helping them to
succeed in their future careers.
As the most technologically advanced
country in the sub-Sahara African region,
South Africa still leads in digitalisation
although Varghese points out that
organisations are still proceeding with caution.
Id say we are on the learning curve, he that have opted for pilot projects as a nod
says. A lot of customers are cautious, but
they are moving forward.
In fact, this caution is helping local
companies to learn from more developed
markets and avoid making mistakes as they
adopt digitalisation.
The overall story is positive, Varghese
says. People are talking about it. They may
be thinking big, but they are staring small
but they are starting; they know they have to
digitalise. We are seeing a wave of change.
Oracle is seeing positive moves in the
adoption of cloud, particularly hybrid cloud,
Varghese says.
The company has rewritten its application
suite as a cloud offering and this software
as a service (SaaS) is quickly gaining
traction within Oracles user base. While
many customers prefer to keep their
database on-premise, they are happy to
switch the application to a service model.
Oracle, under the leadership of Larry
Ellison and Mark Hurd, saw the trends
coming and transformed not just the
products, but the sales force as well,
Varghese says.
This involved making the traditional
territory representatives into cloud platform
representatives. And this was more than just
a terminology change, he adds. We have
put a lot of time and focus on changing the
way transformation is presented to customers.
We now have a world-class sales force that
can articulate the value proposition.
This is important because Oracle
is very concerned about tracking its
customers success. We need to ensure
that our customers are successful,
Varghese explains. In the cloud world, the
customers success hinges on the services
that we offer; the availability, the security
and everything around that.
We need to create a long-term trust in
order to retain customers.
In the world of digitalisation, it takes more
than great technology to make a company
successful; how the initiative is tackled
from the top, and change management
throughout the organisation are key.
Over the years, we have seen that the
customers that make the transformation at
July - August 2017
INTERVIEW
the CEO level are the ones that succeed.
They cant pay lip service to the concept,
it has to be driven by management at the
highest level.
It cant be given to IT to drive, but needs
buy-in from the CEO, the CFO and the CMO.
The pivotal heads of the organisation have to
want to make a difference to their customers.
Typically, the companies that have failed
in the transformation journey are those
to digitalisation without committing to
organisational change.
Overall, I would say that the cloud
journey has to come from the C-level,
Varghese says. The closer you go to the top
of the organisation, the better the outcome
for digital transformation.
A mindset change throughout the
organisation is another vital element in
digital success, he adds.
As cloud computing takes off, and
organisations start to actively switch to
hybrid cloud, the location of data centres is
becoming an issue.
The majority of corporate, financial and
Cherian Varghese
government customers are concerned
about data residency, and are reluctant or
prevented by law from allowing data to be Now customers can choose where their
held outside of the countrys borders. data and applications reside.
This concern is one of the factors limiting Underpinning Oracle Cloud at Customer
cloud adoption, but with data centres is a modern cloud infrastructure platform
costing millions of dollars to build and run, based on converged Oracle hardware,
its not necessarily viable to have them in software-defined storage and networking
every country. and a first-class IaaS abstraction.
To solve the problem, we came up with Oracle fully manages and maintains the
the Oracle Cloud machine. infrastructure at customers premises so
Varghese describes this as bringing the that customers can focus on using the IaaS,
Oracle cloud into the customers data centre PaaS and SaaS services.
rather than taking the customers data into Importantly, its the same cloud
the cloud. This completely changes the infrastructure platform that powers the
conversation, he says. Oracle Cloud globally.
Oracle Cloud at Customer lets organisations Currently, customers have access to all
move workloads to the cloud while keeping of Oracles major platforms as a service
their data on their own premises. (PaaS) categories, including database,
The portfolio now spans all of the major application development, analytics, big
Oracle PaaS categories and for the first data, application and data integration, and
time, also features Oracle SaaS services. identity management.
So far, Oracle Cloud at Customer has been Customers can also consume Oracle
rolled out across six continents and more SaaS services such as enterprise resource
than 30 countries, and will be launched in planning, human capital management,
South Africa early in September. customer relationship management and
Oracle Cloud at Customer removes one supply chain management in their own
of the biggest obstacles to cloud adoption data centres. This means customers
data privacy concerns related to where the have access to Oracle Cloud services
data is stored. across the entire cloud stack, delivered
While organisations are eager to move in a subscription-based, managed model,
their enterprise workloads to the public in their own data centres. Oracle Cloud
cloud, many have been constrained at Customer delivers infrastructure, data
by business, legislative and regulatory management, big data/analytics, application
requirements that have prevented them development, enterprise integration, security
from being able to adopt the technology. and SaaS. n
43
 Artificial intelligence looks set to be the killer app of the next
couple of years, and its rapidly becoming pervasive in the
application software used to run our companies. Mark Davison
was at Inforum 2017 in New York to learn about Infors move
into the world of AI and cognitive computing
Infor introduces
artificial intelligence
I
n arguably one of the most significant
announcements in its history, business
software group Infor has announced
Coleman, an artificial intelligence (AI)
platform for its cornerstone CloudSuite
applications.
With digital transformation sweeping
across all industry segments, including IT,
Coleman heralds a first step in the future
strategy of the company to meet rapidly
changing customer requirements.
Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor, explains
that the companys strategy now revolves
around five key areas: Its traditional
foundation of industry expertise; utilising the
vast power of the cloud; the lateral, multi-
tenant growth of the network; analytics,
following the acquisition of Birst; and now
AI with Coleman.
But it is the launch of Coleman that
piqued the interest of analysts and
journalists at Inforum, as well as both old
and potentially new customers.
AI is an important category for us,
Phillips says. But people ask: Why now?
AI has been around for many years. But
in enterprise computing, sometimes that
happens it takes time to mature and
people give up. But just look at whats
happened in AI in the last 12 months. We
have autonomous cars, Googles AlphaGo
beat the world Go champion, Watson beat
the chess champion, also for the first time
AI was involved in a subpoena.
This technology is creeping into our lives
but it does take time, he says. But once
youve got the foundation down, it speeds up.
Phillips says that another drawback in the
adoption of AI has been compute power.
The PC industry has slowed down in the
last few years Moores Law is changing
and the problem is that we cant get
faster computers, he says. You can throw
more cores at it, but there are limitations.
He adds that the problem of compute
power is now being addressed by the likes
44
of Google and Amazon. as a smart AI partner, augmenting the
Theyve taken the next step and have users work. Coleman uses natural language
millions of machines working together using processing and image recognition to chat,
the cloud, he says. By December, Google hear, talk, and recognise images to help
expects to surpass existing supercomputers by people use technology more efficiently.
two to the power of 300. Coleman develops a conversational
Thats more than all the particles in the relationship with the user which can
universe. be rendered in Infor Ming.le, a social
Infor has been leveraging both Google collaboration platform, or a synthetic
and Amazons cloud for its flagship conversational user interface. User efficiency
CloudSuite and, Phillips says, the company is increased as studies show humans
will continue to do so in the realm of AI. are able to speak and hear 3-4 times as
Were sort of like a research lab, he many words per minute as they can type.
says. We will be trying it and see what Processing the vast data in Infor CloudSuite,
happens in the next 12 months, he says. Coleman automates search and gather
Im surprised at how confident Google is. functions, which can take up 20% of a
Well watch and report back. users work week, significantly increasing
Infor president, Duncan Angove, echoed productivity.
Phillips sentiment. Infor spent many years automating
AI has already entered the mainstream processes that followed clear rules, such as
and is changing our lives, Angove says. accounting and manufacturing processes.
Why now? Compute power,
the Internet, and better
algorithms. The supercomputer
that is the cloud. We see
Coleman eventually powering
our cloud suites.
Its the age of network
intelligence, he adds. And
were prepared for it.
In its official press statement,
Infor says that Coleman is
a pervasive platform that
operates below an applications
surface, mines data and uses
powerful machine learning
to improve processes such
as inventory management,
transportation routing, and
predictive maintenance;
Coleman also provides AI-
driven recommendations and
advice to enable users to make
smarter business decisions
more quickly.
In addition, Coleman acts
futurewave BusinessIT
 REPORT-BACK: INFORMUM

Coleman honours unsung heroine

We are now leveraging machine learning and our access to large
amounts of data to assist users with less structured processes such
as complex decisions, conversations, and predictions, says Phillips.
Coleman helps optimise human work potential in four ways:
Its conversational interactions are more efficient and natural,
and offer a better user experience
Augmentation serves as a partner to amplify ones work
Automation manages low value tasks like repetitive tasks to
enable the user to focus on more valuable work
Advise provides intelligent insights to help the user make
decisions.
Coleman is so powerful because it takes the mission-critical
business data from Infor CloudSuite, coupled with the supplier,
logistics, and finance data from the GT Nexus Commerce Network,
and analyses it with the computing power of a hyper scale public
cloud, says Angove.
The press statement goes on to list some examples of what a user
could ask Coleman:
zz Coleman, what is the accounts receivable balance for ACME Corp?
zz Coleman, whats the next best offer for this customer?
zz Coleman, who is the sales rep on the ABC Labs account?
zz Coleman, what price should I charge for a hotel room?
zz Coleman, what are sales by month for the NW region this year?
zz Coleman, how much PTO do I have left?
zz Coleman, create a requisition for item 4321
zz Coleman, approve the promotion for Nurse Jones.
Elements of Coleman are available today, such as predictive
inventory management for healthcare, price optimisation management
for hospitality, and forecasting, assortment planning, and promotion
management for retail, says Angove. Over the next year Infor is
expected to introduce Coleman to Infor CloudSuite industry suites. n
IBMs Watson may be named after the companys first CEO and
Googles AlphaGo because, well, it could play Go. But in naming
its first entrance into artificial intelligence Coleman, Infor has
acknowledged one of the unsung heroines of the USs space race.
In an official statement, the company says that the name
Coleman was chosen to honour Katherine Coleman Johnson, a
physicist and mathematician whose critical calculations helped man
reach the moon.
In a video precursor to the launch of the AI platform at Inforum,
it was said that John Glenn, the USs first man in space, refused to
enter the cockpit before Johnson had checked the space agencys
calculations.
Once she had, he strapped himself in.
Johnson excelled at maths and science from a young age,
overcoming the obstacles of segregation to become an essential
figure in the US Space Program.
Johnson, whose story was depicted in the 2016 film Hidden
Figures, is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She
has a passion for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math),
and is an inspiration for generations of engineers and scientists, the
Infor statement says.
