High-growth countries are usually exhibited by a low per capita income. The upside, though, is that such countries, usually emerging countries, are able to do more with fewer resources.
Dr Gilbert Saggia, Oracle Country Manager for Kenya, says the advantage of such innovation is that it sees technology playing a big role. The challenge, however, comes in the procurement and implementation of technology. Dr Saggia was addressing a cross section of Chief Information Officers and IT managers attending the CIO 100 Annual awards and Symposium in Kigali, Rwanda.
When it comes to purchasing a vehicle, clients usually purchase a car as it was designed, such that they are able to enjoy the innovation in the vehicle as intended by the manufacturer. On the contrary, when it comes to the purchase of IT solutions, clients usually “cobble up” different solutions from different vendors to come up with a single solution. This, Saggia said, is the equivalent of purchasing different parts of a vehicle from different car manufacturers.
Procurement also presents another challenge to IT implementation, with the process being so lengthy and complex that by the time the solution is delivered, the business has hugely missed on the benefits.
Consequently, there are two ways in which businesses can simplify IT. The first is maintaining an integrated stack, or alternatively through the cloud. For the cloud, firms can choose to have their own private cloud, which they own and build. They can also opt for a public cloud where they procure and consume what they need from a hosted provider. Firms can also opt for a choice of both, where a private cloud is used while some services are hosted on a public cloud.
Some of the solutions deployable on the cloud include analytics and Big Data. Saggia said that 44 percent of Oracle clients are looking to use Big Data, 21 percent looking to use analytics and 52 percent are looking to use the cloud.
He gave the example of a big company that recently announced impressive financial results, where the profit increased by a huge margin, despite little increase in revenue. This, he said, is a result of using business intelligence and analytics to analyse the cost centres which then drives efficiency in the same, leading to huge savings which translate to increased profits.
Addressing security concerns, Saggia said that most breaches are usually internal breaches emanating from employees, or due to overlooking common security procedures such as encryption of passwords.
