Brainstorm Magazine

1. SA is falling behind
(October 2008/Columns)

For a country that aspires to be the powerhouse of Africa – no disrespect intended to other African countries – it is being shamed by countries with far smaller economies. When MultiChoice, a South ...

2. Real-time all the time
(October 2008/UpFront)

... flight tracking, which would layer on top of these platforms. Already SAA and the Airports Company of South Africa offer live “flight status” information on their websites. A year ago, SAA launched a ...

3. Too much to do…
(October 2008/UpFront)

... to be quite simple, but only a few people in South Africa really understand it,” Mullins says. “And keeping up with the pace of technological changes is a challenge even for people who are experts in the ...

4. Oracle misses the point
(October 2008/Columns)

... on those that think they can just jettison them. I asked a simple question on a technical mailing list the other day and received courteous and helpful replies from the two authors of the program I was ...

5. Editor's Note
(October 2008/Editors Note)

... meetings, work, events, friends, cars, houses, jobs, dinners. And that’s true to a greater or lesser degree for around ten percent of us. That’s ten percent of South Africans, by the way. The other 90 ...

6. Mining robots of the future
(October 2008/UpFront)

... CSIR, field robotics is a futuristic technology, a brand-new field in South Africa and guaranteed to be a global technology in the future. Sabatta is the project lead on what he calls the ‘mule project’ ...

7. Making dumb phones smart
(October 2008/In-Depth Analysis)

... is almost wholly focussed on driving data adoption and the company’s results illustrate a strategy that is beginning to pay off. In the three months to June, Vodacom South Africa’s data revenue increased ...

8. Passionate about printing
(October 2008/In-Depth Analysis)

... This is why in 1991 the same two women took full ownership of Remata iNathi Printers. Says director Annemarie Burger: “While we supply our products and services across South Africa and there is always ...

9. Silent crimes
(October 2008/In-Depth Analysis)

Cyber crime is often equated with Nigerian 419 scams, phishing attacks and denial of service attacks, but it encompasses a much broader range of activities that impact businesses in South Africa every ...

10. Time is money
(October 2008/In-Depth Analysis)

... in the telecommunications industry. On the one hand we have the independent communications authority of South Africa (Icasa) aiming to reduce mobile termination rates (MTRs) in the hopes of bringing down ...

11. From takeovers to takeout
(October 2008/In-Depth Analysis)

... want to take, but corporate governance is important today. Africa, including South Africa, has a certain stigma of corruption and that’s not something we will get involved in, so we have to be very careful ...

12. CIVETS are the new BRIC
(October 2008/In-Depth Analysis)

... Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa – have been hailed as the new BRICs, with “a very bright future”. “Each of these countries has a large, young, growing population. Each has a diverse and dynamic ...

13. Serious fun and games
(October 2008/In-Depth Analysis)

... advertisers in the United States have drawn inspiration from one of the fastest-growing online segments: gaming – and South African advertising agencies are following suit.   It’s easy to see ...

14. Cowboys in boots?
(October 2008/In-Depth Analysis)

Many local CIOs lack the maturity and expertise needed to effectively deliver what their boards are demanding. CIOs face tough challenges in the South African ICT landscape, according ...

15. Shooting the moon
(October 2008/In-Depth Analysis)

... of open source developers. As far as South Africa’s spaceman is concerned, they’ve only just begun. A hallmark of the projects Mark Shuttleworth takes on is that they all tackle ...

16. More than just certification
(October 2008/Features)

Skills development in South Africa is becoming a lot more than just going on courses to get the right certificates. A notorious radio ad during the dotcom boom claimed that after going on an MCSE ...

17. But is it safe?
(October 2008/Features)

...  Let’s take physical security first: how vulnerable is your infrastructure to floods, fires, theft and catastrophic hardware failures? Unless you’re in the top echelon of South African corporates and ...

18. The cloud is more than just hot air
(October 2008/Features)

... better,” says regional director of VMWare Southern Africa Chris Norton. “Without virtualisation, it’s quite common to get an organisation running, say, 1 000 servers at eight percent capacity. With virtualisation, ...

19. Dumb end-users
(October 2008/Features)

... the cyber war heats up (see page 26 Silent crimes), the next logical place to start battening down the hatches is on the end-user front. CA Southern Africa’s principal consultant, security, Maiendra ...

20. Didata comes of age
(October 2008/Cover)

... and maintenance of network equipment within client sites and we have also lacked the geographical reach in some of the rapidly growing regions, notably Africa, Middle East and South America and indeed ...