SA ICT SOLUTIONS & RESOURCES GUIDE

FIBRE4BUSINESS

Fibre4business offers you a personal touch to affordable, high-quality, high-speed Fibre Network Services.

My business is built on a successful relationship with one of SA’s leading Fibre and ISP providers, Cybersmart. I have developed a high-quality knowledge base of Fibre Providers, ISP products and best practice approaches to meeting your requirements with the best-fit solution for your needs.

Cybersmart continues to supply all my clients with exceptional connectivity, performance and competitive pricing.

Cybersmart is also a Tier One ISP, meaning they not only offer a complex suite of ISP products but also deploy their own High Quality and future-proof Fibre called Lightspeed.

If you need a custom solution for any Layer 2 or Layer 3 requirements, Primary and Diverse/Redundant Links or merely need a comparative quote against your existing links, please do contact me at your convenience.

373 2811

TESTIMONIALS

Our involvement with them and manager Mikael Mendonca, has always been positive and professional. I would not hesitate in recommending them.

DAVE COUVES - CEO OF COMTEL COMMUNICATIONS

We have seen a 90% decline in the number of internet related calls logged from our customers since moving them to Cybersmart.

We have worked with Cybersmart on two large residential projects and I can personally recommend them as a first class service provider.

At all times he came back to us with the correct and cost effective solutions, promptly. I would recommend him.

PAUL MCMASTER - IT TECHNICAL MANAGER AT FAIRCAPE

WYNAND THERON - FOUNDER & CEO OF ITRIED

ANTON MALHERBE - SALES DIRECTOR AT NOBLE RESORTS

Cybersecurity Insights and Prevention Strategies

Globally, our reliance on technology and increased integration options have improved information and system access but also increased the threat landscape. At TFG, our estate spans corporate, logistics, retail and ecomm—all working synchronously to provide exceptional customer experiences. A vulnerability in any of these can impact the others creating a need for a comprehensive prevention strategy.

Cybersecurity has become a business issue as the consequences of a successful attack is farreaching and can include legal, financial, reputational and operational impacts. Our approach to cybersecurity is focused on risk reduction, consequently every project we initiate, every recommendation we make, and every technology we implement needs to align to this strategy.

A Few Do’s:

1. Prevention is better than cure - ensure that your organisation has appropriate technological controls in place and that you practise cybersecurity awareness and training.

2. Implement best practice - there are many frameworks and best practices available; choose one that best suits your objectives like ISO, CIS, SOC, etc.

3. It’s a journey not a race - define the level of maturity you need to be at and develop a plan to get you there.

4. Defence in depth - also referred to as a layered approach, your controls should be complementary; a failure of a single control should not cripple your organisation.

5. Refine your technology stack - many organisations have tons of tech but have not spent enough time tuning these to bring real value.

6. Automate everything - Security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) is essential to combat the rising tide of sophisticated attacks.

develop and test an incident response plan and make it resilient.

Prevention is key, so be proactive, adopt a risk-based approach to threats stay safe!

Compliance challenges

for

companies, especially SME’s in South Africa

For businesses in South Africa, compliance can be a difficult task, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that lack the funding to invest in pricey compliance measures However, CX Consulting and an American collaborator have customised a governance, compliance, and risk tool that can assist South African SMEs in fulfilling their compliance obligations on a budget

The tool is intended to simplify compliance procedures and lower the risk of noncompliance while offering SMEs and even large corporations a simple and affordable option The tool's features, which can be adjusted to meet the requirements of various companies, include risk assessments, compliance monitoring, and governance frameworks.

One of the main advantages of the tool is that it gives SMEs less need to deal with numerous government organizations and laws by offering a centralized platform for managing compliance. Businesses can avoid expensive legal and reputational risks and save time and money by doing this

Additionally, CX Consulting offers professional assistance and direction to companies, assisting them in navigating the challenging compliance environment in South Africa The company's consultants have a thorough grasp of regional rules and laws, which enables them to offer specific solutions to companies in various industries

In conclusion, the governance, compliance, and risk tool from CX Consulting offers SMEs in South Africa who struggle with compliance challenges a much-needed answer. Businesses can lower their compliance costs, simplify processes, and minimize legal and reputational risks by utilizing the tool and professional advice from CX Consulting.