In the same press statement, the family of Katherine Johnson
say: We are excited and honoured that Infor would choose our
matriarch to help them represent innovation, analytical might, and
a continued push for excellence. She symbolises for many a beacon
of resilience, a source of courage, and a promise of whats possible.
For Katherine Coleman Johnson, the value is in knowledge
shared, not in what is known.
Family members attended the official launch of Coleman and
were given a standing ovation by the more than 6 000 delegates.

Infor expands into the commerce network

A
ddressing one of the five key
categories outlined as part of its
future strategy, Infor has launched
Networked CloudSuites which it says
is an evolutionary step that extends mission-
critical business applications beyond the four
walls of the enterprise across the value chain.
Earlier at Inforum, CEO Charles Phillips
listed the five key areas determining the
companys strategic direction: Industry
expertise; the cloud; the network; analytics;
and artificial intelligence.
By delivering core functionality from the
GT Nexus commerce network into Infor
CloudSuite industry suites, Infor is able
to connect the core applications of an
enterprise with its logistics, supplier, and
finance networks, increasing network-wide
visibility, collaboration, efficiency, and
responsiveness, making an enterprise more
agile and competitive.
Weve built what is essentially a platform
that allows a lot of people to connect in
realtime, says Infors Kurt Cavano. In the
old days, youd take a photograph and send
it out on email; today, you hold the photo
up in the middle and let everyone look at
it. Thats a pretty good metaphor for what
were doing with the commerce network.
CEO Phillips adds: The days when a
single company was responsible for all
aspects of its products, from sourcing to
manufacturing and shipping to point-of-sale,
are long gone; commerce today requires an
extended network of suppliers, production,
3PLS, and financiers, yet the software that
companies rely on has not adapted to this
business model. Leveraging the power of the
GT Nexus commerce network, Infor is able
to offer true multi-tenant, multi-organisation
public cloud solutions that provide a single
instance of the truth, making an enterprise
more agile, responsive, and competitive.
Networked CloudSuites are the next
step for Infor CloudSuite, which in early
2014 was the first set of industry-specific
application suites delivered on the Amazon
Web Services (AWS) cloud. These suites
unify multiple applications into a single suite
for specific industries such as healthcare,
Kurt Cavano
public sector, distribution, and various
manufacturing industries like aerospace and
defence, automotive, food and beverage,
and industrial manufacturing.
With built-in functionality from Infors
2015 acquisition of GT Nexus, Networked
CloudSuites expand Infor CloudSuite
beyond the four walls of the enterprise with
functionality for:
Logistics network live shipment
tracking, ocean booking, 3PL services, and
ocean container tracking
Supplier network order issue and
acknowledge, advanced shipping notices
(ASN), and invoicing
Finance network receivables financing,
payables financing
Network platform community
benchmarks and collaborative issue
management. n

July - August 2017 45

 Fujitsu servers
harness new
Xeon Scalable
F
ujitsu was quick off the blocks
with a new, fully-refreshed range
of dual- and quad-socket Primergy
servers and octo-socket Primequest
business critical server systems designed for
Intel Xeon Scalable processors.
The new servers combine performance,
flexible configuration options, and optimised
system designs to meet the changing
computing demands driven by digitalisation,
including advanced analytics and artificial
intelligence (AI).
With the latest server models, Fujitsu
offers a full set of workload-optimised
servers that make a perfect foundation for
building secure, agile, multi-cloud data
centres: the IT architecture for a human-
centric, digital world.
Representing some of the biggest
platform advancements of the decade, the
latest server innovations are spearheaded
by the multi-node Fujitsu Server Primergy
CX400 M4, which offers workload-specific
computing power in a compact and modular
form factor.
The Primergy CX400 M4 combines the
density and efficiency of blade-like servers
with the simplicity and cost efficiency
of rack-based systems, and presents a
versatile and future-oriented platform
for building integrated systems and
software-defined technologies. It is ideal
for modular and density-optimized server
infrastructures in virtual environments,
for high-performance computing, cloud
and hyper-converged network and storage
environments.
Featuring the new Intel Xeon Scalable
processors announced today, the entire new
46
generation of Fujitsu Server Primergy and
Priemeuest Business model server systems
are designed for exceptional workload-
specific performance and hardware-
enhanced security.
Built for trusted data service delivery,
the new models represent significant leaps
in I/O, memory, storage and network
technologies. On top of their powerful
performance and efficiency, the servers
are optimised with a rich feature set to suit
the broadest range of application scenarios
across a range of industries, including
core and business-critical digital business
processes and databases, hyperconverged
systems, cloud and virtual environments,
and data-rich applications such as realtime
big data analytics, virtual reality and
artificial intelligence.
Olivier Delachapelle, head of enterprise
business: category management data
centre at Fujitsu EMEIA, says: Digital
technology is now at the heart of most
businesses, as organizations leverage
an individually tailored set of connected
technologies such as cloud, mobile,
the Internet of Things (IoT) and data
analytics. This brings new computing and
performance demands that hugely impact
existing data center infrastructures.
