Tag: IT

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love shopping and those who would rather watch paint dry than step foot...

Bruce von Maltitz | Co-founder and Joint CEO | 1Stream | bruce@1Stream.co.za | www.1stream.co.za | Where do humans fit in a world of digital personal assistants? The fourth...

Is your business ready for the day everything has a sensor? One day in the very near future, we will wonder how we ever survived...

No one should get away with fraud. Information that is carefully hidden or deleted can be identified and disclosed! From intentionally erased emails to deleted...

You know what shoppers are doing online – but do you know what they are doing in-store? Consumers are increasingly using digital technology to assist...

The Protection of Personal Information (PoPI) Act has been a topic of interest for some time and businesses and the general public alike pondered when it would be in effect, how long it would take to be relevant and who would oversee the process as Information Regulator. The appointment of Pansy Tlakula as South Africa’s Information Regulator in December 2016, however, means that the time for discussion is over and the time for action has come.

The future of business is in the cloud. That is the message from global analysts as the latest IT sales figures show a marked shift away from hardware. The shift to cloud services and other Digital Business solutions has slashed Gartner's global IT spending growth forecasts by half: a cut of $67bn for this year alone, with data centre growth predicted at a modest 0.3% in 2017.

Consumer buying decisions rely heavily on the retail environment, so it makes sense that retailers are searching for more innovative ways to engage customers at every touchpoint, both online and in-store. With studies pointing to most in-store purchases being made on impulse rather than pre-planned, retailers would do well to consider how customers engage with the retail environment.

Technology is advancing much more quickly than most people anticipated even a decade ago. This begs the question as to whether or not our social, economic and political institutions and structures are equipped, or have developed sufficiently, to deal with the ethical and legal challenges that these advancements have brought and are ever more rapidly bringing.

Along with the rest of the world, South Africa is in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, in which the smart use of information and technology is reshaping societies. One of the most apparent ways in which this is happening can be seen is in the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), where smart, connected devices are being deployed in cities and industries globally, to gather data and glean contextual insights which are used to achieve higher levels of efficiency, productivity and utilization of scarce and natural resources.