Pieter vd Walt Founder / Director

Welcome to the age of authenticated digital document delivery

It was while waiting for legal documents that were "in the mail" , that IT specialist André van Jaarsveldt had an idea of streamlining the legal documentation process. Two years later, Legal Serve was born as a purpose designed digital document application.

In today's competitive market, one cannot overstate the advantages that correct technology can offer a business Historically, the only applications available in the market to digitise the document delivery process, were ill-suited and insecure generic platforms like Email, SMS, MMS, courier, or cloud-sharing

The challenge came in convincing the mindset of the day in adopting brand new technology, but in 2013, Legal Serve signed its first client Since then, giants of industry like Investec, Hollard, Old Mutual, Capitec, African Bank, One, King Price, Mutual and Federal, and Trafalgar have adopted Legal Serve

What is Legal Serve?

Legal Serve is a cloud-based application that enables businesses to securely deliver any business critical document, without the concern if it has been delivered or received It complies with all legislation, ECT Act after court rules

What's in it for you?

Reduction in current costs / budget.

Simplified business processes

Increase in businesses process efficiency

Costs are centralised

All transactions are recorded, managed and audited

All documents are encrypted and certified as original

We are an accredited business partner of the

Department of Justice and the SA Post office

Why you can trust us

The team at Legal Serve has over 37 years of C-level experience, and 80 years of ICT operational experience, which enable us to identify needs within the market for business process automation, and incorporate industry standards and best practices, with a strong governance and compliance framework into the service offering

Legal Serve stays up-to-date with the latest worldwide security industry information standards and industry trends

Contact the leaders and bridge the gap for a consultation and demo.

André van Jaarsveldt Managing Director

E: andre@legalserve co za

W: 011 100 7398

M: 082 781 4978

W: legalserve co za

Secure Compliant Verified Encrypted

State-of-the-art systems and encryption to protect your documents

All documents processed are legally compliant to all laws ECT Act of 2002 and Court rules

Members are verified and all documents are digitally signed for your security

All documents are indexed, encrypted and securely stored in South Africa

Digital document delivery services

Legal services

Digital postal services

On-demand legal operational services

Implementation, configuration and training only takes only 1 hour

Igniting the African AI Ecosystem

Amidst the Artificial Intelligence (AI) the African AI Ecosystem to help Technology Era!

The AI Avalanche

With all the excitement, hype and debates on Artificial Intelligence in 2023, there is a lot of sense-making going on in a world where we are currently not only flooded with state-of-theart smart tech software, hardware, platforms, ecosystems, APIs, etc, but lots of opinions from a range of thought readers, tech experts, business people, and others in this regard. See for example the recent announcements from OpenAI (in addition to ChatGPT enhanced by the GPT4 large language model as well as many third party plugins, also introducing their text-to-3D model called SHAP-E);

Warren Buffet (voicing both concern and amazement over AI)

Microsoft and AMD (joining forces to develop an AI chip in a project codenamed "Athena" to compete against Nvidia)

Palantir (anticipating profitable 2023 fuelled by strong interest in its new AI platform);

Tesla (Elon Musk teasing a one-month free trial of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) for all cars in North America once the system is ("super smooth)

Meta (introducing their open-sourcing multisensory model ImageBind, a new AI research model that understands and combines text, audio, visual, movement, thermal, and depth data)

Humane (introducing a new AI-wearable which it hopes to make smartphones obsolete); BM (launching an AI platform Watsonx, a new AI platform designed to assist businesses in creating and utilizing AI models)

Wendy's (teaming up with Google to develop an AI chatbot that takes your drive-thru orders)

Google (showcasing AI-centered innovations across Google Workspace, Maps, Photos, Search as well introducing their new PaLM2 large language model, upgrades to Bard ChatGPT" equivalent), AI coding Bot Studio Bot, MusicLM, and Med-PaLM)

HuggingFace (releasing Transformers Agent, a coding language model that can generate other HuggingFace models on-the-fly for multimodal tasks)

Scale AI (recently unveiled two AI platforms tailored for governments and enterprises:

Synthesia (releasing HumanRF angles and allows playback from unseen perspectives); Anthropic (with their AI Assistant few pages but hundreds, which and Stability AI (unveiled a powerful SDK that can generate animations from text, images, or video combined with text).

We'll also have an upcoming debate in June 2023 between Max Tegmark and Yann LeCun on whether AI research and development poses an existential threat, with Yann saying that what the debate is really about: "is human extinction through superhuman AI inevitable, or are the risks manageable".