As businesses need to gather, process
and store more data, they need to act
faster and with more flexibility and
agility. Servers are a crucial part of this
digital transformation. This is why we
have developed our new Primergy and
Primequest system line-ups to offer a
comprehensive portfolio of powerful server
systems for all usage scenarios, company
sizes and workloads systems that are
easily able to handle whatever performance
demands you make of them. Choosing these
new-generation systems is a guarantee that
you are ready for the digital future.
Jennifer Huffstetler, senior director:
data centre product management at Intel,
says: The combination of Intel and Fujitsu
technology results in compelling data centre
products that enable our shared customers
to pursue digital transformation. The Intel
Xeon Scalable processors deliver increased
levels of performance, scalability, agility
and security to further accelerate this digital
transformation.
Technical features of the new servers
include enhanced DDR4 memory modules
and up to 6Tb capacity in quad socket
Primergy server, flexible configuration
options to support mix-and-match of storage
drive bays with enormous capacity and
advanced graphics processing units (GPUs)
to further accelerate the most demanding
high-performance computing, hyperscale,
and enterprise datacenter workloads.
Connectivity is provided through onboard
LAN for Ethernet, as well as DynamicLoM
for extended requirements.
The Primequest server pushes the
performance envelope of SAP HANA up to
12Tb of the in-memory database.
Embedded management features let IT
departments deploy, monitor and support
the servers remotely, while the new Fujitsu
ServerView Infrastructure Software Manager
(ISM) allows for the consolidated, efficient
operation and management of converged
infrastructures and facility equipment that
runs in data centres and server rooms. n
futurewave BusinessIT

Xeon Scalable heralds
biggest advancement
for Intel
C
alling it the biggest data
centre and network processor
advancement in a decade,
Intel has unveiled its new
Intel Xeon Scalable processors, providing
businesses with the performance to handle
compute-hungry tasks including real-time
analytics, virtualised infrastructure and
high-performance computing.
Data centre and network infrastructure
is undergoing massive transformations to
support emerging use cases like precision
medicine, artificial intelligence and agile
network services paving the path to 5G,
says Navin Shenoy, executive vice-president
and GM of the Intel Data Centre Group.
Intel Xeon Scalable processors represent
the biggest data centre advancement in a
decade.
Users will benefit from a dramatic
performance increase of 1,65-times on
average over previous generation technology
the Xeon Scalable already holds 58 world
records and Intel expects more to come.
Intel Xeon Scalable processors also
provide businesses with a rich suite of
platform feature innovations that deliver
performance increases across key
workloads. These include:
Artificial intelligence: Delivers
2,2-times higher deep learning training
and inference compared to the previous
generation, and 113-times deep
learning performance gains compared
to a three-year-old non-optimised server
system when combined with software
optimisations speeding delivery of AI-
fuelled services.
Networking: Delivers up to 2,5-times
increased IPSec forwarding rate for key
networking applications compared to
previous generation when using Intel
QuickAssist and DPDK increasing
the value derived from network
transformation.
July - August 2017
Virtualisation: Operates up to an
estimated 4,2-times more virtual
machines (VMs) versus a four-year-old
system for rapid service deployment,
server utilisation, lower energy
costs and space efficiency spurring
enterprise data centre modernisation.
High performance computing:
Provides up to a 2-times FLOPs/clock
improvement with Intel AVX-512 as
well as integrated Intel Omni-Path
Architecture ports, delivering improved
compute capability, I/O flexibility and
memory bandwidth to accelerate
discovery and innovation.
Storage: Processes up to 5-times more
IOPS while reducing latency by up to
70% versus out-of-the-box NVMe SSDs
when combined with Intel Optane SSDs
and Storage Performance Development
Kit (SPDK), making data more
accessible for advanced analytics.
The Intel Xeon Scalable processor
features a new core microarchitecture,
new on-die interconnects and memory
controllers.
The resulting platform optimises
performance as well as the reliability,
security and manageability necessary
in data centres and networking
infrastructure.
Performance: The Intel Xeon
Scalable processors deliver an
BUSINESS 2020
overall performance increase up
to 1,65-times versus the previous
generation, and up to 5-times OLTP
warehouse workloads versus the
current install base accelerating
todays modern-day workloads
including modelling and simulation,
machine learning, HPC and digital
content creation. These performance
gains are enabled through new
features such as Intel Advanced
Vector Extensions 512 (Intel AVX-
512), which boost performance of
computationally intensive tasks,
a new Intel Mesh Architecture
for reduced system latency, Intel
QuickAssist Technology for hardware
acceleration of cryptography and data
compression operations and integrated
high-speed fabric with Intel Omni-
Path Architecture for cost-effective
deployment of HPC clusters.
Scalability: Optimised to meet the
wide range of performance demands
in data centres and communications
networks, the Intel Xeon Scalable
processors offer up to 28 cores and up
to 6Tb of system memory (4-socket
systems), and scale to support
2-socket through 8-socket systems
and beyond, powering entry-level
workloads to the most mission-critical
applications.
47

Agility: Compute, network and
storage performance and software
ecosystem optimisations of the Intel
Xeon Scalable processors make it
ideal for software defined, TCO (total
cost of ownership)-optimised, data
centres that dynamically self-provision
resources on premise, through the
network, and in the cloud based on
workload needs.
Security: Data protection through
full encryption has long carried a
significant performance overhead.
