MyBroadband Magazine Q4 2018

M YBR OAD BAND 2018

Q4

A DIGITAL FUTURE FOR ALL

William Mzimba Vodacom Business Group Chief Officer

BUILDING A BUSINESS NEURAL NETWORK

R 45. 00 i n cl va t

THE FUTURE OF BROADBAND IN SOUTH AFRICA ISSN 2519-7509

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EDITORIAL Welcome to the fi nal 2018 edition of the MyBroadband Magazine.

This edition is fi lled with great insight into the local ICT industry, including the hot topic of AI in the workplace and its role in the IT industry. The online payments industry is also rapidly growing, with cryptocurrency and mobile payment solutions continuing to evolve, and provide companies and consumers with more exibility and choice. We take a look at the future of payments and what you can expect in the coming years. Apple’s new iPhones - always a popular device that the tech industry loves to cover - have launched in South Africa, bringing with them the most powerful processor ever put in a smartphone. I trust you will enjoy this edition, and thank you for reading.

KEVIN LANCASTER EDITOR

IN THIS ISSUE

CONTENTS 22

THE FUTURE OF BROADBAND IN SOUTH AFRICA

24

THE ELECTRIC CARS THAT WILL MAKE YOU FORGET ABOUT PETROL

06

A DIGITAL FUTURE FOR ALL

10

HOW AXIZ DRIVES CLOUD ADOPTION

12

APPLE’S INCREDIBLE NEW IPHONES

16

BUILDING A BUSINESS NEURAL NETWORK

20

INSIGHTS: THE INDIANA JONES OF DATA

31

MOVING INTO THE CLOUD IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK

36

3CX: INNOVATING SIMPLICITY FOR MORE ADVANCED UC

38

AI, AI, AI

40

ARE YOU READY FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION?

42

HOW FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES ARE GRAPPLING WITH TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION

56

IOT - A PRE-REQUISITE FOR ENABLING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

60

SCAN YOUR WAY TO EFFICIENCY GAINS WITH FUJITSU

62

MEETING THE CAPACITY DEMAND CHALLENGE

46

THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL PAYMENTS

50

HYBRID CLOUD SECURITY IN SOUTH AFRICA – NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO SECURE YOUR NETWORK

54

THE MAN WHO GAVE SOUTH AFRICA AFFORDABLE UNCAPPED BROADBAND

67

THE FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTERS IN THE WORLD

72

GOVERNMENT'S BIG PLAN TO OPEN UP CELLULAR NETWORKS IN SOUTH AFRICA

PUBLISHER MyBroadband ADDRESS Ashford House, Midstream Estate, Olifantsfontein TEL +27 12 687 5159 WEB mybroadband.co.za EDITORIAL kevin@mybroadband.co.za ADVERTISING cara@mybroadband.co.za ISSN 2519-7509

William Mzimba Vodacom Business Group Chief Officer

T E L E C O M M U N I CAT I O N S

A DIGITAL FUTURE FOR ALL Carien Pretorius

HOW VODACOM USHERS SOUTH AFRICANS ON THE DIGITAL JOURNEY TO ENTER THE GATES OF CONNECTIVITY AND HELP CHANGE PEOPLE’S LIVES

I

n the world of fused technologies that blur the lines between the physical and digital – or better known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution – Vodacom is driving efforts in ushering customers to grab a hold of what a digital world offers them.

Although it’s unsettling to think about the true power of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to reshape every aspect of our lives, these new technologies can also be surprising agents to help transform our society for good.

Vodacom Business Group Chief Officer, William Mzimba who joined Vodacom Group from Accenture in May 2018 shares his thoughts on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and how Vodacom is focused on delivering exponential change through technology for customers and clients, and will be a significant player in ensuring the continent participates fully in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Bringing a range of industry experience that will be beneficial to the Vodacom Group and its clients, Mzimba confesses that he wasn’t sure what the Third Industrial Revolution had until the Fourth Industrial Revolution arrived, which is where we are today – and is what makes him excited.

Thanks to the rise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the power of digitisation, Mzimba said that he now finds himself in a position where he can impact people’s lives through what digitisation offers.

“What excites me most is the fact that we have the platform to do so, thanks to Vodacom and its employees and clients and customers who are willing for us to guide them into the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” he said.

USHERING SOUTH AFRICANS INTO THE WORLD OF DIGITAL Mzimba, who reports directly to Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub and serves on both the group executive committee and the board of Vodacom SA, said that for Vodacom Business, the digital journey has only just begun.

“We need to be cognisant and fully utilise our powerful platform where we can partner with companies to bridge the transition into the digital world,” said Mzimba.

Stepping stones to a transformed society First Industrial Revolution: (18th Century) The first historic event was the First Industrial Revolution, which was about the innovation of steam and played an important role in ushering in civilisation and humankind progression.

Second Industrial Revolution: (19th Century) The second event was the Second Industrial Revolution, which was about electrifying things as steam was just not cutting it anymore.

According to Mzimba, there are certain challenges that can either enable companies to be successful in their digital journey, or discourage them completely. One of these challenges is the connectivity tools and platforms at their disposal.

Third Industrial Revolution:

“Before getting through the connectivity gate, you are locked outside of what is taking place in the digital world, but once you get in, the prospects to prosper multiply,” said Mzimba.

Fourth Industrial Revolution:

What drives Vodacom’s passion in contributing to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and helps orchestrate their clients’ journey toward the digital world and doing it well, is that people’s lives will be changed for the good.

(20th Century) The third event was the Third Industrial Revolution when the Internet arrived.

(21th Century) The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the fourth major industrial era since the initial Industrial Revolution of the 18th century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres, collectively referred to as cyber-physical systems.

MYBROADBAND 09

T E L E C O M M U N I CAT I O N S

VODACOM BUSINESS FOCUS AREAS Mzimba, who is recognised as one of the continent's distinguished business and thought leaders, stated that Vodacom Business is focused on three principal investment areas – realising growth opportunities for digitisation in the enterprise market, building market leadership in mobile voice and data solutions – including the Internet of Things (IoT) – and scaling converged services through targeted investment in fibre, fixed wireless capillarity and next generation networks.

To help drive enterprise growth, Mzimba shares that Vodacom Business has invested in infrastructure and skills development to service the enterprise market, including the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) market in all categories. The mobile network operator now also continues to explore opportunities to develop sectorspecific propositions that differentiate it from its peers across a range of sectors, including retail, health, agriculture, education, industrial and transportation.

He added that Vodacom has also secured the mobile voice and data communications contracts for national and provincial government departments for four years.

This has enabled it to partner with government to support greater innovation.

The leading mobile network operator has expanded its service proposition in the cloud and hosting space, building on an extensive fixed and mobile infrastructure, pan-African footprint, investment in data centre infrastructure, and its collaboration with global partners such as International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) and SAP HANA (high-performance analytic appliance).

In terms of managed and professional services, Vodacom has remained wellpositioned to develop a meaningful market presence, leveraging off its existing client base as well as sector-specific infrastructure and skills development to service the enterprise market.

A POSITIVE FUTURE FOR ALL Moreover, Mzimba is positive about where Vodacom stands. Besides having seen solid growth in its last financial year – which

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is exactly where the company aimed to be and also plans to uphold in the future – the work they do in the ICT industry is changing the ways South Africans live and do business and the impact and implications of the digital revolution are becoming more evident with each passing hour.

“New technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and Big Data represent some of the most exciting opportunities for our market, but also cause uncertainty in some quarters,” said Mzimba.

billion over four years. If we acquire access to available spectrum, we will be able to drive down infrastructure costs and, in turn, drive down the cost to communicate,” said Mzimba.

Even communities at large can benefit once digital capabilities expand. Vodacom’s prime example of transformation technology is Connected Farmer – the cloud-based web and mobile software solution that has connected thousands of small-holder farmers to the agriculture value chain. This small business model

AI, MACHINE LEARNING AND BIG DATA REPRESENT SOME OF THE MOST EXCITING OPPORTUNITIES OUR MARKET HAS SEEN

“Rather than purely boasting about the possibility and opportunity these technologies offer our organisations, industries and organisations must do their bit to make the public more aware of the ways in which these technologies will benefit the end customer.

has achieved its purpose of turning smallholder farmers into sustainable, realistic and executable food manufacturers and retail businesses, increasing the number of small-holder subsistence farmers in commercial agriculture value chains within South Africa.

“We are investing significantly in this space to offer increased service to our customers. If you look at our call centres, for instance, we are a business with over 43 million customers, which is why we need predictive analytics to know why customers are calling us, and be able to solve their problems before they even call.

Ultimately this means our services improve and our customers are happier.

Additionally, Mzimba stated: “We are working with various municipalities on smart metering projects and assist the Department of Health with the replenishing of stock for hospitals using our IoT system.

We are also working with some financial services companies to facilitate payments and ordering systems. We launched the Citizen Engagement application – a mobile digital app that assists government and citizens with day-to-day service delivery communication.”

These technologies also offer huge cost-saving opportunities for Vodacom customers. The Vodacom Group recently launched Africa’s first commercial 5G service in Lesotho, and uses 3.5GHz spectrum to deliver fixed-wireless access to enterprise customers in the country – providing quicker deployment of broadband services at fibre-like speeds.

“What we’ve accomplished in Lesotho is an example of what can be achieved in Africa.

In South Africa alone we invested R32,7

While Vodacom connects over 100,000 million customers, including Safaricom, Africa has the potential to connect over 2 billion people in the near future. ∎

The future is exciting.

Ready?

See the future differently

Vodacom Business Keeping your business digitally progressive is not about what you do, but how you do it. Choose Vodacom Business, a partner with the latest digital solutions and give your business the confidence and agility it needs to stay ahead.

For more, go to vodacombusiness.co.za

CLOUD

HOW AXIZ DRIVES CLOUD ADOPTION Carien Pretorius

AXIZ DRIVES A PARTNER INCENTIVE PROGRAMME FOR NET CUSTOMER ADDS, IN LINE WITH MICROSOFT BUSINESS OBJECTIVES.

C

loud migration is becoming a priority across the board, but the process can be daunting. In a bid to drive cloud adoption, Axiz (Pty) Ltd has launched a partner incentive programme to focus on Azure tenants and net new customer adds, which aligns with the Microsoft FY19 goals and business objectives.

Traci Maynard, Axiz Microsoft Executive, attended Microsoft Inspire 2018, which took place in Las Vegas this year.

