Africa’s IT industry gears up toward the clouds

The Cloud and Virtualisation Summit Africa offers innovative resources, ideas and best practice case studies enabling your enterprise to apply them immediately in order to leverage the cloud.

The anticipated 3^rd annual Cloud and Virtualisation Summit Africa is taking place at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, from 10 to 11 October 2012.

The event is hosted by international business-to-business conferencing company, Kinetic Events. The must-attend event is aimed at business and technology leaders who need to understand how cloud computing and virtualisation is fundamentally transforming the way in which we think about, acquire and use computing resources.

The Cloud and Virtualisation Summit Africa offers innovative resources, ideas and best practice case studies enabling your enterprise to apply them immediately in order to leverage the cloud, assisting you in maximising performance, minimising costs and improving the scale of your projects. Improving resource utilisation through virtualising IT infrastructures is fast becoming precedence for enterprises, globally. Successful deployment requires upfront preparation and strategising when carefully determining the appropriate infrastructure components and architecture for the enterprise.

The summit will allow attendees to discover the basic concepts behind cloud and virtualisation, the potential enterprise benefits and key decisions associated with virtualisation projects, and exactly how to get started with virtualisation assessment.

The 3^rd annual Cloud and Virtualisation Summit Africa has launched well into day one with positive feedback from all attendees. The summit has geared forward, focusing on enterprise virtualisation projects as the focus of many IT professionals attempting to consolidate servers or data centres, decrease costs and launch successful “green” IT conservation initiatives.

The summit was officially opened by Derrick Plank, Director of ClearSpace Consulting with an interesting take on the increasing impact of cloud computing on business technology. Derrick will also be moderating the event this year.

The summit kicked off with the first keynote of the day presented by Trevor Cronje, CEO of RentWorks. Trevor provided invaluable insight in managing the new economics of the cloud. Summit guest presenter, Dr Andrew Hutchison from the Internation

al Presales Management group of T-Systems International, placed the industry spotlight on security and cloud services for the enterprise. 

The first anticipated panel discussion of the day focused on the role for telecoms providers in cloud computing services. With cloud computing becoming a highly competitive market, the panel provided an in-depth analysis on cloud service providers delivering high-quality, business-grade services to differentiate themselves from low-cost commodity cloud computing providers. The panel featured industry thought-leaders including Hrusostomos Vicatos, Managing Director of Victree; Gareth James, Author and Virtualisation Guru; and Mariana Carroll, Leader: Cloud Computing Centre of Excellence, Deloitte.

The summit features industry focused workshop sessions addressing effective solutions in successfully delivering IT projects and services to enable business growth and innovation. Industry solution providers will lead the workshop sessions. Hewlett-Packard is set to present ‘Experience the Cloud Journey for yourself’, KeyedIn Solutions will provide insight into cloud computing and the changes to the way we see technology. The Intel Corporation and T-Systems will take delegates on a journey from virtualisation to the cloud as Secure Lab sheds lights through practical advice for security you can implement today for your environments.

In the afternoon of day one, Neville Perry, the Acting Group CIO at BancABC will present a topical keynote presentation on cloud services, focusing on the cost effectiveness versus ease of successful integration.

The anticipated second panel discussion of the day one of the summit will feature Rocky Gwewera, Senior Manager: Enterprise Architecture Development, Sasol; Tshidi Modiragale, IT Risk and Compliance Manager, Mutual and Federal Insurance; Gareth James, Author and Virtualisation Guru; and Toni Serra, CIO of Nampak. The panel will take to the skies in a topical debate focusing on what enterprise customers really want from cloud. Hear what the CIOs are really looking for and what the cloud service providers have to say.

Day one of the summit has been strategically developed to enable the convergence of enterprise and technology leaders, allowing attendees to explore the future of IT with cloud and virtualisation, and how cloud computing is fundamentally transforming the way in which we think about, acquire and use computing resources. Day two of the anticipated summit is set to provide delegates with sought-after enterprise intelligence. Day two will feature topical discussion points including next-generation security infrastructure and strategies, and the impact of cloud computing on enterprise architecture.