Application can now run with less
than 1% overhead with data-at-rest
encryption turned on. The new Intel
Xeon Scalable processor also delivers
a 3,1-times performance improvement
generation-over-generation in
cryptography performance. Intel has
extended processor security features
with Intel Key Protection Technology
delivering enhanced protection to
security key attacks. In addition Intel
Xeon Scalable is designed to secure the
platform with further advancements in
hardware root of trust.
Intel also introduced Intel Select
Solutions, a solutions brand aimed
at simplifying and speeding the
deployment of data centre and
network infrastructure, with initial
solutions delivery on Canonical
Ubuntu, Microsoft SQL 16 and
VMware vSAN 6.6.
Intel Select Solutions is an
expansion of the companys
investment in Intel Builders ecosystem
collaborations and will deliver a
choice of Intel-verified configurations
to the market, enabling customers
to speed return on investment in
Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based
infrastructure for user-prioritised
workloads. n
48
Lenovo aims
to simplify the
data centre
D
igital transformation has put
the data centre once again at
the centre of IT strategy, as
organisations think carefully
about whether they run their workloads on-
premise or in the cloud or a combination
of both.
As technology becomes central to the
success of any business, IT is leading the
transformation movement.
Tikiri Wandurangala, senior consultant
at Lenovo Data Centre Group for
Server Systems EMEA, points out that
organisations are having to think on their
feet as technology opens up new and
innovative ways of doing business.
Cloud computing is a major trend, with
organisations deciding on which workloads
they will run on-premise, which on private
cloud and which on public cloud, as they
look to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy.
There are a lot of changes happening
right now, Wandurangala says. Its not
just cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) is big
news too.
The backdrop to AI is the availability of
big data, and the ability to analyse it to
extract value. A lot of people designed
data centres to handle terabytes of data,
he points out. But we are already looking
at data in the petabyte range, and it is both
structured and unstructured.
This throws you into the domain
of analytics and AI to get insights into
your customer set and into prospective
customers.
Shifts in the business landscape are
driving new thinking about technologies
like cloud, data centres and AI,
Wandurangala says. This is why we have
announced two new brands, with the goal
of simplifying the data centre.
We believe that the industry is at an
inflexion point a turning point.
One of the biggest challenges facing
the CIO today is that of complexity. This
is part of the reason why cloud has been
so attractive: data centres have become
very complex and it was very difficult
for them to be agile, to respond to new
requirements.
So a lot of the focus on our new brands
has been on simplification.
As Intel launched its new Xeon Scalable
processors, Lenovo unveiled an end-to-
end data centre portfolio that enables
customers to harness the power of the
intelligence revolution and create a
strong technology foundation that supports
transformative capabilities such as data
analytics, high-performance computing,
hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence and
machine learning.
The company introduced its largest,
most comprehensive portfolio of server,
storage, networking, software and data
centre services, as well as a new set of
brands ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile.
These announcements mark a
significant day in the next phase of Lenovos
commitment to advancing the data centre
customer experience, says Kirk Skaugen,
president of Lenovo Data Centre Group.
Our leadership in x86 server customer
satisfaction and x86 server reliability, along
with these new ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile
brands, and Lenovos new portfolio of data
centre solutions represent the most reliable,
most agile, and highest performing data
centre solutions in the industry.
We are confident we can empower our
customers to solve their most challenging
business problems and become digital
disrupters in their own industries.
The Lenovo ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile
data centre solutions provide organisations
with fluid resources that can adapt to the
evolving needs of a business.
According to a recent IDC survey of
CIOs and technology leaders, 72% of
respondents cited supporting digital
transformation and business growth as
the leading rationale in IT infrastructure
decisions.
In the past three years, hybrid cloud
significantly matured, while software
futurewave BusinessIT
 BUSINESS 2020

Use the skills

As organisations move to digital transformation, one of
the biggest challenges they face is skills availability.
But Tikiri Wandurangala, senior consultant at
Lenovo Data Centre Group for Server Systems
EMEA, believes companies could be ignoring a
potential gold mine of untapped skills.
Dont ignore the skills that you have, he
says. Dont overvalue new ideas and undervalue
experience.
Wandurangala points out that the biggest stumbling
block that all organisations have in moving to new
technology is the availability of skills to make it
happen.
The existing silos within the organisation are often
viewed as negative and thus ignored. But there are
some amazing skills right there, and if companies can
tap into these, they could transform the business.
Skills and availability has been the consistent
refrain in the IT industry almost since its inception,
and there is a constant drive to develop or hire people
with new-age skills.
But dont overlook the fact they there is a mix
of skills required, Wandurangala says. All the best
teams have a range of skills and this includes
people with experience of the previous generations of
technology.

defined architectures and hyperconverged
infrastructure have disrupted the status quo
for IT infrastructure in larger businesses.
To respond to these changes, customers
face challenges including evolving their
infrastructure strategies and considering
how to best enable them now and for the
future.
The new, completely redesigned,
ThinkSystem portfolio, based on Intel Xeon
Scalable processors, is a single unified
brand spanning servers, storage and
networking systems.
ThinkAgile is a new software-defined
solutions portfolio built on the foundation
of Lenovo ThinkSystem platforms: it adapts
to changing IT needs while reducing
complexity and cost created by silos in
traditional IT.