According to Maynard, one of the key takeaways from the conference was that “it’s all about the net new customer adds”.

MICROSOFT CSP PARTNER INCENTIVE Available to all Axiz partners in South Africa, Axiz’s Microsoft CSP Partner incentive rewards all Axiz registered partners for simply selling Microsoft CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) seats and creating new tenants. For achieving this, the partners will be eligible to earn a percentage back for their company.

In order to qualify for the rewards, customers need to follow these easy steps: • Visit https://axizcloud.com/ to view their offerings.

• Become an AxizCloud reseller, by registering on https://dealerzone. axizcloud.com/FrontEndRegister. aspx.

• Sell seats within the threshold and earn a percentage of money back for your company.

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What’s important to note is that Axiz resellers need to add a minimum of 3 new CSP end customer adds (3 new tenants) per threshold, and a minimum of 3 new Azure CSP customer adds (3 new tenants) per threshold in order to qualify – an Azure add-on will not qualify.

"New" means new to CSP and a switch from Microsoft online (MOSA) or Open will qualify, and customer seats must remain active with AxizCloud for a minimum of 18 months in order to ensure that the company earns their percentage back. If

cancelled licences and their values will be deducted. This partner incentive is valid from 1 August to 14 December 2018, and the final seat count on 5 January 2019 determines the seat count. Credit will be passed to winners by 5 February 2019.

Axiz is part of the Alviva Holdings Group and has been a trusted IT channel aggregator for more than thirty years in Southern Africa, and has recently attained Gold Cloud competency status which puts them in a very strong position to guide their partners to solid cloud adoption. ∎

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE NET NEW CUSTOMER ADDS.

your customer cancels their CSP licences during the campaign period, it will not count towards the customer earnings.

The incentive is applicable to active subscriptions only, and resellers with an AxizCloud account must ensure it is up to date to qualify. Suspended and trial licences do not qualify. Academic, non-profit, and charity SKUs will also be excluded.

At the end of the campaign Axiz will do a reconciliation to validate results; any

For any queries, or to become a CSP reseller with Axiz, customers can register via https://axizcloud.com/FrontendRegister. aspx, or contact the Axiz Microsoft team via MicrosoftCSP@axiz.com.

Axiz is an industry leading information technology value added distributor focused on solutions ranging from Edge Client Devices, Core Data Centre hardware, and software to Cloud software and services.

There’s no denying it The cloud has become part of the new business landscape.

And it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that it’s only going to get more popular as time goes on. If you want to stay current and keep your business growing, you’ll have to adapt.

Have you started looking at your options?

Contact Axiz to find out how we can help your company transform to the Cloud, compliantly and cost effectively with Microsoft Azure. For all cloud queries, contact MicrosoftCSP@axiz.com or Traci.Maynard@axiz.com or call 011 237 7128.

SMARTPHONES

APPLE’S INCREDIBLE NEW IPHONES Kevin Lancaster

APPLE RECENTLY LAUNCHED ITS IPHONE XS, XS MAX, AND XR.

A

pple’s iPhone Xs and Xr smartphones launched in the US in September 2018.

The iPhone Xs and Xs Max - the flagships - come with a big price tag, starting at over R20,000 and going to over R30,000 for the top-of-the-line version in South Africa.

This price can be argued as justifiable, though, with performance data from third-party benchmarking tool Geekbench showing that the new iPhones are the most powerful smartphones in the world.

Tests also found that app open time and video editing performance was substantially better on the new iPhones than on Android flagships. This is thanks to Apple’s new A12 Bionic 7nm chip, which features powerful CPUs and GPUs – with up to 50% more graphics processing power. This coupled with iOS 12 provides users with an excellent user experience on the new devices.

Apple has also included dual-SIM functionality in the new devices, thanks to the addition of an eSIM. This lets users place a physical SIM from Network A in their phone, and - if supported by the network - activate the eSIM to connect to Network B. For Apple fans, it does not get much better than this. ∎ 14 MYBROADBAND

iPhone Xs The iPhone Xs – pronounced “10-ess” – is made of surgical-grade steel and the most durable glass ever used in a smartphone.

New additions to the iPhone Xs include an upgraded IP68 resistance rating and a 5.8-inch OLED Super Retina display – the highest quality screen ever on an iOS device.

Apple has also packed a Neural Engine into the device, which improves the performance of the phones, while internal storage options go all the way up to 512GB. As with previous iPhones, microSD support is not included.

Apple further punted the augmented reality features of the iPhone Xs, which allow users to activate scenes like virtual aquariums in any room they are in.

SMARTPHONES

iPhone Xs Max The iPhone Xs Max packs a 6.5-inch OLED Super Retina display, which sports a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR support, and extremely-high contrast ratios. Apple has also upgraded the sound on the phone, with improved stereo speakers.

In the camera department, the iPhone Xs Max features a new dual-camera system on the rear - with a 12MP wide camera and a 12MP telephoto camera, along with a new True Tone flash. On the front, a 7MP unit has been incorporated into the device.

These new sensors work with the A12 Bionic chip to provide optical image stabilisation, autofocus, auto white balance, face detection, facial landmarking, and noise reduction.

Apple said the cameras also support Smart HDR, which allows for image merging that combines multiple photos of a moving subject to create a “perfect� image.

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iPhone Xr The iPhone Xr is Apple’s “more affordable” iPhone in the line-up.

The iPhone Xr is made from aerospacegrade aluminium and is available in a variety of colourful finishes. It features a Liquid Retina edge-to-edge display, which Apple calls the most advanced LCD display ever implemented in a smartphone.

Like the iPhone Xs, the iPhone Xr does not have any home button and relies on Face ID for biometric authentication.

Apple has packed its new A12 Bionic chipset into the iPhone Xr, along with the best single-camera system the company has ever made – consisting of a 12MP f/1.8 lens.

Apple’s iPhone Xr also boasts dual-SIM support through the combination of a nano-SIM and eSIM, and has an ingress protection rating of IP67.

MYBROADBAND 17

INTERNET OF THINGS

BUILDING A BUSINESS NEURAL NETWORK Phathizwe Malinga, SqwidNet acting CEO

USING IOT TO TRUST BUSINESS DECISIONS IN A FAST-PACED ENVIRONMENT

W

e live in a technology age and it is helping us work towards an era of abundance.

In the 1960s, Intel’s Roy Moore noticed that the number of transistors they could put on a single chip required only half the space every two years. This meant that Intel was able to offer twice as much computing power every two years. We have experienced the effect of this from our mobile operators. If we bought 1 MB of data for x Rand 20 years ago, then 10 years later we could buy 32MB of data for the same price. And today, for the same price, we can now afford 1GB of data.

This is what is meant by an exponential technology and companies have been using Moore's Law to offer us more in terms of everything, including technology used for the food we grow.

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Abundance is a good thing when it comes to human rights like access to potable water, distributed food to end world hunger. But when it comes to information, there is such a thing as TMI, Too Much Information. Today, we generate lots of very granular data about ourselves and our environment. Businesses too, are turning to data to generate insights on how to gain and retain competitive advantage.

SqwidNet extends the Internet that we are used to, as humans, to connect things at an ultra-low cost. Using Sigfox technology, we nurture an open access Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem that helps businesses generate more data, making them more sensitive to the conditions that make businesses flourish or fail. Retrofitting Sigfox ReadyTM devices to existing assets allows companies to connect all

Phathizwe Malinga SqwidNet acting CEO

INTERNET OF THINGS

SQWIDNET EXTENDS THE INTERNET THAT WE ARE USED TO, AS HUMANS, TO CONNECT THINGS AT AN ULTRALOW COST.

their existing assets, like water meters, and create for themselves a data-rich asset information network.

Doing this, however, by getting data every few seconds, results in TMI when you have over 10,000 assets in your asset register.

As a business you may miss pivotal events where you could have made a decision that helped the business flourish or prevented it losing market share.

The main design choice that our partners in the SqwidNet Ecosystem use when building IoT solutions is "Event-based".

Event-based allows the IoT device to only connect to the Internet when a predetermined condition occurs, e.g. when a door is closed, when the temperature exceeds an acceptable range, when an asset moves. These are conditions that indicate that an asset or its environment have changed and may be under distress.

This allows for the battery life of Sigfox devices to be measured in decades. It also makes the cost to enable and maintain an IoT network for a business extremely low, an important factor when you are building a neural network. A SqwidNet partner

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can help your company build a data-driven IoT network that is contextually sensitive.

Allowing you to react in real-time, whilst increasing your ability to generate business insights that help you gain a competitive advantage, affording you on-demand innovation. SqwidNet drives innovation through IoT. ∎

B I G DATA

INSIGHTS: THE INDIANA JONES OF DATA Tamsin Oxford

THE DAYS OF HUNTING FOR INSIGHTS IN COMPLEX MAZES WITH FALSE STARTS AND DODGY WALLS ARE COMING TO AN END

T

he terms ‘actionable insights’ and ‘actionable analytics’ are the shiny buzz words of the year as they promise more bang for your buck. They are the terms that define the shift in tools and technologies that allow for richer insights from the data. Insights that deliver tangible and measurable value, that sideline the ‘rot’ and harness the hot.

Tools that overcome the biggest challenge facing the organisation - managing the growing volume of data across fragmented silos and systems.

According to a data value report released

by SnapLogic, organisations are using just above half (51%) of their data and it only plays a role in around 48% of decision making. The same report found that 74% of organisations were battling to generate useful business insights from their rising tides of data. Enter the need for tools and capabilities and allow for organisations to refine how they assess and use their data and the reason why the emphasis lies on the ‘actionable’ and not just on the ‘insights’ and ‘analytics’.

“Actionable insights are achieved by finding the micro and macro contexts and integrating data with current systems and internal data sources to bring about new conclusions,” says Mariette Croukamp, Key

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Account Manager, Ask Africa. “Previous incarnations of analytics required more resources and energy to collect the data.

Today, data is more readily available, making it easier to take it to the next level.”

In addition to changes in technology capability and career speciality, some believe that it is the democratisation of data that has created the shift towards more actionable insights and analytics.

“Previously, when information was harder to come by, learnings were often enough to create competitive advantage, particularly i f yo u h a d a c c e s s t o i n f o r m a t i o n that competitors didn’t,” says Jenni Pennacchini, Business Solutions Director, KLA Market Research. “Today there is easier access to a lot more information so it is increasingly difficult to find information that is completely unique and likely to create an advantage.”

Digital transformation has also contributed significantly to this information overload.

