IT News
INTERVIEW: ITC Infotech Set to Invest in South Africa
IT services major ITC Infotech is all set to take its long-standing association with South Africa to the next level. The company will soon inaugurate a new global delivery centre in Johannesburg. ITNA’s Jenna Delport had the opportunity to chat to Vishal Kumar, President & Regional Head at ITC Infotech, about the launch of this 10,000 sq ft facility. Here’s what transpired: What inspired the need for ITC Infotech’s delivery centre? ITC Infotech established its presence in South Africa in 2010, and we have steadily expanded our operations across the region. Over the years, we have witnessed firsthand the evolution of South Africa into a very attractive destination for IT service delivery, both for our clients in the region, as well as our global clients. South Africa offers a rich &...
Capitec’s Banking App Ranks #1
Capitec has revealed that its new banking app has reached the #1 spot on both the South African Google Play and Apple app store charts. It currently trends on the charts ahead of Zoom, Whatsapp Messenger, Tik Tok and Facebook. “Our digital banking services are the most widely used in the country, with over 7.5 million active users. We’ve also noted a significant increase between January and July 2020, with the bank welcoming almost 600 000 new digital banking clients,” says Gerrie Fourie, CEO of Capitec Bank. This success comes at a time when the bank’s traditional service channels are taking a back seat to its digital offerings; a trend, which was been significantly augmented by the COVID-19 crisis. The bank believes that its clients are seeking safer, more convenient and affordable ways ...
TNM and KaiOS Launch a 4G Feature Phone in Malawi
TNM has partnered with KaiOS Technologies to launch an affordable 4G KaiOS-enabled smart feature phone in Malawi. Priced at $34, the TNM Smart 4G will offer customers access to essential and popular apps such as WhatsApp, Google Assistant, Google Maps, YouTube and Facebook. “These devices will help people to entertain and educate themselves or have broadband internet,” says TNM CEO, Michiel Buitelaar. He believes that this device has been designed to suit the communication needs of first-time users and people in rural areas. To address low digital literacy issues, Buitelaar says the KaiOS phone comes with an easy-to-use interface, an in-house app called Life which features training and lessons related to digital literacy and other educational content. It also provides access to Google Assi...
WhatsApp’s Viral Message Forwarding Feature is Updated
WhatsApp is on a mission to slow the spread of fake news between users and that’s why earlier this year it imposed a strict new limit on message forwarding. This feature means users who plan on forwarding a message that has been identified as “highly forwarded” will only be to send it to a single contact at a time. A “highly forwarded” message is defined as media that has been sent through a chain of five or more contacts. This isn’t the first time WhatsApp has introduced a limit like this – in 2019, the Facebook-owned chat app reduced the number of immediate forwarding contacts to five. These messages were labelled with double arrows to indicate they did not originate from a close contact. WhatsApp says that now it is “piloting a simple way to double-check these messages by tapping ...
Samsung Introduces New Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G
Samsung has unveiled its latest foldable device – the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G – at its annual Unpacked 2020 event. The smartphone is similar to the Galaxy Z Flip and Z Flip 5G which were released earlier this year but The Verge reports that this “marks Samsung’s first major refresh for its flagship foldable phone”. Samsung has unveiled its latest foldable device – the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G – at its annual Unpacked 2020 event.Click To Tweet “After releasing two foldable devices and listening to user feedback on the most requested upgrades and new features, Samsung unveils the Galaxy Z Fold 2 with meaningful innovations that offer users enhanced refinements and unique foldable user experiences,” says the tech company. “Galaxy Z Fold 2 combines the portability and ...
MTN to Focus on African Markets and Ditch Middle East
MTN has announced that it is focusing its strategy on the African markets. “As part of our ongoing portfolio review, we believe the group is best served to focus in the future on our pan-African strategy,” says MTN Group CEO, Rob Shuter. “We will, therefore, be exiting the Middle East in an orderly manner over the medium term. As a first step, we are in advanced discussions to sell our 75% stake in MTN Syria.” The news comes after the telco announced that it added 11 million subscribers in the first six months of the year to reach a total base of 262 million. By the end of June 2020, MTN had 102 million active data users and 38 million active Mobile Money users. Despite lockdown restrictions impacting network rollout, MTN Group invested R10 billion in capital expenditure across...