Even better together, the ThinkSystem
and ThinkAgile portfolios empower
customers to create the foundation of a
future-defined data centre with:
Simplicity: The ThinkSystem portfolio
of servers, storage and networking
solutions gives customers the ability
to streamline IT infrastructure.
The portfolio also works with an
organisations previous investments,
without the need to completely re-
architect the data centre.
Agility and flexibility: With the Lenovo
ThinkAgile portfolio, integrated
solutions adapt to changing IT and
business needs by delivering the
speed, simplified management
and agility of cloud services while
retaining the much-valued control
and governance of on-premises
IT. Its pre-integrated, pre-built and
pre-tested offerings deliver robust
new capabilities to customers data
centre, including automated lifecycle
management, decreased total cost of
ownership (TCO) and reduced need for
IT resources to maintain the platform.
Solutions include the ThinkAgile SX
series for Microsoft Azure Stack, as
well as the ThinkAgile SX rack level
solutions that integrate networking
with hyperconverged offerings for a
seamless customer experience.
Future-proofed preparation: Lenovo
designed the ThinkSystem and
ThinkAgile solutions, such as the
ThinkSystem SD530 high-performance
computing offering, to support
workloads spanning large data analytics
applications to high performance
computing, artificial intelligence and the
largest hyperscale environments.
IT leaders consistently face two main
challenges, Wandurangala says: technical
challenges and people challenges.
In terms of people, he explains that the
new data centre has seen a shift in the
way people are deployed. In the past you
aligned skills according to the technology,
but this resulted in a tendency to create
silos. Locked inside these silos is a lot of
skills, as well as cost and time.
The software-defined data centre aims
to unlock these skills. It is about lining up
skills behind an application or business
process. The line of business will tell IT
what we want, and the team will be a group
of people who understand the business.
Lenovo has its Xclarity management
to make this vision a reality, managing
processes across the system rather than
managing the technology silos.
Our customers are having to do more in
the data centre, so we are trying to make
it simpler and more cost-effective. It needs
to be open and flexible, so that as new
technology becomes available they are able
to adopt it quickly.n

July - August 2017 49

 Governance, ethics
and your data
R
ecent controversies around Cash
Paymaster Services (CPS), Net1
and South Africa Social Security
Agency (Sassa) concerning
citizens data serves as a lesson to all of
us as business owners, managers and
individuals.
Essentially, the lesson is this: if you give
your data away without securing it, expect
your privacy (or that of your customers) to
be exploited.
In case you missed it: Sassa mandated
CPS, a subsidiary of Net1, to distribute
grants in South Africa. Net1 is alleged
to have used grant recipient data to sell
loans, insurance and other products from
Net1 companies to grant recipients using
methods described as ambush marketing.
Right now, the Protection of Personal
Information (PoPI) Act provides very little
protection, and only the privileged and monied
realistically have recourse to civil action.
So how do we, as South Africans, protect
our data?
Attorney Alan Warrener provides a simple
answer: Currently, our legislation is making
all the right noises about protection of data
and data privacy. However, theres very little
in place that we can rely on to enforce that
just yet. Under common law, if you give your
data away, its gone - the recipient owns it
and can do what it likes with it.
Gary Alleman, MD of information
management and data governance
specialist Master Data Management,
echoes that response: Client data should
be protected, and there are several ways
of doing so. Rules can be built into the
businesses data governance, handling
policies, and business processes.
However, as the digital business realm
expands, companies are forming more
partnerships to offer services rather than
just products to segments of customers.
This implies sharing of data, opening a
whole new grey area that needs to be
addressed by the business and policed by
data-smart customers.
Data protection the key to being data-
smart
The first responsibility for the protection of
our data lies within each individual.
Of course, people need to share their data if
50
they want a loan, a bank account, a vehicle
licence, or even a loyalty card. However, we
can limit use of that data to that purpose,
notes Warrener.
Unfortunately, it takes a written contract
an undertaking from the service provider
not to use the personal data received for
any other purpose - to enforce that.
As the actions of Sassa, CPS and Net1
illustrate, its time to stop taking such things
for granted.
With the PoPI Act not yet fully
promulgated, the only bit of law we can rely
on if we feel our data has been exploited
is Section 14 of the South African Bill of
Rights which notes our Constitutional Right
to Privacy. Since the only place you can
fight for that is in a civil court the best way
to ensure your data will only be used for
a specific purpose, is to get it in writing,
Warrener explains.
One would think that if the only way
forward for individuals is to get it in writing,
not a lot of business is going to happen. Yet
it does online and all the time.
What restrains companies is the
knowledge that abuse of data and privacy
will quickly lose them customers. Many
online companies do state what they will
be doing with our data and the data-smart
consumer ensures its there.
Then again, there are other organisations,
often considered trusted entities (like
government department, banks, insurance
providers) where the promise of privacy is
implicit. Yet they omit to provide such an
undertaking in online and offline (hardcopy)
documents.
Big data and creepy connected data
While many online businesses do explicitly
state what they will do with customer data,
there are multiple clauses indicating that
the data generated by online browsing,
purchasing and social interaction will be used.
Saying this, it may be in a way that does
not directly identify the person.
This data, as we know (because we
received those pop-up ads and links to
naughty sites after viewing that risqu video
from cousin Martin) is used to better target
marketing at us and our online associates.