Apart from my book “Democratizing Artificial Intelligence to benefit Everyone: Shaping a Better Future in the Smart Technology Era”, I also recently wrote a few articles on The Power of Generative AI: Exploring its Impact, Applications, Limitations, and Future, Quantum Computing for Generative AI, and Human Intelligence versus Machine Intelligence, as well as some upcoming ones on "AI and Web3" and the so called "AI Singularity".

It was also great to recently participate in some insightful panel discussions on "Redefining Business Performance with Generative AI" (Swiss Cognitive World-Leading AI Network) and "AI and Web3: A Perfect Match?" (Only Webinars). What we have also seen this year is an AI Everywhere trend with AI becoming more prevalent in organizations with the rise of no-code AI allowing for easier implementation and integration into various business processes, an Accelerated Digital Transformation driven by the ongoing effects of the pandemic and the rapid advancements in technology, and Hybrid Work as remote and hybrid work models become the norm.

The Africa AI Ecosystem on the Move

All of this is also very relevant her conferences across the continent Summit 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya (organized where I participated as a keynote Space. New Trends in Banking, Insurance, and Fintech.

What is the commercial Value to your Business and Why" as well as a session on AI in Healthcare, which was also very stimulating and thoughtful. As mentioned on LinkedIn, I’ve enjoyed my engagement with everyone I’ve met at the event and are looking forward to further collaboration - also via Cortex Logic and the Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa | MIIA.

I’ve also been impressed with the hospitality, passion, character, talent, knowledge, and thoughtfulness of the Kenyan people and other fellow African colleagues. As mentioned to John Kamara and others, I’m proud of what has been achieved so far with Adanian Labs and AICE, given that its roots can be traced back to John's involvement with MIIA and the Cortex Group and the vision that we have for the AI ecosystem in Africa. Well done to everyone involved!

events discussing the Future of AI policy Trustworthy AI and Research in AI. At the AI thought leaders, government, and my fellow Africans gets exactly what’s at stake and what needs to be done to take Kenya and Africa forward in a substantial way o help shape a better future in the Smart Technology Era.

In Chapter 8 of my book “Democratizing Shaping a Better Future in the Smar “Democratizing AI” Newsletter artic Public Sector”, I not only share AI’s the public sector, but specifically around the globe.

I also recently commented on Lynn Gitau's article on Unlocking Silicon Savannah: Assessing Africa's AI Readiness, where she discusses the state of emerging technology in Africa and specifically assesses Africa's AI readiness, which was inspired by her attending the AICE Africa AI Leaders’ Summit in Nairobi.

She expresses concern about Africa's readiness for the potential impact of AI, particularly in terms of job automation (citing a report from Goldman Sachs that predicts AI could replace 300 million jobs globally and one from BanklessTime.com that up to 800 million jobs can be replaced by 2030. While the World Economic Forum estimates AI will create the knowledge gap in Africa given an to technology resources for African

“Democratizing Artificial Intelligence to benefit Technology Era” as well as the articles

“Democratizing Human-centric AI in Africa” and "Democratizing AI to Help Shape

a Beneficial Human-centric Future", I wholeheartedly agree with her that the focus should be on providing every child in Africa with the right education and technology resources to compete globally in an AI-driven future. This is a key part of helping to unlock Africa’s potential to shape a better future in the Smart Technology Era.

Collaborating across the Africa AI Ecosystem to Democratize

Human-centric AI

Apart from the many AI companies active on the African continent, we have been fortunate to see examples such as South Africa's CSense Systems which was the first African AI company being sold to a multi-national company (namely, General Electric) in 2011 (I was a co-founder) as well as more recently another significant African AI company exit in Tunisia's InstaDeep which was sold to vaccine maker BioNTech. There are also other startups like South Africa’s Aerobotics and DataProphet which have raised significant funding for AI applications in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing.

We have also seen the tremendous impact of tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, AWS, Meta, GE, and many others on the continent. There are also excellent work being done in Africa's AI Ecosystem by the Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa | MIIA, Zindi, DSNai - Data Science Nigeria, AI Africa Consortium, Cirrus AI, AICE Africa, Adanian Labs, Deep Learning Indaba, and others. It is an honour to be on the boards or advisory boards of many of these organizations.

