African firms fuel innovation with IBM cloud solutions  

More than eight companies spanning some of the fastest growing industries in the African region, from telecommunications to retail, have elected to adopt IBM cloud solutions to provide faster IT solutions in their business operations. This was disclosed by IBM during the IBM Business Nigeria 2016 event in Nigeria.

The companies which include Navigation and Geocoding Technologies Limited (Naveo), Whogohost, Korrect Software, Serve Consulting, and IntTeck Global Systems, will be leveraging the hybrid cloud solution for greater flexibility, scalability and central management.

According to a statement from IBM, the move by the companies to go on cloud is indicative of a global trend. A report from Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) shows that hybrid cloud is the new norm for businesses and it predicts that more than 80 per cent of enterprise IT organisations will commit to hybrid cloud architectures by 2017.

Similarly, a 2016 global study of hybrid cloud themed ‘Growing up Hybrid: Accelerating Digital Transformation from IBM Centre for Applied Insights, found that 500 hybrid cloud implementers from 13 industries are using hybrid cloud to jumpstart “next generation” initiatives.

Tejas Mehta, General Manager, IBM Central and West Africa said “The IBM Cloud allows a company to improve business agility and capacity to quickly meet shifting customer demands. The Africa region is propelling innovation by adopting IBM Cloud. The IBM Cloud will give them the technical muscle to consistently align their operational and assets with prevailing market conditions, laying a foundation for commercial sustenance and future growth.”

Among the testimonials cited of companies which are actively utilizing IBM Cloud is Naveo. Located in Moka, on the island nation of Mauritius, Naveo specializes in fleet management solutions, providing tracking tools designed to help customers dispatch vehicles more effectively, improve worker performance and reduce operating costs. Looking for the right skills to manage the IT environment needed to host its fleet-tracking and asset-tracking GPS solutions, improve operational performance and eliminate system downtime; the company migrated from its existing hosting platform to IBM’s hybrid cloud solution based on an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model.

As a result of the migration to the highly-scalable IBM Cloud, the company was able to develop and launch Naveo One, an all-in-one fleet management solution offering telematics, telemetry and geographic information system (GIS) capabilities. Naveo can now focus on marketing its GPS tracking application with assurance that the infrastructure will support its growth across the nations of the Indian Ocean Islands and Africa.