CIO South Africa's trusted partners had just four minutes to wow top IT executives at The Venue in Melrose Arch. Through innovative pitches, they made a lasting impression on a room full of CIOs.
Intimate and trendy best describes The Venue in Melrose Arch, the setting for this year’s CIO Pitch Parade, arguably one of the most engaging and interactive IT gatherings in the country.
As promised, Nicholas Goliath, renowned comedian and MC brought the energy, humour to stage and as forewarned guests who sat too close to the stage were his first victims – they became part of his comedy routine. The banter was well-received by those who became a part of his jokes. In fact, it was one of the highlights of the evening.
Sharon Maasdorp, newly appointed COO at MakwaIT, swiftly took to stage for the first round of partner pitches.
She’s only been with the company for two months, but Makwa’s 12-year track-record of exceptional delivery speaks for itself. Sharon explained that Makwa has a global presence in countries such as the US and UAE and specialises in areas such networking and customer experience. “Within the customer experience parameter, we provide bots on demand. They are AI-powered bots that augment human agents and workflows to improve efficiency and drive ROI, delighting customers at every touchpoint,” she explained.
“If you are looking for tailored solutions, transparency in pricing, proficient processes, and bots on demand, look no further than Makwa!”
Daniel Manyemwe, chief customer officer at Entelect, took an integrative approach in his presentation. Using his four minutes on stage, Daniel showcased Entelect’s service offerings, highlighting quality solutions delivered by exceptional talent and end-to-end technology services. “Pick your capability,” he said, introducing Entelect’s project and agile manager, business analyst, solutions architect, and solutions designer.
“We specialise in flexible engagement models: augmented engagement, a hybrid approach offering the best of both worlds, and fixed project engagement perfect for small-scale projects,” he added.
In the final moments of his presentation, Daniel encouraged attendees to scan the QR code on the screen, giving them a chance to experience what building their own dream team feels like.
Auralia Edwards, enterprise architect at Workday, on the other hand is extremely passionate about AI. “Trying to stay competitive without AI, is like competing in the Tour de France on a unicycle,” she said.
“Workday is built to empower the power of adaptation – when we create models, we do it through a consistent and transparent model using AI,” Auralia explained. “Key to this approach is a focus on the data used and how it's used, we call this concept, responsible AI, which is built into our product.”
The concept of ethical or responsible AI really piqued the audience’s interest. “What is ethical AI?” they asked. “This means understanding how to use AI responsibility, looking at recommendations and experiences and knowing where they come from, which is very important for us at Workday as we continuously abide by the many global standards on AI utilisation,” Auralia responded.
Eventually, the second biggest highlight – and most dreaded part of the evening, depending on your perspective – happened: the buzzer went off! One of the partners was buzzed off stage. They took it in stride, which added a touch of humour and entertainment for the attendees.
A solution for the people
BDO’s head of cybersecurity Gilchrist Mushwana’s pitch honed in on BDO’s most exciting offering yet: the BDO Cyber and Forensics lab. The cyber lab mimics an attack seeking to assess sensitive assets by exploiting security weaknesses across multiple systems. “BDO Cyber and Forensics lab’s penetration testing services identifies vulnerable and reveals how networks designed to support normal business operations can provide attackers with pathways to back-end systems and data,” he explained.
According to Dr Angus Hay, regional executive: South Africa at Africa Data Centres (ADC). ADC currently has two major data centres in South Africa, one in Johannesburg and the other in Cape Town.
During his presentation, Angus referred to the CIO’s dilemma, which involves moving all their IT into the cloud, but there’s a problem, he explained in that the data centre in the ‘basement’ only has half the workload. “It is for that reason that we [Africa Data Centres] exist, the end-point is crucial, you’ll never be 100 percent in the public cloud. While you move into the cloud, best to move into a scalable co-location, to keep the remainder of your IT, it’s not just cloud, but cloud and co-location.”
During the Q&A session Angus was asked: What is ADC’s value proposition of a public cloud? “Moving into a co-location gives you a scalable capability for workloads, a place that is secure and not exposed to the public cloud. Sovereignty and security in a platform you trust is the added bonus,” he responded.
Meanwhile Frank Heitmuller, head of sales and strategic account manager at Communication Genetics spoke about the digital journey. “The digital first onboarding journey is where an agent kicks off an intelligent forms process, the interview is pre-populated via Salesforce and is adaptable to mobile and web,” he explained. “It takes the information and directly integrates then the agents would have to generate a policy plan, put together and it gets approved and back into Salesforce.”
“At Communication Genetics , we do this through a conversational cloud, that is omnichannel, allowing you to communicate with all stakeholders,” he added.
Siddika Osman, CEO at Nkgwete IT, was next on stage. “Our vision is unlocking Africa’s power through technology. We’ve been activated for the past 11 years and our commitment is demonstrated in the fact that we’ve never missed an SLA. We are certified in four ISO standards, and are a process driven organisation – focused on improvement,” she noted.
Siddika also spoke about ONE Technologies, which competes with the best and produces laptops in the very same facilities as household computer brands.
“Today I want to talk about aaS,” said Mpho Mothapo, managing executive, cloud and cloud advisory at BCX, software as a service (aaS) to clarify, as soon as he got on stage. However, the acronym alone had attendees bursting in laughter. That was all by Mpho’s design, he was getting technical, but brought a bit of humour to it.
“This is the language that everyone is speaking, why is that relevant to you?” Mpho posed to the CIOs in the room. “My favourite in the world of software as a service is MPaaS, a cloud-based service that provides tools, infrastructure, and support for developing, deploying and managing mobile applications. BCX has something to teach you about this, we have managed to take all our applications and put them into one, hundreds of applications in one platform.”
Right after, an audience member asked Mpho how he could reassure CIOs that his pitch around aaS wasn’t just sales talk. "The presentation focused on aaS, however, we have transitioned as a company, not only selling these services to our clients but also using them internally,"
CIO South Africa community manager Nomahlubi Sonjica returned to stage at the end of the partner pitches to thank attendees and partners for their participation and support of South Africa’s fastest-growing IT community.
From there, guests enjoyed a round of drinks and networking. Judging from the amount of interest piqued and questions posed during the post-pitches Q&A session – there'll surely be some new partnerships in the near future.