I'm for example also very proud of Data leadership for the excellent exampl years and their wonderful vision to AI talents in 10 years. MIIA, who inception, aims to transform and innovative and collaborative Mach consisting of individuals and key players in the African AI Ecosystem.

MIIA is also collaborating with Zindi which is a professional network for data science and platform for data science competitions. The Zindi community has now grown to over 60,000, and they are on a mission to make data science and AI accessible to everyone.

We have an opportunity to collaborate even better - on a business, research and social good level. We have an opportunity to create AI companies that unlock business and societal value at scale. We have an opportunity to do state-of-the AI research to help solve intelligence, establish a world-class talent pool, and create sustainable AI for social good solutions. My call to action is: Let’s collaborate on all these fronts and work together to help shape that better future in the Smart Technology Era!

Jacques Ludik Co-Founder / CEO

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~ Aristotle ~

The Rise of Collaboration Innovation as a Competitive Advantage

Digital transformation trends are shaping the future of business, with a significant focus on B2B customer engagement.

As we move forward into 2023 and beyond, there are several key trends to watch, which align closely with the ethos of Advantage Group, a global provider of B2B benchmarking. As an integral link between business partners, Advantage Group nurtures companies to improve performance through strengthening B2B engagement

The work we have undertaken globally and locally with some of the most recognizable and iconic FMCG brands and retailers are constantly reaffirming the evolving challenge of sustainable growth models.

When we approach our data through the lens that “every business is a digital business”, we have found that Boards, Excos and Functional leadership across organizations, are all battling in different ways to effectively manage the business of today, while trying to enable opportunities to consider the business of tomorrow and their future-fitness.

With this in mind, here are four trends to lean into:

The rise of intelligent automation. Organizations everywhere are leveraging technology to streamline processes and drive efficiency. This shift enables businesses to focus employees on higher-value work.

Regulation in the digital economy remains in focus, with antitrust legislation and regulations affecting companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles are here to stay. Digital companies are increasing their efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. This focus on sustainability is evolving rapidly and is evidenced in our Advantage results where we measure the shift in ESG when it comes to B2B sustainable growth strategies.

Increased focus on H2H (Human to Human). While companies are increasingly making plans for business within the virtual world, this includes changes to how money flows in the metaverse, with cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance gaining prominence.

We are seeing a movement towards the human aspect of tech and digital and how this can be leveraged for success. The more digital we become, the more we need the human connection.

These trend examples underscore the rise of collaborative innovation as a competitive advantage.

Advantage Group's global data shows that companies with higher levels of collaboration often achieve better commercial outcomes.

Trust is a key metric, with top-performing companies often having better trust scores than those focused solely on margin and profitability.

In essence, companies invest more and partner more with companies they trust and collaborate with, rather than purely based on commercials.

Feedback is essential in this competitive and dynamic environment. It aids business partners in improving the capabilities that drive business performance, thus facilitating the digital transformation journey and making it a shared success.

At Advantage Group, we play a pivotal role in this process, equipping businesses with the knowledge to respond effectively and ease the natural tensions that exist in any productive B2B relationship

As the digital transformation landscape evolves, the focus on B2B engagement intensifies. Businesses that leverage these trends and foster trust and collaboration with their partners stand to gain a competitive advantage in the digital era.

To find out more go to www.advantagegroup.com or contact Dylan Piatti (Africa Managing Director) at dpiatti@advantagegroup.com

Manager

Dylan Piatti Africa Managing Director

Leveraging AR and VR technology

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are rapidly growing technologies with a wide range of applications across various industries. In the realm of retail, AR/VR can be used to create immersive shopping experiences that engage and excite customers.

One of our clients, an interior design company specializing in custom-designed kitchens, approached us to create a VR kitchen showroom demo that would showcase their custom-designed kitchens in an interactive and engaging way. The demo was designed to help customers visualize their ideal kitchen layout and see what their custom kitchen could look like.

To create the demo, we used VR technology built for the web, to build a virtual kitchen that customers could explore using a headset. The virtual kitchen included different layouts and colour schemes that customers could select and customize to their liking.

Customers could then select different appliances from the manufacturer's product range and place them in the virtual kitchen to see how they would look and function in their space. This interactive experience allowed them to get a better sense of how the appliances would fit into their kitchen and how they would look and feel in real life.

