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Africa leapfrogging Western countries


Johannesburg, 24 Jul 2012

The challenges faced by CIOs in SA and Africa are not that different from those faced by their mature market counterparts.

This is according to Gordon Love, Symantec's regional manager for Africa.

Gregg Brans, an appliance specialist at Symantec, also noted that, in some areas, CIOs in Africa are leapfrogging technologies used in Western countries. He explained that many African countries have more mature BYOD [bring your own device] solutions than mature market countries in the West. Love added that Africa is the third-largest user of smart devices, despite its broadband challenges.

According to Brans, this tendency to leapfrog is also seen in the ways CIOs think about disaster recovery and data centres. For example, he said, CIOs in African countries will seldom build their own data centres. Instead, he said, they will get together with other CIOs and facilitate shared services.

“They are learning their lessons from the Western countries as they cycle up,” said Brans.

Love also pointed out that the areas of focus for CIOs are no different, whether they are in Nairobi, Johannesburg or Lagos. He said these include the need to reduce costs and business risk, and increase value.

However, Love pointed out that a lack of basic infrastructure is one of the unique challenges faced by African countries.

Brans also noted that African countries are not able to utilise international cloud platforms for disaster recovery because high bandwidth costs make this unfeasible. He argued that local cloud platforms are needed in SA and Africa to drive disaster recovery as a service in these areas.

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