The IT Leaders Africa Summit has for a 6th time successfully gathered the industry's most influential players, who are shaping the IT landscape in South Africa and beyond. This world class IT Leadership summit, hosted at the ultimate business hotel, The Maslow, situated in the heart of Sandton's commercial district informed, educated and inspired IT professionals and heads of IT to deliver exceptional leadership to their organisation.

This year, with the help of an advisory panel, insight and contributions from a regional and global perspective were implemented to mould an agenda that is crafted by the industry and is a true reflection of Africa's IT Leaders' needs.  The advisory panel included Tunde Coker, MD for Rack Centre Limited; Robert Sussman, Joint CEO for Integr8 Group and Hugo Timmerman, Head of IT for Southern Africa British American Tobacco. These panel members have stated their mission to create a platform where "meeting of the minds" can happen at CIO / Head of IT level providing multifaceted insights to similar topics and for every contributor to leave with valuable new relationships, knowledge and the ability to apply insights into their organization and others. 

The 6th IT Leaders Africa Summit took place 18 - 19 March 2015 at the Maslow Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg.

The two day summit was expertly moderated by Chairperson and Advisory Principal of Africa Strategic Business Capital (ASBC) Gary Craul. Bringing over 25 years of experience, Gary is recognised as a professional leader in the areas of enterprise strategy, value-based management frameworks and technology adoption approaches, and also operates as a strategic transaction advisor.

"The age for Africa to succeed has arrived"; this powerful statement made by Minister Naledi Pandor from the Ministry of Science and Technology during her opening message to IT Leaders Africa Summit delegates was echoed in many presentations to follow and set the tone for an enthusiastic, strategic and innovative atmosphere. Minister Naledi Pandor insisted that Africa needs to start creating its own ICT sector of enterprises that responds to Africa's own needs and challenges.

 Following this inspiring opening address, our advisory panel, joined by Mike Davies, CIO for Royal Bafokeng Platinum took to the stage.  During this panel discussion on the overview of the CIOs role in implementing enterprise strategy, the panel concluded that a powerful CIO highlights technologies based on the ambitions of business, he/she understands the Business Strategy and makes IT the synergy of connecting the dots, in turn, changing the world. Tunde Coker took the stage for a second time on day two, to discuss the Core IT infrastructure advances in Sub Sahara Africa.

With the digitalisation of business models and influx of new technologies challenging the way CIOs plan IT for their organisations, Heydon Hall, CIO for Regent Insurance discussed these disruptive forces reshaping the role of the CIO.  Haydon stated that the CIO now had the additional task of being a digital marketer in an effort to better understand the customer.

After these first, hard hitting presentations, delegates had the opportunity to break away into smaller workshop sessions and hear from pioneering international suppliers including HP, Brocade, Blue Coat Systems, Kofax and Palo Alto Networks.  Over the two days, second and third workshop sessions were hosted by Airwatch, Performanta, SITA, Telkom and Ubusha.

During their 60 min workshop, platinum sponsor Performanta took a look at real-world assessments and discussed how attendees could measure their organisation against the industry on 10 Information Security and Privacy measures. HP discussed combining proactive security testing to protect applications with deep application security expertise and extensive software development experience during their workshop session titled "If you want better security, think like a bad guy".  Blue Coat explained how IT teams can quickly indentify advanced and zero malware, utilize actionable intelligence for rapid incident response and continuously monitor network traffic and focus on the most critical threats.

Gold sponsor, SITAs CTO, Pandelani Munyai discussed the delivery of E Government services as well as ICT governance for public sector during their two workshop sessions and Telkom expanded on how digital migration can impact the future of business.  During this session, they took a look at aligning a digital strategy with overall business objectives that allows a business to improve their customer experience by getting closer to the customer, reducing the costs of serving customers and being flexible to customers' needs through efficiencies of scale

Joint silver sponsors at the 6th annual, SLVA and Ubusha discussed the mechanisms that IT heads could use to ensure a secure information-processing environment during their workshop presented by Kris Budnik, Managing Director for SLVA Information Security. AirWatch by VMware MD, Ian Evans explored Merck's mobility story and shared best practices on implementing an engaging internal enterprise app program, which will soon be a necessity to enabling a productive mobile workforce. Adriaan Joubert, SE Manager at Palo Alto Networks analysed the intertwined relationship between cyber-attacks and applications based on recent data collected from over 5,500 networks worldwide. Brocade asked their attendees whether their networks are built on 'The Old IP', expanding on 'The New IP' revolution. During Kofax's session, the question was raised; "How Prepared are you for the age of the customer and to deliver a Consistent Experience across channels?"