By leveraging AR/VR technology, we created an engaging and immersive shopping experience that helped customers make more informed decisions about their kitchen appliances and layout.

Overall, this case study highlights the potential of AR/VR technology to transform the retail experience and help businesses better connect with their customers. As AR/VR technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see more innovative use cases and applications across various industries.

Other applications that are powerful use cases for VR are virtual real estate tours, training experiences that simulate dangerous situations, and driving simulations. Uses for AR are retail and e-commerce, education and training, and marketing campaigns.

CEO

Tyler Thomas

TFGLIMITED

RPA and the value TFG is trying to add with it

TFG went through a strategic change where operations were optimised across the group, with a shared services model for finance and HR. This meant putting people into new positions and at the same time,

taking redundant tasks and automating them. UiPath was selected and the benefits of RPA was presented to the operating board in two use cases – including managing utilities invoices. One of the specific processes that TFG automated using RPA was the offboarding process, which used to take a team of up to 12 people two weeks to conclude. When this process was automated, it took just under an hour. We were authorised to start rolling it out and were very successful in getting HR processes automated in the first year.

Scaling RPA in an organization:

To help organizations incorporate RPA effectively, the following tips can be useful:

1. Select a POC / process that is suitable for automation and develop a proof of concept to demonstrate the benefits of RPA. This will help you gain buy-in from stakeholders and justify the investment in RPA.

2. Choose an RPA champion for each department to drive the adoption of RPA and source processes to automate. Having a business leader as the RPA champion has accelerated the scaling of RPA.

3. Surface opportunities for automation. Start with the most repetitive and time-consuming tasks, as these are the ones that will deliver the most significant benefits. The HR and Finance Departments are a great source of processes suited for automation.

4. Enable the RPA champion with a development team to build and support the automations. A business analyst that understands RPA is of value to this team.

5. Monitor the performance of the RPA solutions and provide continuous feedback on benefits and return on investment.

Find out how the Institute of Chartered IT Professionals drives change for Information technology every day, in South Africa.

The Institute of Chartered IT Professionals (ICITP-SA), is the only Professional Body in South Africa that can award the chartered IT Professional, CITP (SA) and IT Certified Professional, ITCP (SA), professional status in the ICT sector in South Africa and internationally.

MISSION

To ensure the advancement of the NQF by promoting public interest and trust in the Information Technology Profession by encouraging ongoing professional development; developing and maintaining the standards for the practice of Information Technology and by facilitating access to its designations in recognition of deserving Information Technology practitioners in South Africa.

VISION

To develop, manage and empower the IT Profession in South Africa

Get Certified Become Recognized

WHAT WE OFFER

Membership

When you become a member of ICITP, you become part of the dynamic change that is transforming, enriching your knowledge, shaping the world of Media, Information and Communication Technology.

Critical Skills

Critical Skills Work Visa will enable the South African government to achieve the objectives of programmes such as National Development Plan (NDP), Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP) and New Growth Plan.

Certification

Certified and Chartered IT Professionals play an important role in IT businesses all around the world. They help achieve the overall objective of the business by working as business partners rather than just an employee.

Accreditation

The ICITP® accreditation of degrees is an important benchmark of the standard of Higher Education programmes and their contribution to the IT Profession in South Africa.

Board Exams

The ITCP™ is the entry-level designation of ICITP, designed to create specialized practitioners in Information Technology whom are practically component and have business skills.

Recognition of Prior Learning | RPL

Recognition of prior learning is an assessment process that involves the assessment of an individual's relevant prior learning (including formal, informal, and non-formal learning) to determine the credit outcomes of an individual.

Chief Executive Officer, ICITP SA

We offer a clear professional development route for our members.

The Rise of IoT Solutions in Africa

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been growing rapidly around our continent as the global footprint for IoT enterprise solutions continues to grow. More and more businesses, governments and individuals are looking to leverage the use of IoT for enhanced connectivity efficiency and innovation In this article we’ll look to highlight an overview of the trends, challenges and overall performance of the IoT landscape in Africa We’ll also look at the top 5 reasons why companies fail when implementing IoT solutions and how to mitigate those failures in future

In Africa, we face a unique set of challenges in the adoption and usage of IoT and have seen trends that are not always aligned with the global market’s performance Enterprise IoT adoption has been on the rise whilst consumer IoT solutions remain to be a concept that has not yet fulfilled it’s potential on the continent

What are the challenges associated with consumer IoT in Africa?

