Brett Parker is the Managing Director of SAP Africa. In this chat with Andile Masuku, he reveals some of the most critical strategic decisions made by SAP’s global leadership back in 2010, that helped the software giant maintain its dominant position in an increasingly competitive global market. Brett also highlights some of the fascinating greenfield opportunities SAP is pursuing on the continent and explains why SAP is well-positioned to partner with enterprises looking to navigate digital transformation issues.
Moroccan-born Dr Chakib Bouhdary is SAP’s global Digital Transformation Officer. In this chat with Andile Masuku, he shares some of the most common misconceptions he encounters regarding digital transformation when he interacts with executives around the world. Chakib also comments on the strategic mindset driving the trend towards large enterprises keenly making big plays outside their traditional businesses.
Show notes: https://github.com/PHPUgly/podcast/blob/master/shows/ep39.md recorded December 3rd, 2016 Topics Google released public Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers We discuss some of the announcements coming out of AWS re:Invent 2016 24 Pull Requests What’s new in Git 2.11 Laravel v5.3.25 is released PHP 7.1.0 Release and 9 New Features you need to know The hosts Eric Van Johnson Twitter / Github / Blog / About.me Tom Rideout Twitter / Github / About.me John Congdon Twitter / Github Follow us on Twitter @PHPUgly Email us at Podcast@phpugly.com Sponsor of this show: The DiegoDev Group
SA Taxi-owned Zebra Cabs has raised just over $21.6 million from Futuregrowth Asset Management to expand their owner-driver scheme in Johannesburg, and to take on Uber and Taxify. Their big hairy audacious goal is to have 3 000 cabs on the road by 2020.
This development has got us wondering how many players Africa’s ride-sharing market can sustain. There must be easier ways to make a buck, but it seems the prospect of carving out a decent chunk of a potentially multi-billion dollar industry is clearly too much to pass up for VC's like Futuregrowth. The FOMO is real!
It’s going to be interesting to see how quickly Zebra Cabs burns through their newly-found cash. Will they withstand the fierce price war that's almost guaranteed to ensue? How long will their financiers be willing to wait before they turn a profit? And will more funds be forthcoming when Zebra Cabs needs to extend their runway further down the line? Only time will tell.
In this week’s African Tech Round-up we publish snippets from two conversations Andile Masuku taped at SAP’s Executive Digital Exchange, which happened in Camps Bay, Cape Town last week. First, he spoke with SAP’s global Digital Transformation Officer, Dr Chakib Bouhdary who shared some of the most common misconceptions regarding digital transformation he's encountered while interacting with executives around the world. Chakib also explained the strategic mindset driving the trend towards large enterprises keenly making big plays outside their traditional businesses.
Then, Andile then spoke with SAP Africa MD, Brett Parker, who revealed some of the most critical strategic decisions SAP’s global leadership made back in 2010 that helped them to maintain their dominant position in an increasingly competitive global market. Listen in to hear Brett highlight some of the fascinating greenfield opportunities SAP is pursuing on the continent.
Music Credits:
Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution
This is a lively chat Andile Masuku had with Dr Vukosi Marivate, a Data Scientist and Senior Researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). They speak about the trend towards countries around the world passing laws that require the personal information of their citizens to be hosted on servers within their borders. We reached out to Vukosi after having some insightful engagement with him on Twitter last week; following our coverage of Russia blocking LinkedIn for flouting data security regulations.
Senegal is now the second African country after Tunisia to adopt an electronic currency. eCFA is equivalent in value to the country’s physical tender and will be available on all mobile money and e-wallet platforms. This development has led to e-money proponents speculating which African country might be next to adopt electronic money. Zimbabwe, perhaps?
It’s popularly been argued that given the persistent economic troubles that have dogged the country, Zimbabwe might very well be the continent’s best use case for the adoption of virtual currency. But for the time being, Zimbabweans will have to be content with the country’s newest currency-- bond notes, which the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe started rolling out on Monday, December 28th, 2016.
This week’s African Tech Round-up features a lively chat Andile Masuku had with Dr Vukosi Marivate, a Data Scientist and Senior Researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). They speak about the trend towards countries around the world passing laws that require the personal information of their citizens to be hosted on servers within their borders. We reached out to Vukosi after having some insightful engagement with him on Twitter last week; following our coverage of Russia blocking LinkedIn for flouting data security regulations.
Music Credits:
Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution
