Southtechreviews

By President Ntuli, Managing Director, HPE South Africa  I was excited to learn from a recent BCG survey how many South Africans are open to exploring the benefits of AI, with almost a third of those who are aware of the technology already using it. It’s encouraging to know that across the country, there’s significant curiosity and enthusiasm for AI. And with the government taking key steps in the right direction and inviting feedback from industry experts on its new National AI Policy Framework, we have a great opportunity to help shape the country’s AI development. The challenge, for stakeholders across industries, is to come together to make AI easier to use and quicker to adopt. This way, we can fast-track a shift in our transformation trajectory, altering our course from where we are now to where AI is moving in the future. For AI innovation in South Africa to be meaningful, it must drive considerable economic growth. With analysts predicting that the technology could expand A...

Naren Mewa, chief digital officer, Tarsus Distribution For as long as users have had access to mobile devices and the Internet, there has been a tension between IT departments and the end-user communities they serve. On the one hand, IT needs to impose standards on the technology real estate for ease of administration, cost control and security. On the other, some end-users have strong feelings about which digital tools they believe to be the best for their purposes.   The finely tuned balance between IT control and end-user preference has come under ever growing strain this year as a result of more people needing to work from home due to the pandemic. Many IT departments were poorly prepared for the challenges of remote work, opening gaps for end-users to find workarounds for apps and services they could not access from home.   Plus, in the mad scramble to enable remote working for end-users who were traditionally office-bound, IT teams could perhaps not pay as much attention...