While we know there are ways to avoid
this, many of us live with it because it can
be useful. Nevertheless, theres a fuzzy line
between using big data appropriately and
using it in an inappropriate, exploitative way.
Alleman comments: SASSA erred when
it gave Net1 and its CPS subsidiary full
access to the government database of grant
receivers.
If data governance principles were in
place, SASSA would have ensured that only
critical information necessary for payment of
the grant was shared with Net1 and CPS. It
would also have ensured that use of that data
was limited to payments of the grants, that
the data was suitably secured, and that it was
disposed of when it was no longer required.
As a responsible organisation with a
trusted relationship with your customers,
protecting their data is vital. Its an
unwritten contract but one that PoPI, when
its promulgated, will make mandatory.
Understanding the ethics behind your data
When Net1 decided to exploit the Sassa/
CPS database for use by its own subsidiary
companies, and used its trusted position
to get grant recipients to switch their
protected Sassa card for the Net1 EasyPay
Everywhere card (on which debit orders
could be placed and deductions could be
made), was that decision ethical?
Says Warrener: While the King Code
of Corporate Governance offers guidelines
for corporate governance and ethics, and
companies listed on the Johannesburg
Stock Exchange (JSE) are expected to
comply with these guidelines, these cannot
always be relied on.
In addition, even though companies
prefer to be seen as ethical, as its important
to their investors and stakeholders, there are
just as many companies that will bend rules
to breaking point.
In the case of Net1, chances of a grant
recipient launching a civil suit are close
to zero its simply out of their reach,
Warrender says. The impact of selling a
loan to an unsophisticated and needy
individual can be devastating, he adds.
And, when things go wrong, their recourse
is limited. Nor can they rely on the trusted
entities with which they initially shared their
data, to protect their interests.
Which is why we need data privacy and
security legislation sooner rather than later.
futurewave BusinessIT

Alan Warrener
Gary Allemen
Although some may feel that what CPS and
Net1 did in exploiting grant recipients data to
enrich themselves was by no means ethical,
the ruling of the Constitutional Court did not
explicitly say so. It only says they may not do
so again, nor may any company taking on the
role of grant dispenser in future use the data
for any purpose but to pay out the grants.
Constitutional Court ruling sets a
precedent
This is an important ruling by the highest
court in the land. It sets a precedent that
will have considerable impact on the rulings
of civil and other courts in future.
The courts in South Africa are very liberal
and fiercely independent, Warrener says.
There is recognition of the pace of advance
across multiple areas, especially digital, and
that the law must act to regulate abuse.
This is essentially what the PoPI Act
aims to do it expands upon Section 14
of the Bill of Rights, detailing proper use
and limitations on use of personal data.
However, until this legislation is fully
promulgated, its up to each of us to protect
our own data. n
July - August 2017
What about social media
and security?
By Carey van Vlaanderen
S
ocial media has skyrocketed for
businesses all over the world,
with many companies using
it as a way of strengthening
their brands and reaching out to new and
existing customers.
Its clear that social media is likely to
continue its popularity with businesses
although, in an age where information
security has never been such a pressing
issue, there are still questions that need to
be addressed.
Is social media really a threat to security?
The threat posed to security by social
media is nothing new. A report released
by Cisco in 2013 claimed mass audience
sites, which include social media, pose a
significant threat to information security.
One obvious threat is the potential
for blurring the line separating personal
information and company data, particularly
when a user is using a social media account
for both personal and work purposes.
Our right to privacy and the type of data
we consider confidential is no different on
social media than on other communication
platforms, says Charl Ueckermann, CEO
at AVeS Cyber Security. Leveraging the
business opportunities of social media can be
done without giving away the right to privacy
and without compromising confidentiality. It
is therefore important that businesses use the
tools at their disposal to help every person in
the organisation understand the rules of the
social media game.
The risk may be underestimated by
workers, many of whom may believe their
social media accounts are not carrying
anything of interest for cybercriminals,
but it can still be used as a portal into a
companys wider network.
So, is social media a weak spot?
Potentially. The use of phishing to
compromise e-mail accounts has been well-
documented, but they can take on a new
dimension when combined with social media.
For example, if cybercriminals can
compromise a LinkedIn account, they can
potentially fool others on the network into
thinking they are genuinely one of their
co-workers, opening up the possibility of
handing over sensitive information.
But if they dont get that far, theres
nothing to worry about?
SECURITY
Not exactly. Social media output is a key
component of a brands overall image. If a
cybercriminal manages to compromise one
of these channels it could prove damaging.
For instance, in 2013 a hacker was
able to gain access to the Twitter account
of Burger King and then used it to display
a MacDonalds logo, along with explicit
obscenities. Similarly, its not exactly
reassuring when someone like Mark
Zuckerberg has his social networks
compromised.
What can be done to make things better?
Setting up a rigid social media policy to
protect company accounts is always a good
start.
A code of conduct for employees, as
part of a wider cybersecurity program,
can include the implementation of strong
passwords, with weak logins such as
13456 still all too common.
Other potential points include monitoring
engagement with brand mentions, offering
guidance on how to spot malicious software,
implementing two-factor authentication, and
ensuring that only brand approved content
is shared.