The Future of Data Centres Post Pandemic
COVID-19 has altered industries across the globe highlighting just how dependant the world is on data. The Global Data Center Security Solutions Market is expected to grow by $5 billion during 2020-2024. The role of the data centre has never been more important during this pandemic, enabling business continuity with the delivery of remote working tools and cloud-based services. When it comes to healthcare, data has played a key role by facilitating artificial intelligence and other tools for tracking the spread of the virus, including emergency services systems, research and development into vaccines. Other industries such as retail and supply-chain management have also seen a surge in the use of the data centre as a mission-critical tool. This is also applicable to media, content and gami...
Instagram Debuts Reels to Rival TikTok
Facebook-owned Instagram has rolled out a new way to create and share videos – Reels – to rival popular Chinese app, TikTok. The social media platform says that users can share reels with their followers on Feed, and if they have a public account, make them available to the wider Instagram community through a new space in Explore. Here’s a closer look at how to use Reels, according to Instagram: Select Reels at the bottom of the Instagram camera. Reels can be recorded in a series of clips (one at a time), all at once, or using video uploads from their gallery. Record the first clip by pressing and holding the capture button. Users will see a progress indicator at the top of the screen as they record. Stop recording to end each clip. User will see a variety of creative edi...
Do You Need a Reason to have Intelligence at your Fingertips with the Huawei IdeaHub?
If you are looking for an endpoint solution that will migrate your workspace into the 21st century and meet all your smart office needs, Pinnacle has the perfect offer for you. In July 2020, Huawei launched its elegantly simplistic IdeaHub in Southern Africa. When using the term simplistic, this in no way refers to the various functions the unit can offer, but to the modern user-centric design. The Huawei IdeaHub finally gives you the opportunity to throw your outdated whiteboard out the door with its intelligent handwriting capabilities, HD projection, video conferencing feature and open office App Gallery, this all in one solution is all you need to host meetings, presentations, or just a simple brainstorming session. Suitable for meeting rooms, open offices, executive boardrooms or even...
Huawei Launches P40 lite 5G
Huawei has just launched its first 5G phone for the mid-range smartphone market – the P40 lite 5G. Other than its 5G compatibility, this trendy handset boasts a smart look, powerful performance and impressive photography specs. To meet the more diverse needs for photography and videography in the 5G era, the P40 lite 5G is equipped with a 64MP Hi-res AI Quad Camera system. This includes a 64MP main camera, 8MP super wide-angle camera, a 2MP Boken camera and a 2MP macro camera. The 64MP main camera is perfect for shooting in all scenarios, ranging from outdoor settings with strong lighting to low-light settings such as night time photography. The camera setup is designed to let more light in, and so captures hi-res photos with sharp details. For those who want to shoot videos in 4K, t...
Strathmore University selected as Regional VMware IT Academy
VMware has announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish the University as the first Regional VMware IT Academy for East Africa. In this role, @iLabAfrica-Strathmore University plans to continue to offer VMware IT Academy training as part of its own curriculum, but will also be responsible for implementing the VMware IT Academy program across other higher educational institutions in East Africa. This hopes to help bolster digital skills across the continent and encourage economic prosperity linked to digital skills transfer. Research has shown that the African continent continues to face a technical skills shortage, further highlighted by the sweeping impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on business’ ability to embrace remote working policies. Digitalisation is e...
CloudFabric: Leading DCNs into the Intelligence Era
The world is now entering into the era of the digital economy, leaving the industrial era behind with the emergence and rapid development of Information and Communications Technology (ICT). According to a survey conducted by global research and advisory firm Gartner, 75% of large enterprises have already transferred their principal strategic focus onto digital transformation. And while the most critical production elements were land and labor in the agricultural era, and capital and technology in the industrial era, data and intelligence have now replaced these industries in the digital economy. A significant amount of data has and is still being generated during digital transformation, which has become a core asset for enterprises. However, data is not an end in and of itself. Rather, it ...