Fantastic prizes, competitions and limited offers were available throughout the two day event including an iPad mini sponsored by Sage ERP Africa as well as a Blackberry Passport, sponsored by Blackberry. Delegates enjoyed a wine, coffee and whiskey sampling during networking sessions followed by a cocktail function.

Kinetic was proud to host vendors that are on the forefront of innovation in the industry including HP, Performanta, Blue Coat Systems, Telkom, SITA, Airwatch, Kofax, Palo Alto Networks, Brocade, Ubusha Technologies, SLVA Information Security, Neotel, Dimension Data, Meso Systems, Avoxi, Sage Pastel Accounting, Software Testing Solutions, Document Accounting Solutions, Teraco, Rogue Web and A.O.M.

A very well received presentation by IT Law Specialist Professor David Taylor from Legal Edge Consulting took a frank look at the inside of a typical corporate network, from a Board, legal and IT security perspective, followed by a diagnosis and recommended treatment. Stating that online payments are busy taking over all forms of commerce, Travelstart CEO, Stephan Ekbergh discussed the processes that should be in place to regulate online commerce.

The Summit hosted five panel discussions in total, outlining the CIOs accountability for IT competencies, discussing connectivity for unified communications in Africa, alternative strategies taking shape within organisations located in areas with limited bandwidth and defining the role of the CIO in the age of the cloud.

MD and CEO for Neotel, Sunil Joshi took a seat on Neotel's sponsored panel alongside CIOs David Visser from Coca Cola and Mike Davies from Royal Bafokeng Platinum.  With Mohammed Parker, Deputy Director: IT Strategy, eCommerce and Governance from the Department of Local Government: Western Cape Government joining what was already a highly powered panel at the last minute, this panel brought key insights regarding enterprise technology and shared the innovations that their organisations are using in the real time transmission of voice, data and video and whether 4G is sufficient to improve connectivity for unified communications in organisations.  David Visser stated that Coca Cola has evolved by listening to what technology associates use at home.

Dimension Data, established as a world leader in ICT solutions, also powered a panel discussion.  Grant Morgan, General Manager: Cloud for Dimension data was joined by Fundile Ntuli, CIO for ubank; Peter Oeschger, Group CIO for Finbond Mutual Bank and Heinrich Kukkuk, Group Information Technology Manager for Aveng Group in the discussion on the role of the CIO in the age of the cloud.  This session answered questions about where the CIO features in an age when decisions to use the cloud are being made by marketing and other functions both within and outside the organisation

Other panellists throughout the two days included:

•             Kevin Wilson, General Manager IT Services, Stefanutti Stocks

•             Abid Adam, Head of Risk and Information Security, Old Mutual

•             Abdul Baba, IT Executive Head, Skynet

•             Chandima Miyanadeniya, CIO, Aon

•             Nkosana Mbokane, General Manager: ICT, Perishable Products Export Control Board

•             Rocky Gwewera, Group Head of Infrastructure Architecture, Sasol

During a session focused on the new social and mobile collaboration tools that connect people inside and outside the enterprise, Alon Lits, GM from Uber discussed their methods in providing real time communications and access to supporting systems when designing the people-centric business.

Sihle Mthiyane, Head of IT at Thales took a straight forward approach in explaining why 90 % of enterprises fail to execute against their strategies and what the CIOs role is in fixing this. Yolisa Skwintshi, IT Executive for Sanlam expanded on why it is in the interest of IT leaders and business leaders alike to develop program management capabilities so that enterprises are able to see their strategies through to fruition.

During one of the final keynote sessions, Nils Körber, CIO for One Africa called to all CIOs at the IT Leaders Africa Summit to invest in developing technical skills in Africa.  Nils discussed investing in Home Grown Technology and answered the question; "can African developed technology support the needs of locally based organisations?" stating that "Africa is the future"

The IT Leaders Africa Summit has been designed for the key people who are needed to align IT with business priorities and provides the ideal setting to engage and network with like-minded individuals within the African IT industry.  It was evident at the 6th edition that the Summit is no longer only a platform for executives to improve their own organisations, but to influence the future of ICT in Africa. 

The 7th IT Leaders Africa Summit takes place 17 - 18 March 2016 at the Maslow Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg.  Contact Marcia van Jaarsveld on 021 180 4700 or email marcia@kineticevents.net for more information.