What are the brands and the businesses supposed to focus on? This is how actionable insights changes the game plan. It takes the mass of information and translates it into something that the business can do something with.

“This situation is further exacerbated by the pace at which businesses operate,” adds Pennacchini. “Decisions do not last as long so there is the need to action at a more rapid rate. In addition, the complexity created by choice and access has meant that to get into an action space there is a need to focus on different types of data to get real insight.”

PREVIOUSLY, WHEN INFORMATION WAS HARDER TO COME BY, LEARNINGS WERE OFTEN ENOUGH TO CREATE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.

Thanks to the progress of technology, data can be written far more quickly and it can be processed far more effectively than ever before. With the ongoing onset of the Internet of Things, data is just going to keep on growing and oozing out insights through every technical pore. It is the next level of data capability where the disciplines in the business such as finance, strategy and sales look at more subtle metrics in their data. These could show anything from the pace of change in product uptake to loyalty to building predictive models based on current trading.

“People expect companies to be smarter about them and their needs, understand what they are looking for and ensure they get a supplier that knows them and works with them,” says Francois Marais, Data Analyst, About IT.

“Innovations such as AI, machine learning and deep learning, plus the ability to integrate a variety of data sources from multiple hybrid cloud and on-premise systems really underpins the stratospheric advances pouring into the industry right now,” concludes Marais. “These insights and a wealth of others are all served up to users far more visually today, so people can make faster, more accurate associations from the data. It is automatic, available immediately, and integrated so you get the most up-to-date information anywhere, even via a smartphone app.” ∎

This next layer of analytics and insights is further powered, of course, by the availability of emergent technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This is taking analytics into the realm of human behaviour, an area that is fast becoming the golden goose of the insights realm. The sudden access to behavioural data has meant that many firms are spending inordinate amounts of time and energy evaluating what people are doing. This has opened up new levels of understanding but it has also put greater pressure on the business to use data more effectively and with greater understanding for customer and company.

MYBROADBAND 23

B R OA D BA N D

THE FUTURE OF BROADBAND IN SOUTH AFRICA A

s the world ramps up for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, connectivity is beginning to play an ever-increasing role in the emergence and deployment of new platforms that will become commonplace in our everyday lives. Some of the current use cases leading the charge are artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), the Internet of Things (IoT) and the concept of smart cities.

Openserve Chief Commercial Officer, Althon Beukes believes that, from a South African perspective, world-class connectivity is imperative to create an even playing field with the leading globally connected countries. In addition, local capabilities such as e-Government, across the health, education, security, agriculture, municipal management and other sectors, will play a major role in delivering efficiency and efficacy into the system and streamlining the processes and parameters required to allow us as a country to grow and compete in a hyper-connected world.

“Openserve takes a forward-thinking approach to enable future-focused technologies to not only be viable, but to thrive within the South African environment by future-proofing the country’s infrastructure through building capabilities that can handle the everincreasing data volumes,” says Beukes.

Speaking to Openserve’s current readiness for a significant and continued role in the shaping of the South African broadband landscape, Beukes says, “Our existing capabilities, like our IP enabled optical core and transmission offering, facilitate the transport of data in highly efficient ways. Openserve’s extensive aggregation network brings together and grooms access technologies to enable the data to get onto the fibre superhighway. A wide range of access technologies such as satellite, fibre, 3G and 4G cover all the bases in terms of connecting and utilising the opportunities that the connected future offers. We make it our mission to avail this to all South Africans, regardless of their preference, affordability and current technological competency,” says Beukes.

“From any perspective, the digital future and connectivity are inextricably linked and form two sides of the same coin. For South Africa, the future looks extremely bright, as – through Openserve infrastructure – the country is perfectly positioned to extract maximum value from the opportunities that are invariably going to open up and give businesses and entrepreneurs of the future the ability to interact through technology on a global scale,” concluded Beukes. ∎

Althon Beukes Chief Commercial Officer Openserve

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THE ELECTRIC CARS THAT WILL MAKE YOU FORGET ABOUT PETROL

M

any motoring enthusiasts aren’t exactly fond of electric cars.

They often look ordinary and downright ugly, don’t produce exquisite exhaust notes, and remove the symphony that is a high-revving engine.

Fortunately, car companies have started to shift away from the utilitarian approach they took with electric cars and are moving towards the production of powerful and desirable vehicles.

As electric car technology improves and companies understand it better, the powertrain of the vehicle becomes less of a focus, and the drive, looks, and features of an electric car receive more attention.

The result is attractive, desirable electric vehicles which even petrolheads will at least consider taking for a test drive.

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Tesla Roadster The Tesla Roadster is an electric supercar which Elon Musk calls “a hardcore smack to gasoline cars”. The Roadster boasts a 0-100km/h acceleration time of 1.9 seconds and a top speed of over 400km/h.

It is also all-wheel drive and packs 10,000Nm of torque. With all that power and speed, you would expect its batteries to be drained after a quick drive down the road, but Tesla says the Roadster will feature a range of 1,000km.

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Porsche Taycan The Porsche Taycan, formerly known as the Mission E, is Porsche’s first purelyelectric car. The company states that two permanently excited synchronous motors (PSM) with a system output of over 440kW will accelerate the sports car to 100 km/h in well under 3.5 seconds - and to 200 km/h in under 12 seconds. Porsche said the Taycan will also have a range of over 500km.

Audi e-tron The Audi e-tron is a full-size SUV that combines “sportiness and everyday practicality”. The vehicle is driven by two electric motors together with electric all-wheel drive. Audi says this provides awesome performance and agile handling, while the high-voltage battery is the foundation for a good range.

“With its combination of electric drive and a comfortable, sophisticated interior, the Audi e-tron creates a new sense of mobility,” said Audi.

Jaguar I-PACE Jaguar describes the I-PACE as the “world’s smartest five-seater sports car”.

The performance SUV is fully batterypowered and features a 4-wheel-drive system that propels the vehicle from 0-100km/h in 4.8 seconds. The I-PACE’s 90kWh battery provides 470km of range on a single charge, added Jaguar. “I‑PACE is a Jaguar above all else – a true driver’s car. Its electric motors and near perfect weight distribution deliver 696Nm of instant torque and sports car agility.”

INTERNET OF THINGS

MOVING INTO THE CLOUD IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK Jamie McKane

Inus Dreckmeyr Netshield CEO

A

n increasing number of businesses in South Africa are migrating their systems to the cloud, but many are still wary about making the "big change" to a cloud-driven environment.

This digital migration is often viewed as risky and disruptive, but it can in fact be the exact opposite, according to Netshield CEO Inus Dreckmeyr.

Netshield is a leading company in the IoT industry, developing the hardware and software used for IoT monitoring systems. The company sells a range of IT products and solutions and is a local OEM of intelligent gateways and sensors.

Netshield often aids companies in migrating their monitoring and event handling systems to cloud-driven solutions, improving efficiency and accessibility while maintaining costs.

Dreckmeyr said that traditional system migration comprises an abrupt shift from the existing event management tools to a cloud-based environment, and this sudden change can make many clients wary of updating their systems.

"When you look at traditional networking and event management tools, you find yourself in a position where if you migrate data into an IoT environment, you have no visibility of this data within your traditional e ve n t m a n a g e m e n t e n v i r o n m e n t , " Dreckmeyr said.

He said that Netshield addresses this issue by offering integration with multiple systems, allowing existing systems to function simultaneously over SNMP while also broadcasting data to a cloud-based environment.

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INTERNET OF THINGS

COMFORTABLE AND SECURE MIGRATION "The first approach we had was to simply offer a tool which can report back to multiple systems, not only to the cloud-based IoT environment."

"What you simply do is you switch on both your SNMP and IoT protocols, so you can stream all your events through to the cloud for the big data analysis end of things, and any current event that hasn't been resolved you can then manage through your traditional processes," Dreckmeyr said.

This works similar to a broadcast function, with gateways sending the same data from connected hardware to both the existing systems and the new cloud-based environment.

Implementing this solution means that companies can very easily enable cloud-based analytics and data processing while leaving their existing systems undisturbed.

Of course, if the cloud-based environment offers a more efficient and stable environment for all event management, the entire system can be migrated easily with minimal disruption.

"This buys you the time to migrate your event management software to a point where it links into the rest of your system," Dreckmeyr said.

"Instead of splitting your products and saying these use the SNMP and these communicate with the cloud environment, you have this flow where you have the option to use any combination of cloud and local environments."

He added that connected device management systems would slowly migrate to cloud services due to the improved efficiency and accessibility of the format.

34 MYBROADBAND

"All of those event management tools will slowly but surely migrate to some form of cloud format as people realise the advantages of cloud services and the ease of storing your data in the cloud," Dreckmeyr said.

Netshield endeavours to educate its customers on how painless and easy it can be to implement cloud-based IoT systems by offering flexible products catered to the specific applications of the customer.

COMPANIES CAN VERY EASILY ENABLE CLOUD-BASED ANALYTICS AND DATA PROCESSING WHILE LEAVING THEIR EXISTING SYSTEMS UNDISTURBED.

IMPROVED ACCESSIBILITY AND COST SAVINGS Migrating your systems into the cloud this way allows for you to take advantage of powerful new tools while maintaining the stability and redundancy of your legacy systems.

Performing tasks like data queries or on-boarding new equipment becomes much easier thanks to the crosscompatible and collaborative nature of the cloud environment software.

For example, if you need to make certain information available for customers to access, you can simply use the implemented REST API to provide compatibility with most

database calls within the cloud IoT environment.

A d d i t i o n a l l y , u s i n g s o f t wa r e l i k e C l o u d Fo r g e t o i n t e g r a t e new equipment within your IoT environment allows you to simply connect the hardware and select preconfigured devices.

“The cloud-based analytics tools and AI engines have much improved interfaces and are easier to use,” Dreckmeyr said. He noted that if customers opted to implement a cloud IoT system running concurrently with their existing event management tools, they would have ample time to conduct a stable migration and could offload some analytics processing to the cloud environment to save on processing costs.

“It can work as a safety net in some ways, and it can buy you some time to migrate your tools to a cloud-based environment,” Dreckmeyr said.

“If you want to then adapt certain parts of your systems so that they are easily scalable within the cloud, you can use dynamic processing power scaling to save on data processing costs.”

“Instead of paying a premium to move existing systems over to gateways which only support cloud environments, you can support both systems and make migration to cloud systems far more comfortable.”

Netshield offers flexible IoT solutions to clients based on their specific needs, including support for integration of existing hardware, dashboards, and management tools.

“We have adapted our offering to suit a number of different environments based on our knowledge of trends within the cloud,” Dreckmeyr said. ∎

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U N I F I E D C O M M U N I CAT I O N S

3CX: INNOVATING SIMPLICITY FOR MORE ADVANCED UC T

he South African Unified Communications industry has been experiencing a shake-up for years.

A young market full of potential, South African businesses are quickly updating their expectations of what a UC solution can bring to their team and how it can connect workers in remote communities.

WHAT BUSINESSES WANT Customers across the globe are aware of the ways in which business communications and collaboration are changing, and their expectations of what they can get from their providers is as well. Businesses want solutions that are easier to implement and integrate with existing systems and devices; no pricey vendor lock-in to specific manufacturers or technology partners. As an open-platform solution, 3CX addresses these needs by offering multiple deployment options, on Windows, Linux, mini-PC, virtualised, or in the cloud. What’s more, the PBX offers plug and play compatibility

with a wide range of popular IP Phones, gateways and SIP Trunks. With 3CX, it’s your PBX, your way.

CHANGE IN TECHNOLOGIES Technology is playing an ever increasing part in South African development and experts are forecasting that by 2020 there will be 1 billion connected devices across the continents. With an increasing stock of quality UC solutions, the South African market is building a greater demand for collaborative technologies like 3CX’s WebRTC-based web app and integrated video conferencing. With customers opting for providers that can offer the implementation of VoIP and the ability to host in the cloud, the need for software like 3CX is gaining demand. 3CX integrates with CRM systems, SIP Trunk providers and many other third party software solutions to offer the South African market a modern UC system.

UNCOMPROMISED AFFORDABILITY Research has shown that companies across South Africa are planning to increase their budgets for PBX systems, and cloud hosting is one part of that. And although they are looking to spend more, they of course are also looking to spend smarter.

3CX provides a top-grade UC solution with all the features South African businesses are looking for, but this is also structured in a way that makes telecom budgets stretch farther. Our software licence is available in three straightforward editions that give access to all of our features with one simplified price that is just a fraction of the cost of similar products on the market.

And what’s more, licensing is based on the number of simultaneous calls meaning there are no pricey per user costs to worry about.

South African businesses are quickly developing and bypassing old technologies, electing to go straight for modern solutions that offer the latest in Unified Communications. By increasing their expectations, adapting to new technologies and increasing budgets for smarter system upgrades, time and time again South African businesses are turning to simple, flexible and affordable solutions like 3CX. ∎

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38 MYBROADBAND

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AI, AI, AI Tamsin Oxford

IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND AUTOMATION REALLY GOING TO CHANGE THE COUNTRY? 40 MYBROADBAND

A

recent forecast done by leading research firm, International Data Corporation (IDC), suggests that the worldwide spend on cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) will hit $19.1 billion in 2018. That’s a 54.2% increase on 2017. IDC also predicts that this spend will hit $2.2 billion by 2021, a mere three years in the future. But is AI really that big a deal? Is it going to hit South Africa hard and leave it breathless?

According to Adrian van der Merwe, CEO of North Wind Digital, it is too early to tell. “Corporates are currently investing in machine learning and cognitive technology, however, the roadmap is two years from realisation. That said, every sector and function is concerned about the impact that AI will have on them.”

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

taken over by the intelligent interface that minimises human error and maximises efficiency on both budgets and the planet.

According to IDC, 2019 will have around 40% of digital transformation initiatives using AI with retail overtaking banking as the sector investing the most into this emergent technology. By 2021 it is anticipated that 75% of enterprise applications will use AI with the fastest spend growth sitting in public safety, emergency response, pharmaceutical research and discovery, and expert shopping advisors and product recommendations.

“Even with these benefits and the potential of AI many in South Africa remain sceptical, citing concerns around the potential negative impact on jobs,” says Robert Hudson, Chief Technology Officer, BT in Africa. “The reality is that every industrial revolution has had its own affect on skills and the workforce but the dystopian reality portrayed by Hollywood is far removed from the truth. In fact, our global research has found that while AI and automation are accepted to be disruptive, their impact on the labour market is still up for debate.”

There are significant benefits to the adoption and implementation of AI but its impact will vary from sector to industry to career. In the transport industry, for example, it is already changing the game.

According to Shadab Rahil and Nolan Daniel, joint CEOs of Payment24, AI has the potential to make roads much safer.

“AI’s natural language understanding and pattern recognition abilities will reduce the need for user interfaces and ignite the growth of self-driving transport shuttles,” says Rahil. “It will also provide route planning, assistive safety features that predict potential accidents and intelligent fuel consumption.”

Many of the basic features of driving from Point A to Point B can potentially be

South Africa is also known for taking a wait and see approach to most new technologies. The country has long watched technology evolve, taken what works and then added its own unique flavour to the product that ultimately comes out the other end. Organisations shouldn’t be timidly hiding behind their CRT monitors from the AI incursion but rather leveraging their skills base and the potential of their employees to formulate a robust AI adoption strategy.

“Most global enterprise CEOs are looking to AI to innovate,” adds Rahil.

“Conversational chatbots will become more mainstream and the technology will quickly filter down from larger companies to midsized companies. We are also likely to see chatbots-as-a-service in the near future.”

South Africa may lag behind in terms of adoption, but analysts have predicted that AI-enabled economies will grow faster than those without. PwC reported that AI would boost the global gross domestic product by nearly $16 trillion by 2030. This will very

likely give the local enterprise the push that it needs to differentiate through AI-enabled cost savings and operational efficiencies, among other things.

“I believe that, in the next year, AI will become more of a strategic imperative for corporates while the technology continues to improve,” says van der Merwe.

“Machines will be performing more of the coding functions and adopting advanced machine learning to learn from other machines. Within the next five years we will see AI being accepted as an everyday part of our lives, both in the corporate and personal spaces.”

Gartner believes that the global business value from AI will hit $1.2 trillion in 2018 and $3.9 trillion in 2022. The research giant believes that AI’s business value will lie in three primary areas – customer experience, new revenue and cost reduction.

It will also, according to Hudson, take a leading role in intelligent banking, defence against cyber criminals and the move from digital to autonomous mining.

I BELIEVE THAT, IN THE NEXT YEAR, AI WILL BECOME MORE OF A STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE FOR CORPORATES.

“It should be noted that AI is only as good as the people who have programmed it,” he concludes. “It requires a lot of industry knowledge and expertise to build a model that is able to learn based on the specific and unique processes that are involved in the different parts of the business value chain and on the use case application. As the possible applications of AI are better understood and become increasingly integrated within certain blocks of IT infrastructure and systems, we will begin to see more sophisticated use cases emerging.” ∎

MYBROADBAND 41

TRAINING

ARE YOU READY FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? • MASTER THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES TO TAKE YOU TO THE TOP • BUILD THE MOST EFFECTIVE INTERNSHIP PROGRAMME FOR NEW RECRUITS.

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igital transformation is sweeping through all industries, making it more important than ever for engineers and technicians to stay abreast of both the underlying and new telecoms technologies and methodologies. Success Builders International (SBI) is a leading local organization helping to prepare people for the ever-changing world of IT and telecommunications.

SBI’s training provides a technology foundation, is vendor independent and provides a skills springboard for specialised roles and vendor-specific training. It is designed to create context, dependencies, inter-working and end-toend understanding.

In order for engineers and technicians to be able to support emerging network environments, SBI has designed Digital Platform Core: Certificate in Network Softwarization (DPC).

WHY DPC IS A NECESSARY AND VALUABLE PROGRAMME The trend toward Network Softwarization is transforming the networking industry into an open ecosystem by separating the hardware on which the network functions and services run, and the software that realises and controls the network functions and services. At the core of this change is a shift to increasingly software-centric

42 MYBROADBAND

operations with the virtualisation of most of the hardware devices across the end-toend value chain of the network.

This fundamental shift in architecture requires a skills-set that is different to traditional telecoms skills.

Completion of this programme prepares participants to further their careers into supporting the networks of the future and entitles them to take the ONF (Open Networking Foundation) SDN Associate exam as well as receiving Pearson assured qualification.

SBI’s DPC training has been designed to provide the exposure and skill-sets necessary for engineers and technicians to successfully evolve and transform into the age of network softwarisation. It is a learning pathway through the softwarecentric technologies that are digitizing and transforming network infrastructures.

For people who aspire to become technical leaders of the future, SBI’s Digital Advanced Certificate programme offers additional opportunities to master coding fundamentals for SDN and NFV, cyber security essentials and the ability to build an end-to-end digital system including IoT, SDN, NFV and Cloud technologies.

WHAT IS IN DPC? The programme begins by providing a thorough understanding and foundation of legacy technologies. An understanding of this foundation enables participants to effectively access and master the virtualisation required by the Digital Transformation elements that follow.

“The SBI programmes, developed in South Africa, have evolved extensively over time,” says SBI Managing Director Caron Perkins. “Customised updates are made every year and specifically address the need for engineers and technicians to have a strong knowledge base in both existing telecoms networks and the new skills needed to most effectively address and support digital transformation." ∎

The series starts with a 2-day overview of the digital transformation landscape.

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D I G I TA L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

HOW FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES ARE GRAPPLING WITH TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION 44 MYBROADBAND

W

hen you look at the current Fortune Global 500 list, one common trend that shows itself across all sectors and nations is that those companies that have embraced technology have better revenue and a more secure position in the market.

Companies as varied as BMW, CMB and Enel have all solidified their position in the Fortune Global 500 thanks in significant part to their pioneering focus on digital transformation.

Following those digital transformations, the respective organisations are then able to invest in competitive differentiation via technology. Using facial recognition

for payments, taking steps forward in automated driving cars, and other features that resonate with the market and deliver high revenues are only possible once the organisation has completed its digital transformation. In each of these cases, Huawei – which partnered with 211 of the Fortune 500 in 2018 – has been a core part of the transformation strategy.

Fortune Global 500 Business leaders recognise the potential for technology.

According to a survey by Lean Methods Group, innovation – closely related to technology – was the third most significant concern for big business CEOs, while technology was fifth. Sixty-five per

cent of Fortune Global 500 CEOs polled

by Fortune magazine cited the rate of technological change as being “one of the top three or four biggest” challenges, if not the biggest.

HOW FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES ARE GRAPPLING WITH TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION Only 12 per cent of companies listed in the Fortune Global 500 of 1955 were still listed in the 2017 list. The others have either shrunk and dropped off the list, gone out of business, or been acquired over the 62 years. Technology drives much of that churn. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) report notes: “The constant

MYBROADBAND 45

D I G I TA L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

turnover in the Fortune 500 is a positive sign of the dynamism and innovation that characterises a vibrant consumer-oriented market economy, and that dynamic turnover is speeding up in today’s hypercompetitive global economy.”

delivered, and serviced – and it forces CEOs to rethink how companies execute, with new business processes, management practices, and information systems, as well as everything about the nature of customer relationships.”

Digital transformation is no longer optional for Fortune Global 500 companies that wish to remain in that list. By 2018, 67 per cent of the world’s top 1000 enterprises will have selected it as a key strategy. By the end of 2017, 70 per cent of the Fortune Global 500 had set up full-time digital transformation or innovation teams.

FINDING THE RIGHT SOLUTIONS For an example of how Huawei has been able to help companies grapple with the digital transformation challenges and deliver a future-proof platform for innovation, you only need to look at the

A Fortune Global 500 company has the resources to invest in advanced Cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and other advanced technologies.

Bringing those technologies together under a cohesive vision, and grappling with both the amount of data and the scale of the technology environments is a significant challenge, which only becomes larger as the company grows.

For many Fortune Global 500 companies, the first goal in any digital transformation strategy is to break down the technology silos within the organisation. With many large companies, technology is divided by business verticals. However, to deliver consumer-focused innovation, it becomes critical that the company break down those silos and encourage proper crossdepartment collaboration.

This is just the first step, but it shows that digital transformation needs to be taken as a whole-of-business strategy, and it needs to be driven by a visionary CEO that can build an executive team that shares the vision. Once the leadership team is in place, the next goal is finding the right technology partners and solutions to execute it.

A McKinsey report notes, “Digital transformation is about sweeping change.

It changes everything about how products are designed, manufactured, sold,

46 MYBROADBAND

consumption, to keep operation costs low.

It was also vitally important the servers were stable. Huawei developed a solution that combined servers that had been tested in extreme conditions and were then placed in Pitea, a small Swedish town near the Arctic circle, where the naturally cool temperatures helped minimise the power drain on the datacentre.

For Fortune Global 500 companies – and other large enterprises – digital transformation is critical to their ongoing

FOR MANY FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES, THE FIRST GOAL IN ANY DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY IS TO BREAK DOWN THE TECHNOLOGY SILOS WITHIN THE ORGANISATION.

automotive industry. Few industries have been more affected by technological disruption than the automotive industry, as new forms of power generation start to replace existing, petroleum-driven vehicles, and new start-ups leverage extreme data generation from the behaviour of cars on the road to improve safety and the driving experience. The “holy grail” of fully automated, self-driving cars seems to be just one or two innovations away.

As part of its digital transformation strategy, one of the stalwarts of the industry, BMW, needed to achieve shorter R&D cycles for engineers, more frequent computer-aided engineering (CAE) simulations, and higher simulation precision.

The company turned to Huawei to develop solutions featuring hundreds of servers that would run on minimum power

health. For companies of this size and scale, solutions need to be tailored to the company’s specific needs. Success in these digital transformation exercises hinges on finding the right partner, with the right heritage in finding the right solutions for large enterprises.

As one of the global leaders in R&D, Huawei has a wide range of technology solutions to benefit enterprise and government alike.

Go to http:/huaweinewict.cio.com for more information on the full suite of services. ∎

F I NA N C E

THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL PAYMENTS Jamie McKane

T

he financial landscape in South Africa is changing, with an increasing number of people moving from cash to digital payments.

For those with smartphones and banking apps, making an electronic payment to stores or family and friends is just a few swipes away.

The increased proliferation of NFCcompatible payment terminals and contactless bank cards allow for a secure and frictionless shopping experience, and the rise of platforms such as Zapper and SnapScan have allowed shoppers to pay securely using their smartphones.

One of the most notable additions to the growing collection of digital payment platforms in South Africa is Samsung Pay, which offers a reliable and accessible digital payments solution to owners of selected Samsung devices.

All of these technologies have seen accelerated adoption across the country, according to major South African banks and the providers of these services.

48 MYBROADBAND

The traditional payments environment is quickly being upset by new platforms which offer faster and more secure payment options.

SMARTPHONE REVOLUTION The launch of Samsung Pay in South Africa is a major step forward for those with compatible flagship smartphones.

This application uses smartphone hardware to enable payments via Near-Field Communication (NFC) and Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST).

Combining these two technologies allows users to pay using their smartphones almost anywhere, taking advantage of the biometric security hardware on the device to provide an added layer of security to payments.

The platform supports both multiple cards from local banks and loyalty or membership cards.

Samsung South Africa director of integrated mobility, Justin Hume, said that the service has seen impressive adoption across the country.

"The launch of Samsung Pay has been a huge success for Samsung," Hume said. "We have seen strong adoption of the new service and the numbers are growing daily.

"We cannot wait for our other banking partners to be ready to offer Samsung Pay to their clients as well."

Justin Hume Director of Integrated Mobility for Samsung South Africa

He said that since the open beta testing phase and the official commercial launch of the product, Samsung Pay now has close to 50,000 registered users - a number which is growing daily.

BANK PARTNERSHIPS When Samsung Pay first launched in South Africa, Standard Bank and Absa were quick to jump in and support the payment platform, adding support for their bank cards.

Samsung expects the adoption of its payment app in South Africa to be similar to the adoption it has experienced in international markets.

Standard Bank head of emerging payments Wendy Pienaar told MyBroadband that partnering with Samsung for the benefit of the bank's customers was a natural decision.

THE LAUNCH OF SAMSUNG PAY HAS BEEN A HUGE SUCCESS FOR SAMSUNG.

"Samsung Pay is the only tap and pay mobile solution in market where you can virtually pay at any payment terminal where you can swipe, insert or tap your physical card," Hume said.

"This allows you to pay on more than 50% more payment terminals than any other mobile payment solution or even by tapping with your contactlessenabled card."

"Standard Bank Group has engaged in an ambitious digitisation programme to become more and more relevant in our customers’ digital experiences," Pienaar said.

"In terms of payments, this means enabling our customers to shop anywhere with their favourite device - their smartphone."

She noted that Samsung was the first device manufacturer to join the Mastercard and Visa contactless payment programmes in South Africa.

"Standard Bank has invested in the technology required to participate in those programmes, and Samsung has the highest penetration in the local market," Pienaar said.

"As such it was a natural decision to have Standard Bank and Samsung join forces for the benefit of our customers' payment convenience and security."

Absa Unsecured Lending, Transactional Banking, and Payments managing executive Cowyk Fox told MyBroadband that the bank is passionate about innovation and aspires to be a digitally-led banking group.

“We also wanted to set the tone as true digital leaders by allowing our customers to be the first on the continent to experience the next frontier of mobile payments,” Fox said.

MYBROADBAND 49

F I NA N C E

“With 47.8% of total SA phone web traffic passing through Samsung devices, it is clearly the device of choice amongst South African people.”

Fox said Absa expects to see increased digital mobile payment adoption across the continent in line with global trends.

He added that Samsung Pay has changed the way Absa customers make in-store purchases due to its support for both MST and NFC.

“Currently, mobile devices are driving invisible digital payments; global mobile payments are expected to grow at CAGR 30%-plus to 2023 according to Allied Market Research,” Fox said.

“Other purely contactless payment mechanisms from other banks have a very limited reach in the South African market,” Fox said.

“More than 50% of this growth is being driven by Card on File solutions like Samsung Pay, Zapper, SnapScan, etc. according to Mastercard.“

CASHLESS TRENDS The global trend in the payments market comprises a migration to a truly cashless society, and South African banks aim to accommodate customers looking to explore digital payment opportunities.

He noted that South Africa is still within the early phases of mobile payments adoption.

Pienaar noted that Standard Bank customers are adopting smartphone-based banking experiences at an increasing rate.

"Our customers have more and more digital experiences, on or supported by their smartphones," Pienaar said.

"Standard Bank aims to become the preferred payment partner in those experiences, integrating traditional offerings such as credit cards with market innovations such as Samsung Pay, SnapScan, Virtual Cards and Instant Money."

She added that there has been a clear increase in the use of platforms like Zapper, SnapScan, and Samsung Pay, and this usage is expected to accelerate.

Going forward, Pienaar said Standard Bank will focus on delivering what matters to customers for their digital shopping experiences - safety, convenience and wide acceptance.

"This will be done by augmenting our traditional offering with exciting innovations tailored to the local market as well as support for global payment ecosystems."

50 MYBROADBAND

Absa plans to continue monitoring and exploring the digital payment industry, and expects the adoption of contactless, QR Code, and mobile payments to increase substantially over the next 12-24 months.

“The underlying integration that Absa has done with Visa and Mastercard to enable Samsung Pay will also allow Absa to rapidly enable other “pays” like Apple Pay and Google Pay when these providers decide to enter the South African market,” Fox said.

“We are keen to work with these providers as and when they bring these payment options to South Africa and the African continent.” ∎

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SECURITY

HYBRID CLOUD SECURITY IN SOUTH AFRICA – NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO SECURE YOUR NETWORK Carien Pretorius

H

ybrid cloud deployments are becoming the standard in most organisations today, offering increased speed for operations. According to Trend Micro’s Executive Vice President, Network Defence Steve Quane, people who develop in the cloud are able to move much faster than those who don’t.

such as jeopardising GDPR and POPI compliance or taking critical networks offline.

While cloud adoption continues to accelerate most organisations aren’t prepared to mitigate and disclose security breaches should they occur.

Organisations need security in the cloud as much as they need it on-premise, but can't have different security solutions in each place, as this can be hard to manage and is much less secure. A hybrid cloud security solution on the other hand – one solution that covers both cloud and on-premise workloads to include virtualisation – allows for effective people management and ease of use.

According to Quane, organisations need to understand their security risk posture by analysing which servers are protected, at which levels, and be able to report and manage it, to understand their state of risk from a breach perspective. This is essential as it has the potential to impact business operations significantly,

CONCERNS IN THE CYBERTHREAT LANDSCAPE One of the greatest concerns in security, which we can expect to see in future are attacks in the IoT (Internet of Things) landscape.

Hackers have already begun to take advantage of IoT to launch cyberattacks, which can have serious

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ORGANISATIONS NEED SECURITY IN THE CLOUD AS MUCH AS THEY NEED IT ON-PREMISE.

financial and legal implications for organisations.

The danger is the scale of a potential attack in the IoT environment, as millions of devices can be harnessed to target computing networks or a company’s online infrastructure.

Recent IoT attacks, such as the Mirai Botnet, alternately known as IoT Reaper, have caused widespread outages by taking over millions of IP cameras and Internet routers by simply exploiting their weak or default passwords.

Because of this, many organisations are realising that if they have a large IoT infrastructure, it's far more efficient to have it in the cloud, rather than on-premise.

“We're going to see similar attacks as the recent attack on cameras where someone took over and compromised around a million cameras in the cloud.

So I believe that the IoT deployment in the cloud and the attacks associated with it will probably be the most significant cloud attacks that we'll see soon,” said Quane.

Cybersecurity cannot be an afterthought and it must be key to the IoT implementation process from the outset. Without it, companies face massive risk and the catastrophic consequences that may follow.

Steve Quane Trend Micro Executive Vice President, Network Defence

MYBROADBAND 53

SECURITY

DEEP SECURITY With more businesses leaning towards cloud-based environments, security solutions must evolve in tandem to protect Hybrid Cloud environments, and safeguard against potential breaches, impacts to data privacy, and compliance issues. Trend Micro, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, offers several hybrid cloud solutions such as Deep Security, which secures the infrastructure to safeguard against potential breaches, while staying POPI and GDPR compliant.

Deep Security meets the requirements of a security solution purpose-built to handle the rigours of complex dynamic hybrid cloud environments, and easily and automatically scales up and down across these environments. This means fewer security products and skills to manage, and lower operational cost.

The product is two-fold: it handles several security controls in one package, which means it reduces complexity and is much more costeffective. Customers can go from 6 vendors to 1, and it has the ability to use the benefit of the elasticity and scalability of the cloud in an automated manner. It offers everything from intrusion prevention to anti-virus and application control to file-integrity, monitoring, and other controls.

“We've built Deep Security in such a way that as the servers scale up and scale down, no human has to touch it. The security essentially follows the server: as those servers go up, Deep Security recognises those servers are there, and applies the correct controls. As they go down, we pull the controls out and no one has to manage it,” said Quane.

54 MYBROADBAND

“Here at Trend Micro, we have several controls that really assist in not only the disclosure part if you have been breached, but also in the data protection component with things such as application control, file integrity monitoring, or additional security safeguards that apply to servers to really help customers manage their GDPR and POPI compliance,” said Quane.

WE'VE BUILT DEEP SECURITY IN SUCH A WAY THAT AS THE SERVERS SCALE UP AND SCALE DOWN, NO HUMAN HAS TO TOUCH IT.

Trend Micro has a deep understanding of the cloud and how it needs to be secured, and offers the only truly hybrid cloud security solution that is seamless from physical to virtual in cloud applications.

“We also have regional experts in South Africa and across the world who can assist organisations looking to secure their hybrid cloud,” Quane concluded. ∎ To find out more, visit www.trendmicro.com

Automating Hybrid Cloud Security for DevOps The ongoing shift of workloads to public cloud platforms further complicates the composition of hybrid cloud environments. As a result, surveyed organizations indicate that they find the implementation of consistent security policies across on-premises and cloud infrastructures challenging. And while keeping pace with the speed of DevOps is of concern, automating security via DevOps is an opportunity to keep pace with the cloud.

Biggest Hybrid Cloud Security Challenges

25%

23%

20%

Find it difficult to maintain strong and consistent security across their data center and multi-cloud environments

Reveal employees are signing up for cloud applications without the approval and governance of their IT departments

Indicate the rapid pace of change via DevOps automation makes it a challenge to maintain security controls

Security at the Speed of DevOps Securing hybrid cloud environments requires a new approach that embraces the speed at which businesses move. Solutions that integrate with DevOps tools to automate cybersecurity processes are essential to achieve this goal. While hybrid clouds bring changes to IT business models, methodologies, and technologies, DevSecOps represents an opportunity to efficiently improve an organization’s cybersecurity posture and enable business agility.

Read the full white paper, Leveraging the Agility of DevOps Processes to Secure Hybrid Clouds on www.trendmicro.com info_africa@trendmicro.com | +27 11 012 3606 | https://www.trendmicro.com

B R OA D BA N D

THE MAN WHO GAVE SOUTH AFRICA AFFORDABLE UNCAPPED BROADBAND Rudolph Muller

R

udi Jansen is one of South Africa’s Internet pioneers. He was a founding member of MWEB, helped with Naspers’ acquisition of Tencent Holdings, and was behind the drive which enabled open peering between all networks in the country. His biggest achievement, however, was to bring affordable broadband to South Africans.

To appreciate the magnitude of what Jansen achieved, it is important to understand what the broadband landscape looked like in the 2000s. Telkom’s ADSL service dominated the market, and most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were simply reselling Telkom’s wholesale ADSL products. This environment did not foster innovation or incentivise service providers to invest in their own network.

For nearly a decade after ADSL was launched in 2002 the price for a gigabyte of data remained largely unchanged at

56 MYBROADBAND

around R70 to R80 per GB. These high prices, coupled with the high bandwidth costs at the time, made it inconceivable that South Africa could have affordable, uncapped broadband.

Jansen and his team at MWEB thought differently. While developing a technical solution based on Telkom’s IPC product – which is used by ISPs to provide their own ADSL bandwidth – they realised that there are better solutions than simply buying a set product from Telkom and selling it on to their subscribers.

As MWEB CEO, Jansen also wanted to kick-start MWEB’s growth with a truly unique offering. He set his management team the challenge of differentiating itself through uncapped products. “It ended up being one of the most exciting projects within MWEB and it really got the entire organisation focussed. It was a wonderful period in the MWEB history,” said Jansen.

To build an affordable uncapped product, in a market with high wholesale bandwidth costs, which was controlled by Telkom, was not easy. In fact, nobody except Jansen and his team at MWEB thought it could be done. They proved the market wrong.

MWEB built its own national and international network - which was previously outsourced almost entirely to Telkom and Internet Solutions – incredibly fast. “We went from no network to one of the biggest networks in a space of 4 months,” Jansen said. They partnered with Seacom for affordable international bandwidth and purchased large amounts of IPC bandwidth from Telkom.

There was also the problem of free and open peering. At the time big telecoms operators were very protective of their networks and did not want to peer with MWEB. “Nobody wanted to open up as they thought their own growth will stop and they charged a

Rudi Jansen

fortune for transit between networks. It was easier to get peering in Europe than in South Africa,” said Jansen.

Solving the peering problem turned out to be simple. Armed with enough affordable international bandwidth through Seacom, MWEB routed its traffic via Europe and passed its network traffic over at the almost free peering links. Locally MWEB peered for free with whoever it could – big or small.

These plans came together beautifully, and on 22 March 2010 MWEB achieved the unthinkable – it launched uncapped ADSL products starting at R219 per month. This rocked the South African ISP market. The talk in the industry was that MWEB had lost the plot. Jansen was told that uncapped ADSL was not sustainable and that it will never work. A few competing ISPs even thought it was just a marketing stunt.

Jansen proved them all wrong and changed the South African broadband landscape forever. Uncapped broadband is now more widespread and more popular than ever, and it has helped to ignite many online industries in the country, including online gaming, streaming, and eCommerce.

Jansen’s words in 2010 are as relevant today as they were then – “Anyone who thinks you can go back to a ‘capped world’ is completely misguided. You can never go back. You can never offer an inferior service.” ∎ MYBROADBAND 57

INTERNET OF THINGS

Reshaad Sha CEO of Liquid Telecom

58 MYBROADBAND

IOT - A PRE-REQUISITE FOR ENABLING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Reshaad Sha, CEO of Liquid Telecom

IOT AND DIGITIZATION ENABLES US TO EFFICIENTLY, PROACTIVELY AND PREDICTIVELY ADDRESS THE SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES THAT ARE BEING FACED

BY THE AFRICAN CONTINENT AND GLOBALLY.

W

ith Africa’s population set to increase from around 1.3-billion in 2018 to 1.7-billion by 2030, both challenges and opportunities are presented with regards to managing issues including food production and food supply security as well as the utilization of limited natural resources in a sustainable manner.

Water scarcity and poor water quality are realities that negatively impact health, food production and security. Population growth rates and climatic changes place an exponential demand on this scarce and dwindling resource. These are just some of the sustainability challenges facing not just the African continent, but other developing nations and the world as a whole. In addition to this, the demand for the delivery of basic services such as healthcare and sanitation also increases.

Against this background of African population growth lies the grim projection that Africa will account for more than 50% of child deaths (under 5) by 2030, while each day, nearly 1000 children die owing to preventable water and sanitationrelated diarrheal diseases according to the UNICEF 2017 Trends in Child Mortality report. It’s an alarming fact, given that while some 2.6-billion people have gained access to improved drinking water sources since 1990, 663-million people still do not have access.

The South African department of Water Affairs and Forestry estimates that the agricultural sector accounts for more than 50% of water use in South Africa and experience water losses of between 30-40%. Further to this, the department states that around 35% of irrigation system losses, often nutrient enriched and containing herbicides, pesticides, and

MYBROADBAND 59

INTERNET OF THINGS

other pollutants, return to rivers. These are just some of the ways in which reactive, inefficient, and manually driven processes have limited us in responding in an impactful manner and timeously mitigating these risks.

It is for these reasons and other socioeconomic and environmental concerns that the United Nations has established its Sustainable Development Goals strategy, addressing the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, and environmental degradation.

We need to look at smarter ways that leverage technology in order to address these challenges. The situation requires a radical response that delivers a proactive, predictive and data driven approach to addressing these issues with exponentially growing levels of speed and impact.

The IoT ecosystem, comprising of sensors, connectivity, data analytics and workflow automation platforms, and applications are at the core of acquiring, analysing and harnessing the insights that can be integrated into agriculture, service delivery, health and resource management processes – IoT is at the core of a digitization strategy.

One such sector which has benefited immensely from technology is in agriculture pest control, with the implementation of AI and IoT by Spanish startup AgroPestAlert.

The innovation makes use of “smart” traps that capture insects and analyse their wing beats to identify their species and even their sex. Placed throughout the fields, the traps communicate with the system to predict an imminent invasion. The system will send alerts to phones, tablets and computers and use an easy-to-understand visual tool to cue farmers instantly.