Cost of entry: The cost of IoT devices can be expensive, making them inaccessible to many consumers in Africa. The high costs of these device are due to factors such as import taxes, fluctuation in currencies and limited supply.

Limited connectivity: In many parts of our continent internet connectivity is limited or unreliable This impacts the performance of the IoT solutions and leads to poor user experience

Power outages: This impacts the performance of IoT solutions and makes it difficult to rely on for daily usage.

Limited technical expertise: This makes adoption of the IoT solutions difficult as many consumers do not have expertise to install, maintain and troubleshoot consumer IoT They furthermore do not have access to learning through digital channels

Despite these challenges, IoT enterprise solutions have been on the rise and seen significant improvement in a variety of sectors and have had enormous impact on sectors such as large corporate enterprises, SMEs and governments

In which sectors have enterprise IoT gained momentum in Africa?

Agriculture: Agriculture is a critical sector in many African countries and contains most of its GDP IoT is being used to optimize field crop yields, reduce waste and improve efficiency

Precision farming has become a key ingredient for some farmers to get a competitive advantage over their specific field

Healthcare: IoT has been leveraged to improve healthcare outcomes in African platforms which have been created for IoT wearables to monitor patients remotely, help with disease management and assist patients with their specific special needs.

Smart Cities: As urbanization continues to accelerate across Africa, IoT is being increasingly used to create smart cities that are more efficient, sustainable and liveable IoT solutions, such as smart lighting, traffic management and waste management, are being deployed in cities across the continent

Retail: Retail solutions have been on the rise to improve security through easily being able to authenticate users through biometric authentication platforms Limiting fraud and providing a simple solution for validating a customer identity in banking, for example

Supply chain management: Supply chain management has advanced significantly over the last few decades. Inventory management has been simplified and inventory levels, locations and conditions can be tracked in real-time Asset tracking has also become popular in every industry including logistics IoT devices are now being used to track the location, temperature, light and overall condition of perishable goods when travelling by sea. It allows insurance companies to understand exactly what went wrong should there be any questions raised about the conditions of the perishable goods from the buyer or harbour control

The global outlook for IoT solutions has been on the rise and the market has been on the rise for the last few years as adoption continues to increase steadily at a CAGR of an average of 19.3%. Overall spending will increase from $ 201 Billion in 2022 to $ 483 Billion in 2027

If the global market is on the rise, then why do IoT solutions fail in Africa and South Africa?

Although there has been a significant increase in the number of IoT solutions in enterprises and have been adopted in multiple sectors, navigating the IoT landscape in Africa can be difficult and some solutions may fail due to a variety of reasons Let’s take a look at the top 5 reasons why IoT fails in South Africa

The top 5 reasons why IoT fails in South Africa:

1. Change management

A trend amongst companies and governments is that IoT gets treated like an innovation project whereby they explore the possibilities of IoT instead of using it to act as an operating-model transformation To capture value at scale from IoT requires cross-functional collaboration from 2021 - 2027 in all departments and will require changing people’s behaviour, the systems they work with and the processes they use.

2. Perception and interpretation

Some projects are evaluated based on their ROI within the first year after implementing the IoT solution The project then gets written off after a year as a failure, but the perception of the solution implemented was that the IoT technology’s hardware should have made a return on investment by attracting more clients. The one thing companies tend to forget is the data behind the implemented solution that can be leveraged to generate multiple different revenue opportunities by promoting hyper-personalized services or products to clients

3. Installation of hardware

If you work with any government or enterprise, they will let you know that one of the biggest cost issues related to IoT solutions at scale is the cost related to the deployment. Almost every scaled installation requires some form of customization or a bespoke solution The added complexity of seemingly easy tasks, such as getting a secure network connection and linking into legacy systems adds time and cost.

4. Cybersecurity

When everything becomes connected it exploits more connection points for hackers to tap into. It will in essence offer vulnerable points of attack for hackers Security remains to be a key area in the IoT field and should not be taken lightly

5. Networks

Networks acts as the backbone of IoT solutions. Should a network be down during loadshedding, or theft has occurred on a solution that requires 24/7 4G connectivity, the project is likely to fail

What does it take to scale IoT successfully?

