Computing giant IBM has opened a $1.6 million facility in Johannesburg to boost innovation in SA.
The IBM Client Centre is co-located with IBM's Innovation Centre and the company says it is designed to accelerate innovation for South African business and IT skills.
IBM says using the newly expanded centre, clients, IT partners, developers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and academics can now access enhanced cloud capabilities and extensive big data and analytics resources.
Adoption of cloud technology has reached a tipping point, with approximately one in every two medium to large businesses in both SA and Africa already using cloud, says IBM. It adds that the growing proliferation of mobile phones and tablets is accelerating the opportunity to interpret data patterns to anticipate needs and deliver improved services.
Market analyst firm IDC believes business models based on mobility, Internet, and cloud technologies will grow quickly in 2014. The most important events of the year will continue to cluster around what IDC calls the '3rd Platform' for IT growth and innovation, built on mobile devices, cloud services, social technologies, and big data analytics.
IDC sees mobile technologies, in particular, as gaining rapid adoption, with mobile enterprise applications a leading investment priority for organisations across the continent, particularly in SA.
IBM notes that to take advantage of this explosive growth, the newly enhanced centre will be focused on providing solutions that use big data and analytics as well as cloud technologies to solve key local challenges, such as improving government services, digitising banking services, and enhancing customer centricity in telecommunications.
Users of the facility will be able to participate in virtual and in-person training, test out new products, network with peers from around the world, and receive mentoring and guidance from IT and business experts, the company notes.
This centre provide users with hands-on access to cloud-based industry solutions, such as IBM Intelligent Operations designed to provide cities, governments and utilities with a central command centre for the use of predictive analytics to enhance efficiency and manage all their operations.
"Public sector leaders can see the city's command centre in action, in a simulated or live environment, helping them see how such systems can positively impact the city and its environment," says Abraham Thomas, IBM SA country GM.
"Our investment in this centre is in line with our strategy to underpin growth in South Africa's IT sector and to support the use of advanced technology in public sector service delivery and commercial business growth, particularly African expansion," says Thomas.
IBM believes its new test and demonstration environment will serve to cut the costs and complexity of assessing IT solutions, but will also assist CIOs in presenting strong business cases for advanced technology adoption.
"The environment is also critical to ISVs [independent software vendors], partners and potential customers who can now experience our advanced solutions and execute proof of concepts, which will make a significant difference to their quality and time to market." says Thomas.
"The investment is intended to stimulate skills development innovation - driving growth by giving constituents access to IBM's most advanced technologies in a real world environment. The public and private sectors can touch and feel how cloud and big data and analytics can help address the challenges unique to the South African context." he says.
The IBM Client Centre public sector Intelligence Operations Centre will be followed by experiential technology showcases focused on the telecoms and financial sectors later this year, IBM says.
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