Around 200-million Africans use approximately 1-million manual pumps across the continent to manually access clean drinking water. IoT applications

60 MYBROADBAND

have been utilised in assuring the delivery of water through these manual pumps, according to estimates, at least one-third of those pumps will break down at least once in its lifecycle, and up to 70% will break in the second year of operation. The impact of not having access to clean drinking water is dehydration or waterborne pandemics.

In the Kenyan Region of Kyusoa, Oxford University began a proof of concept project in 2013, which made use of motion sensors to capture the movements of the pump's handle which was transmitted and analysed in real time. A decision support system, based on real data, was used to predict pump malfunctions, allowing for better planning and shortening the time needed to repair broken pumps, or avoiding malfunctions altogether, directly improving the access to clean drinking water for the rural population.

Liquid Telecom realises that the future of sustainability lies in technology and innovations such as IoT. We provide high speed fibre connectivity to interconnect

WE NEED TO LOOK AT SMARTER WAYS THAT LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY IN ORDER TO ADDRESS THESE CHALLENGES.

as well as access platforms to build IoT solutions, in addition to access to the Microsoft Azure suite for analytics and algorithm-driven processing and execution.

Our Pan African network enables collaboration and cross-border innovation and learning, as well as the capability to efficiently scale out these solutions on Africa’s Liquid Cloud. ∎

Africa’s Africa’s Cloud Cloud is Africa’s Cloud is Liquid.

Liquid. is Liquid.

TM TM

TM

Cloud computing accelerates every aspect of your business but it only works as well as theevery infrastructure it.

Cloud computing accelerates aspect ofsupporting your business As an official Microsoft partner, only Liquid Telecom it. can but it only works as wellCSP as the infrastructure supporting combine enterprise-grade reliability from As an official Microsoft CSP partner,and onlyperformance Liquid Telecom can Microsoftenterprise-grade Cloud with an award-winning network. from combine reliability andfibre performance Cloud computing accelerates every aspect of your business Microsoft Cloud with an tools award-winninganywhere fibre network.

So now you can access on almost but it only works as well as thevirtually infrastructure supporting it. anyan device. you’re working online or off,Telecom from your So now you Whether can access tools virtually anywhere on almost As official Microsoft CSP partner, only Liquid can computer, tablet or phone, we have your business covered any device.

Whether you’rereliability working online or off, from your combine enterprise-grade and performance from with Microsoft Cloud. computer, tablet or phone, we have yourfibre business covered Microsoft Cloud with an award-winning network. with Microsoft Cloud.

Contact Liquid Telecom today on 080 1111 636 or So now you can access tools virtually anywhere on almost saleshelpdesk@liquidtelecom.co.za to1111 see how we can Contact Liquid Telecom on online 080 636 or your any device.

Whether you’retoday working or off, from accelerate youror company along digital journey. computer, tablet phone, we haveyour your business covered saleshelpdesk@liquidtelecom.co.za to see how we can with Microsoft Cloud. accelerate your company along your digital journey.

Contact Liquid Telecom today on 080 1111 636 or saleshelpdesk@liquidtelecom.co.za to see how we can accelerate your company along your digital journey.

www.liquidtelecom.co.za www.liquidtelecom.co.za

Building Africa’s digital future Building Africa’s digital future

Liquid Telecom trademark notice. “Liquid Telecom”, “Liquid“, “the Liquid Telecom Logo” and “Hai” and “the Hai logo” are registered trademarks ® of Liquid Telecommunications Holdings Limited and its affiliates and “the Liquid Telecom Africa Cloud Logo”, are trademarks ™ protected by law of the same Liquid Telecom trademark notice. “Liquid Telecom”, “Liquid“, “the Liquid Telecom Logo” and “Hai” and “the Hai logo” are registered trademarks ® of company (altogether the “Marks”). All rights reserved. You may not at any time or for any purpose use the Marks or the name “Liquid Telecom Group”. © Copyright Liquid Telecommunications Holdings Limited and its affiliates and “the Liquid Telecom Africa Cloud Logo”, are trademarks ™ protected by law of the same Notice. Liquid Telecommunications Holdings Limited 2017. All rights reserved. company (altogether the “Marks”). All rights reserved. You may not at any time or for any purpose use the Marks or the name “Liquid Telecom Group”. © Copyright Notice. Liquid Telecommunications Holdings Limited 2017. All rights reserved.

www.liquidtelecom.co.za

Building Africa’s digital future

Liquid Telecom trademark notice. “Liquid Telecom”, “Liquid“, “the Liquid Telecom Logo” and “Hai” and “the Hai logo” are registered trademarks ® of Liquid Telecommunications Holdings Limited and its affiliates and “the Liquid Telecom Africa Cloud Logo”, are trademarks ™ protected by law of the same company (altogether the “Marks”). All rights reserved. You may not at any time or for any purpose use the Marks or the name “Liquid Telecom Group”. © Copyright Notice. Liquid Telecommunications Holdings Limited 2017. All rights reserved.

PRODUCTIVITY

SCAN YOUR WAY TO EFFICIENCY GAINS WITH FUJITSU WORK SMARTER AND SAVE MONEY WITH FUJITSU SCANNING SOLUTIONS BY DIGITALLY TRANSFORMING YOUR BUSINESS PROCESSES.

D

espite the talk over recent years of paperless offices, printed documents are still an integral part of today’s workplace. However there are increasing pressures to move from paper based processes to digital ones driven by compliance, employees demanding the right to work remotely, generational expectations, customer demands and the need to cut costs/ raise productivity and manage business information efficiently and securely.

As well as those benefits listed above, the cost of paper, print and storage is increasing too, putting further pressures on paper-based processes, if a business factors in the indirect costs of print, such as the time taken to find and retrieve a document from a file versus a quick, online search, the case to switch to digital processes is compelling.

There are several advantages to scanning documents through a dedicated scanning device and merging them with digitallyborn material:

Improved speed and paper handling.

Capture double-sided documents easily, at speed and intuitively. Fujitsu’s scanner range offers a high daily throughput and can cope with mixed batches without the need for pre-sorting or adjusting settings. They also come with market leading feeding mechanisms to ensure user intervention is minimised.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Save money Productivity gains Compliance Collaboration Easy organisation Smarter working Free your space Disaster recovery planning Deterioration of quality Efficient retrieval Legal admissibility Document and records retention Greener Customer satisfaction

WHY A DEDICATED SCANNING DEVICE?

Additionally the scanners will automatically crop to the correct size scanned, remove any scan skew, auto rotate and remove blank pages.

as a photocopier – and then the scanning function itself. An MFP is also a shared device, so extra time may be incurred if it is already being used.

Image quality and processing. A scanner can capture the content of a document and not just the image. Rather than creating a JPG, a scanner can produce a searchable PDF, thereby making information instantly retrievable at a later date. Bundled OCR software with the ScanSnap range means documents can be scanned and instantly converted to editable Word, Excel or PowerPoint files.

Receipts and business cards can also be scanned, and information exported to a database or expense monitor system.

Bundled PaperStream Capture software with Fujitsu’s SP and fi models literally cleans up the image and assisted scan can help with choosing the best scan for your workflow. ∎ For further information contact Mustek today.

Location and efficiency. There have been numerous studies about the wasted time in a typical week that can be spent walking to and from a multi-function device – such

MYBROADBAND 63

CONNECTIVITY

MEETING THE CAPACITY DEMAND CHALLENGE E

ight years ago, a typical client requirement was for 155 Megabits per second; today, 100 Gigabits per second is not unusual”, says Chris Wood, CEO of leading capacity wholesaler WIOCC.

requiring interaction with multiple service providers. A simpler solution is to use an expert Africa supplier with the expertise and relationships to deliver end-to-end managed connectivity solutions – a single point of contact, one contract and one bill.

Increasing adoption of, and reliance upon, bandwidth-intensive applications by enterprise and domestic clients is driving capacity demand amongst operators – particularly those serving banking and trading communities - content providers, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Wireless ISPs (WISPs), typically starting at 10Gbps, up to 100Gbps and beyond.

WIOCC is such an organization: a leading African carriers’ carrier focused on implementing tailored solutions for its wholesale client base. It is playing a key role in the arrival of international carriers, ISPs and over-the-top players into African markets, with these arrivals triggering a significant migration of content, principally from Europe to Africa, to improve service performance for consumers in Africa. With this has come the need for more localised services such as IP Transit, which provides ISPs with connectivity to global Internet content.

As well as delivery of the bandwidth itself, network latency, reliability and cost are all critical in the provision of connectivity.

Achieving the required network scale, quality and reach demands a significant and sustained programme of investment in metropolitan, national and international infrastructure. For example, capacity wholesaler WIOCC has invested over US$300 million in its unique network footprint, which is scaled to meet the ongoing capacity needs of even the most demanding of wholesale clients. The network comprises more than 55,000km of African terrestrial fibre linked seamlessly with capacity on multiple submarine cable systems, providing access to much of subSaharan Africa, including the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

TAILORED SERVICE OFFERINGS FOR AFRICA Addressing connectivity requirements in Africa can be complex, typically

64 MYBROADBAND

WIOCC is also increasingly supporting client migration from legacy SDH networks to new-generation, high-capacity, lowdelay Layer-0 Optical Transport Network (OTN) technologies and pure Ethernet at the Metro level, enabling seamless integration of international connectivity with extensive local presence.

JOHANNESBURG/ PRETORIA METRO With its 40-PoP Johannesburg/Pretoria Metro, extensive South African network and strategic investments in international submarine cables, WIOCC enables ISPs, WISPs and operators to address the needs of enterprise customers in Jo’burg and Pretoria seeking cost-effective, high-quality Internet and point-to-point connectivity. ∎

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Why WIOCC? Africa’s leading carriers’ carrier Doesn't compete for your end customers Operates an extensive Jo’burg Metro network High uptime with unique, diversity-rich, high-redundancy network Very competitive pricing Dynamic – responds rapidly on commercial/service decisions Flexible – bespoke offering in SA and cross borders Find out how you can partner with WIOCC to target your enterprise customers with the most competitive solutions. Contact us at marketing@wiocc.net

Pick your partners based on their ability to embrace the future

As an industry we have our fair share of evolution. From the broad-based moving of boxes, to the delivery of services, to value adding distribution. In fact I have said it before, that anyone who moves a product from A to B and carries a brand logo in their presentation, markets themselves as a value-added distributor. I don’t think there is anyone in this space who doesn’t believe they are “value-adding”.