1. Decide who owns IoT in the Organization

One of the most important aspects of any project is to ensure the entire organization knows who is responsible for deploying IoT solutions. Companies that follow this simple step are usually more successful when implementing the solutions

2. Plan and design the solution to be at scale from the start

Too many times IoT has been seen as an innovation project, which tends to get stuck in the pilot phase Ground the solution with specific business outcomes to ensure the project has the focus it needs to be successful

3. Fail fast and fail forward

There is no specific IoT use-case combination that works for every single company Many companies think they can dip their toe in the water by having a silver-bullet use case Deploying multiple use cases at the same time will enable the company to transform its way of work

4. Strategic partnerships

There is no question that implementing IoT solutions at scale requires strategic partnership agreements Partnering with the right company that takes your company’s strategic values, objectives and vision into account can be difficult to find. Having partners who can navigate the change management process, whilst your company can focus on the bigger picture should be the ideal solution to the number 1 reason why companies fail

5. Invest in talent

IoT technical talent is a scarcity and the entity would need to partner with a company that knows how to navigate the landscape and can speak the technical language to find the right people for the job People are at the centre of the organization and will make or break a project

Although Africa experiences challenges in our landscape, IoT solutions for enterprises can be adapted with a different mindset to gain their desired return on investment Data should be leveraged more when implementing solutions and should be seen as a tool to scale IoT

SharePoint migration for time users and how one of the most popular information more important to implement this than ever

Microsoft has the new release of an integrated AI system with Open Ai’s ChatGPT called “CoPilot” coming soon, which will be an absolute game changer in how we use Office 365. Like in a way that will make you feel you have your own Jarvis (the one Ironman uses).

So, it’s never been more important to migrate to SharePoint and make sure integration is ready for Microsoft’s Co-Pilot’s release to stay ahead of the game.

One extremely relevant benefit of implementing SharePoint in South Africa is having your company files and folders available during load shedding and since this will replace one or more file servers, it means fewer power-hungry servers putting strain on your backup power solutions, like UPSs’ and inverters.

All have the positive knock-on effect of less budget-wasting spending on replacing batteries, employees’ ability to work, not being interrupted, being more productive, making the company run smoothly & efficiently, and putting you ahead of the competition.

With SharePoint, what most people don’t realise is that it's not a one-time setup process. It is in fact an ongoing process that requires a well-planned strategy, and a thorough understanding of the migration process with ongoing support.

The migration process can be time-consuming, expensive and complex. Having a clear plan in place is essential, but this is a moot point if you don’t understand what SharePoint actually does and its capabilities. I will briefly touch on a few key features.

For most users, the goal will be to replace the file share, most likely because of the cost of replacing hardware, upgrading the security, keeping an eye on valuable company data and who has access to them, failover, etc.

For this purpose, I will be writing about two recent migrations for a small insurance company and a small accounting firm. One based in Cape Town and one in London…Boy did I run into some unforeseen problems with the latter!

Besides the obvious of processing a migration from dying hard drives on a server thousands of miles away in London over Christmas, with absolutely no access to these dying drives, there were much bigger obstacles in the actual process.

I wasted over 100 hours on this project and gained a few grey hairs in the process before realizing there are multiple ways to migrate this data. I'll explain the best practices, so you don't have to.

Before we begin, back up your data and don’t forget to back up your data, then once done back up your data. Yes, I said that because it’s more important than you think. Someone has put their trust in your hands with their information.

The data on a hard drive at the Ferrari’s Head Quarters are more valuable than all their new cars combined currently for sale. Imagine all your photos were deleted. It’s a rather devastating and hard pill to swallow.

SO BACKUP, BACKUP AND BACK THAT UP.

Step 1: If you want peace, plan for war

This process will require some meetings and working with department heads. This is crucial if you want to streamline, simplify, and improve the company at a greater level than you and your client anticipate.

Before starting the migration process, assessing the current environment and understanding the business requirements is important. My top tip here is to simplify. After all, technology is there to make our lives easier, as I always say, ‘less is more.’

See how much data there needs to be migrated. Evaluate the files and folders and workflows.

Another top tip is to create a SharePoint site for each department, account, hours, production, etc. Get a list of users and what access permission they need. If not, have a meeting, get it organized into departments, get the users in the different departments to organize folders and do a ‘spring clean’ rather than doing their housekeeping for this task.