Implementing a policy is particularly
important for businesses operating more
than one social media account, although
it is equally important not to discourage
employee participation as this will hinder
the benefits these platforms bring.
Is it the employers responsibility to
safeguard social media security?
Employers should always try to educate their
workforce on the potential dangers of social
media as best they can, but employees
themselves need to remain vigilant.
For example, its important to be
cautious of links embedded in email
messages, even if they appear to be from a
social network provider.
Always ensure links come from trusted
sources. If in doubt, connect to a sites
URL directly by typing it into your browser.
Always keep a track of what devices
have access to your accounts, and utilise
any available service that will notify you
when a new login occurs.
Furthermore, workers shouldnt risk
leaving themselves vulnerable by potentially
sensitive information on social media. n
f Carey van Vlaanderen is the CEO of
ESET South Africa
51
 Employees cover up
cybersecurity incidents
E
mployees hide IT security
incidents in 40% of businesses
around the world (this figure is
48% for South African businesses)
according to a new report from Kaspersky
Lab and B2B International, Human Factor
in IT Security: How Employees are Making
Businesses Vulnerable from Within.
With 46% of global IT security incidents
caused by employees each year, this
business vulnerability must be addressed
on many levels, not just through the IT
security department.
Walking hackers to your door
Uninformed or careless employees are one
of the most likely causes of a cybersecurity
incident second only to malware. While
malware is becoming more and more
sophisticated, the sad reality is that the
evergreen human factor can pose an even
greater danger.
In particular, employee carelessness
is one of the biggest chinks in corporate
cybersecurity armor when it comes to
targeted attacks. While advanced hackers
might always use custom-made malware
and hi-tech techniques to plan a heist, they
will likely start with exploiting the easiest
entry point human nature.
According to the global research, every
third (28%) targeted attack on businesses in
the last year had phishing/social engineering
at its source. For example, a careless
accountant could easily open a malicious
file disguised as an invoice from one of
a companys numerous contractors. This
could shut down the entire organisations
infrastructure, making the accountant an
unwitting accomplice to attackers.
Cybercriminals often use employees as
an entry point to get inside the corporate
infrastructure. Phishing emails, weak
passwords, fake calls from tech support
weve seen it all. Even an ordinary flash card
dropped in the office parking lot or near the
secretarys desk could compromise the entire
network all you need is someone inside,
who doesnt know about, or pay attention
52
to security, and that device could easily be
connected to the network where it could
reap havoc, says David Jacoby, Security
Researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
Sophisticated targeted attacks do not
happen to organisations every day but
conventional malware does strike at mass.
Unfortunately though, the research also
shows that even where malware is concerned,
unaware and careless employees are also
often involved, causing malware infections in
59% of incidents in South Africa.
Why HR and top management should get
involved
Staff hiding the incidents they have
been involved in may lead to dramatic
consequences, increasing the overall
damage caused. Even one unreported event
could indicate a much larger breach, and
security teams need to be able to quickly
identify the threats they are up against to
choose the right mitigation tactics.
But staff would rather put organisations at
risk than report a problem because they fear
punishment, or are embarrassed that they
are responsible for something going wrong.
Some companies have introduced strict rules
and impose extra responsibility on employees,
instead of encouraging them to simply be
vigilant and cooperative. This means that
cyberprotection not only lies in the realm
of technology, but also in an organisations
culture and training. Thats where top
management and HR need to get involved.
The problem of hiding incidents should
be communicated not only to employees, but
also to top management and HR departments.
If employees are hiding incidents, there must
be a reason why. In some cases, companies
introduce strict, but unclear policies and put
too much pressure on staff, warning them
not to do this or that, or they will be held
responsible if something goes wrong. Such
policies foster fears, and leave employees
with only one option to avoid punishment
whatever it takes. If your cybersecurity culture
is positive, based on an educational approach
instead of a restrictive one, from the top
down, the results will be obvious, comments
Slava Borilin, security education program
manager at Kaspersky Lab.
Borilin also recalls an industrial security
model, where a reporting and learn by
mistake approach are at the heart of
the business. For instance, in a recent
statement, Teslas Elon Musk requested
every incident affecting worker safety to be
reported directly to him, so that he can play
a central role in change.
The human factor: corporate climate and
beyond
Organisations around the world are already
waking up to the problem of their staff
making their businesses vulnerable: 59% of
companies surveyed in South Africa admit
that staff are the biggest weakness in their
IT security.
The need to implement personnel-
focused measures is becoming more and
more evident: 29% of local businesses
are looking to improve security through
delivering training to staff, making this
the second most popular method of cyber
defense, second only to the deployment of
more sophisticated software (38%).
The best way of protecting organisations
from human-related cyberthreats is to
combine the right tools with the right
practices. This should involve HR and
management efforts, to motivate and
encourage employees to be watchful and
seek help in the case of an incident. Security
awareness training for staff, delivering clear
guidelines instead of multipage documents,
building strong skills and motivation and
fostering the right working atmosphere, are
the first steps organisations should take.
In terms of security technologies, most
of the threats aimed at targeting unaware
or careless employees including phishing
can be addressed with endpoint security
solutions. These can cover the particular
needs of SMB and enterprise companies
in terms of functionality, pre-configured
protection or advanced security settings, to
minimise risks. n
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