By Rakesh Parbhoo, CEO at Westcon-Comstor Sub-Saharan Africa

Distribution is at a crossroad, the industry, the consumer and the products we move are becoming more digitally centric – this is not a new epiphany – it’s not a trend we need the analysts to map out for us, it is a reality. As the leader of a technology-centric distributor, I can put a stake in the ground and state that distribution itself needs to act quickly and embrace digitalisation or miss a huge opportunity.

Digital Distribution means three things, firstly it’s the digital vendor solutions we take to market: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Secondly, digital enablement is not just procurement and provisioning, but how we can really enable our partners to succeed. And lastly, in our model it is how we are making it easier for customers to do business with us as well how we enable customers to grow profitably in a digital world.

That said as distribution we are looking for the next big thing that will transform what we are doing well today into something we can perpetuate into the future. At Westcon-Comstor we have identified that one such element is the addition of digital distribution to the mix. The channel is complex, with so many vendors, partner requirements and end user needs – in the middle of that is distribution.

Notably, digital distribution does not entail throwing out the old and basing your business on a “born in the cloud” model. It goes without saying that some products are volume, run-rate and focussed on breadth while other products require commitment from the distributor and the reseller.

By adding digital distribution as an engagement pillar to our business model we are in fact better enabling the reseller by streamlining otherwise manual processes and providing them with an opportunity to create more share of the customer’s wallet. What does it mean for the customer?

Ultimately we are in the business of managing customer experience, not just the shifting of product. It means end-to-end solution delivery from partners who are able to add specialisations to what they offer by way of services, better SLAs and more robust logistics support, as opposed to resellers that simply focus on quantity of transactions.

In our own business we have been making progressive strides towards putting digital distribution at the centre of what we do. Does this mean we won’t have a warehouse? Never. We are exceptionally proud of our logistics offerings and there is a growing demand for these services.

What embracing digital distribution translates to, is that the systems we deploy internally need to be able to better support the digital procurement of products, solutions and services.

Internally we have, at a global level, overhauled our systems and processes so that they are in a position to deliver on the needs of a customer with more immediacy. In short, by digitising several manual processes including quoting as an example, we are able to close the loop on customer service.

The value of digital distribution is that it places a magnifying glass on every level of the services process, from the first engagement email or call to the delivery of the product. Enabling us to track and manage every stage of the customer experience cycle.

What we don’t want to offer is just another online tool for procurement.

Instead we are creating an environment where digital distribution sits at the heart of what we do and becomes an inherent part of our organisational DNA – all the while delivering on the partner experience and delivery of products and services to the end user.

www.westconcomstor.com +27 11 848 9000

SOLE ACCREDITED DISTRIBUTOR FOR SOUTHERN AFRICAN MARKET

www.iclogistix.co.za

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C O M PU T I N G

THE FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTERS IN THE WORLD Rudolph Muller

O

ver the last thirty years, computer manufacturers and countries have been in a race to build the world’s fastest supercomputer. Companies like IBM and Cray have been producing faster and faster supercomputers, which are typically used by government departments and research institutions for processing intensive tasks.

The United States has recently bumped its main rival China off the top of the fastest supercomputer list with its new Summit supercomputer. Summit was unveiled by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the world’s most powerful and smartest scientific supercomputer in June 2018.

The US’s Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said Summit demonstrated the strength of American leadership in scientific innovation and technology development.

To keep track of the fastest supercomputers in the world, the website TOP500 publishes a half-yearly report which ranks the top machines. Here are the fastest supercomputers from the June 2018 report.

68 MYBROADBAND

Summit Summit is an IBM-built supercomputer with a performance of 122.3 petaflops on High Performance Linpack (HPL), the benchmark used to rank the TOP500 list. Summit has 4,356 nodes, each one equipped with two 22-core Power9 CPUs, and six NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs. The nodes are linked together with a Mellanox dual-rail EDR InfiniBand network.

MYBROADBAND 69

Sunway TaihuLight Sunway TaihuLight is a system developed

by China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology and installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. Its HPL mark of 93 petaflops has remained unchanged since it came online in June 2016.

70 MYBROADBAND

Sierra Sierra is a new system at the United States’ Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which delivers 71.6 petaflops on HPL. Built by IBM, Sierra’s architecture is similar to that of Summit, with each of its 4,320 nodes powered by two Power9 CPUs plus four NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs and using the same Mellanox EDR InfiniBand as the system interconnect.

MYBROADBAND 71

C O M PU T I N G

Tianhe-2A Tianhe-2A, also known as Milky Way-2A, received a major upgrade that replaced its five-year-old Xeon Phi accelerators with custom-built Matrix-2000 coprocessors.

The new hardware increased the system’s HPL performance from 33.9 petaflops to 61.4 petaflops, while bumping up its power consumption by less than four percent. Tianhe-2A was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology and is installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, China.

72 MYBROADBAND

AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure The new AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure is the fifth-ranked system on the list, with an HPL mark of 19.9 petaflops. The Fujitsu-built supercomputer is powered by 20-core Xeon Gold processors along with NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs. It’s installed in Japan at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

MYBROADBAND 73

T E L E C O M M U N I CAT I O N S

GOVERNMENT'S BIG PLAN TO OPEN UP CELLULAR NETWORKS IN SOUTH AFRICA Jan Vermeulen

M

inister of Telecommunications and Postal Services, Siyabonga Cwele, has published the final version of the Electronic Communications Amendment Bill, laying out the legislative framework for a wholesale open access network (WOAN).

Cwele introduced the bill before the National Assembly, and referred it to the Portfolio Committee on Telecommunications and Postal Services. Once it passes the National Assembly, it will go to the National Council of Provinces, after which it is sent to the President to sign into law.

The publication of the bill and its introduction in Parliament comes nearly two years after Cwele received Cabinet approval for his National Integrated Information Communication Technology (ICT) Policy White Paper.

The white paper was controversial even before it was published, as industry sources revealed that it aimed to take back radio frequency spectrum that had already been assigned to network operators. This was in addition to setting forth a policy to establish a wireless wholesale open access network (WOAN).

74 MYBROADBAND

NATIONALISING SPECTRUM Based on a simple reading of the Cabinetapproved ICT Policy White Paper, Cwele intended to establish a WOAN by assigning all available radio frequency spectrum suitable for mobile telecommunications to it. The WOAN would have no direct

Spectrum represents capacity on a wireless network, and companies like Vodacom and MTN have been clamouring for years for the government to release the frequency bands that have been sitting completely unused. They argue that access to the spectrum will drive down prices, and that

THE WHITE PAPER WAS CONTROVERSIAL EVEN BEFORE IT WAS PUBLISHED, AS INDUSTRY SOURCES REVEALED THAT IT AIMED TO TAKE BACK RADIO FREQUENCY SPECTRUM.

government ownership, and whoever operates it is restricted to only providing wholesale services.

However, as a result of this plan, existing operators such as Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Telkom, Rain, and Liquid Telecom would not be assigned a single megahertz of new spectrum.

with the additional spectrum they can provide better rural 4G coverage.

Instead, the ICT Policy White Paper set aside all those frequencies for the WOAN. To add insult to injury, the White Paper went on to state that all existing frequency assignments would be taken back and given to the operator of the WOAN.

MYBROADBAND 75

T E L E C O M M U N I CAT I O N S

Negotiations between Cwele and mobile network operators followed after the white paper was published. Cwele stated that government has no plans to expropriate spectrum that has already been assigned.

He assured that the frequencies assigned to operators would be safe until their spectrum licences come up for renewal in the 2027/28 financial year.

Cwele also agreed to commission an assessment into how much spectrum the WOAN needs, and allow the remaining spectrum to be assigned to network operators.

The CSIR was used to conduct the assessment and, according to a government report, the study concluded that the WOAN only needed a portion of the currently available spectrum suitable for mobile telecommunications. The remainder of the spectrum could be licensed to network providers.

separation between its existing network operations and its participation in the WOAN. It also gives effect to the compromises the Minister made with Vodacom and MTN to ensure networks get access to the "highdemand spectrum" they've been asking for.

When high-demand spectrum, not reserved for the WOAN, is assigned to a network provider, they must procure a minimum of 30% capacity in the WOAN (or more, if ICASA says so).

Anyone who gets a licence for high-demand spectrum must also immediately open up their network to the WOAN in urban areas, providing wholesale open access to their infrastructure.

Amongst other things, the amendment stipulates that the consortium that runs the WOAN may not include members that either separately or collectively possess a market share of more than 50% in electronic communication services.

If any member of a consortium applying for the WOAN licence is already a network operator in South Africa, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) must require functional

76 MYBROADBAND

Telkom was mostly positive about the amendments, and raised no objection to the Minister taking control of the band plan, saying that it was an extension of one of his functions.

Regarding spectrum trading, sharing, and the use-it-or-lose-it principle, Telkom said that as spectrum management tools, they will allow the market to develop and increase spectrum efficiency.

ONE CONCERN WITH ALLOWING MOBILE NETWORK PROVIDERS TO CONTINUE TO OPERATE THEIR OWN INFRASTRUCTURE IS THAT THEY WOULD NOT BUY WHOLESALE CAPACITY ON THE WOAN.

One concern with allowing mobile network providers to continue to operate their own infrastructure is that they would not buy wholesale capacity on the WOAN. To allay the minister's fears, the operators agreed to take up a minimum of 30% of the WOAN's available capacity at commercially negotiated rates.

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AMENDMENT BILL To establish the WOAN and give effect to other aspects of the National ICT Policy White Paper, it became necessary to change the Electronic Communications Act.

TELKOM, VODACOM, AND MTN RESPOND By the time of going to print Vodacom and MTN told MyBroadband that they are still reviewing the Electronic Communications Amendment Bill and have not yet formed an opinion on it.

In addition to the provisions for the WOAN, the amendment bill also includes the following changes to the way frequency spectrum is managed in South Africa:

ICASA must just ensure, as stated in the bill, that competition is not distorted through the trading and sharing of spectrum.

•

Telkom added that an independent management agency for the WOAN should be considered. It also suggested that the bill could contain more provisions to expand active infrastructure sharing, to assist the WOAN and other smaller operators. ∎

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Use it or lose it — if a radio frequency spectrum licensee fails to use spectrum licensed to it for a period of two years, ICASA may withdraw the licence.

Spectrum trading and sharing — network providers may trade and share spectrum, with the approval of ICASA in the case of high-demand spectrum.

Refarming — repurposing spectrum now requires ICASA approval.

National radio frequency band plan — the Minister, rather than ICASA, must now develop the plan.