That’s the first step and compared to the rest of the migration, you will soon realise that it’s more of a leap forward than just a step forward. I advise getting the department heads to work with their respective teams so that the users are familiar with the folder structure before the new SharePoint site.

It’s best to give them a deadline a good few days before the migration starts. The reason for that is the long file and folder paths. SharePoint will skip those and tell you what files and folders it has skipped and there is no easy way around that. If there was, good luck trying to keep track of all the changes and making sense of it, to then explain that to the users.

Once the above spring clean is done we are now going to test the migration with a little tool from Microsoft.

This will shed a lot of data that will save you time and money. And maybe most importantly, the client will receive a very tidy new file collaboration platform.

Step 2: There’s more than one way to skin a cat and migrate to SharePoint; below is the

We are going to install a little tool, called “Microsoft 365 Migration Agent” on a PC where a copy of the data will be copied from. This tool is a custom tool configured just for you, so you can just search for it on the internet and download it. To get this tool, you will need to log into your “Microsoft 365 Admin Portal”.

On the left, scroll and select SharePoint; this should be in the Admin Centre between Exchange and Teams.

Then select “Migration”.

You will then select “File Share” Select that option

In the main window to the right, you will see three tabs Scans, Migration and Agents Select “Agents”

Now “+add”. A pop-up will appear with your own helpful Agent to download and install. Now open the agent and link your Office 365 admin account.

Go back to your Admin portal to the same location where you downloaded the agent, and you will see your Agent link there You can see and ensure the agent/link is connected there

This little agent is a very important tool for a few reasons. It will keep track of what has migrated and what hasn’t. A function you don’t get if you upload directly without the agent. The agent also manages it very well, without it, it can take a lot longer. In one case it took a week to copy 200GB without the agent, with the agent, it was done in less than an hour.

Step 3: Let’s create a SharePoint site and look like a genius

The SharePoint site is where your document will be migrated to, the best way to understand SharePoint to the average user is that it’s a website where you can view your documents, but with a lot more information like who worked on it last.

best way in my opinion

It’s best to look at templates when you create them and you can see the beautiful layout and its endless capabilities. I suggest you create a test SharePoint site and copy a dummy set of folders and files there and play with it to get the idea and customise it for your needs. It’s a lot simpler than you think.

After this create a SharePoint site for each department or whatever plan or structure you have planned. At this point, you will see that you can access SharePoint on a webpage and work with documents from there, or you can work on the documents on OneDrive via the web.

But to really make the users familiar with what they have to work with, install OneDrive on their workstations, and link the sites with the relevant document folders or in this case sites, to their OneDrive. This will effectively replace the network share drive.

When you play around in your SharePoint test site, you will also see that you can add it to teams. This will make documents available in teams as well. And the best part is that it will always save to the SharePoint site.

So, you can work on documents, on your OneDrive, on your PC, online web browser or even in teams and it all is in the same location effectively.

Top tip. Create a SharePoint site that the whole company can access like an intranet site with links to the different departments and information so they can always find the link to their relevant departments.

Step 4:

Take the leap one step at a time

Now that we have done some prep work and tested/played with SharePoint, now it’s time to migrate. Don’t make the mistake I made by doing it all at once. Do it one or two departments at a time, rather than migrate the smaller/fewer data departments first. This is to see if there are any issues.

Now that we have done some prep work and tested/played with SharePoint, now it’s time to migrate. Don’t make the mistake I made by doing it all at once. Do it one or two departments at a time, rather than migrate the smaller/fewer data departments first. This is to see if there are any issues.

It will make life a lot easier when having to teach and implement it on users’ computers, but most important, it will give you an idea of what to do when you migrate more departments.

It would be extremely intimidating for both you and the end user if you didn't anticipate teething problems, which there almost surely would be.

It is usually a good idea to let users know that there will be some growing pains and a learning curve.

Final thoughts:

Above are building blocks and some top tips learnt from real-life scenarios. Each section can be a rabbit hole you can go down as far as you like.

Once you have created the site and migrated everyone, you can now modify the sites to suit particular needs. You can run reports and so much more than you could ever have done on a file server.

The test site is your friend, so go and explore it, play with it, experiment and even break it then fix it. This is how you will learn what it can do.

Happy migration and remember, backup your data, then back it up again.

Jerome Ferreira

I.T & Virtual Chief Information Officer

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