Every time an engine runs, it generates heat. Anyone who has felt the warmth behind their fridge can confirm this. The same is true on a larger scale in supermarkets, datacentres, factories, wastewater facilities, metro stations and commercial buildings. Excess heat can be reused to supply a factory with heat and warm water or reused by neighbouring homes and industries through a district energy system. Using this energy that would otherwise go to waste can give a productivity boost to the economy and lower energy prices for consumers. Utilising excess heat can replace significant amounts of f ..read more

Every time an engine runs, it generates heat. Anyone who has felt the warmth behind their fridge can confirm this. The same is true on a larger scale in supermarkets, datacentres, factories, wastewater facilities, metro stations and commercial buildings. Excess heat can be reused to supply a factory with heat and warm water or reused by neighbouring homes and industries through a district energy system. Using this energy that would otherwise go to waste can give a productivity boost to the economy and lower energy prices for consumers. Utilising excess heat can replace significant amounts of f ..read more

With data centre infrastructure evolving to meet the changing needs of end users – including the incorporation of IoT devices – data centre managers can no longer rely on basic cabling testing. It’s critical that they have the tools available to be able to test and troubleshoot issues quickly, to ensure Business Continuity. Lisa Schwartz, Director of Business Development and Product Marketing at AEM, talks us through some of the challenges data centre teams are encountering and how they can ensure they have a comprehensive testing strategy that meets users’ growing demands. Lisa Schwartz, Dire ..read more

As Smart Cities emerge across the globe, there is a ‘huge opportunity’ in Africa to embrace and evolve towards this concept. This is the view of Mahmoud El-Banna, Head of Digital Industries Sales for China, India and MEA at Nokia. He talks us through some of the existing and new initiatives in the region, as well as how Nokia is at the forefront of such projects across the globe, including Africa. Mahmoud El-Banna, Head of Digital Industries Sales for China, India and MEA, Nokia. The African continent is poised to leapfrog other continents when it comes to the adoption of Smart City technologi ..read more

Jim Holland, General Manager, Africa, Lenovo Data Centre Group, on the digital economy and why many commentators in the enterprise IT space appear to be missing this new, burgeoning economy. It’s often said that the numbers don’t lie. Yet, sometimes they do – or at least don’t tell the whole story. By looking beyond, the figures of the declining global growth and productivity, there is a new, burgeoning economy on the rise that many commentators appear to be missing – The digital economy. The question we all find ourselves asking, as the region emerges from the lockdown, is will we ever go bac ..read more

Huawei tells Intelligent CIO how and why it is using Artificial Intelligence in data centres to promote green tech adoption, reduce repetitive work, monitor and manage fragmented resources which might otherwise easily be overlooked. Data centres are being overhauled, revamped and modernised to support Digital Transformation and the power-hungry cloud deployments they contain. Artificial Intelligence is a key part of this overhaul as energy conservation – to address both cost and environmental concerns – becomes a top consideration for data centres. AI solutions are being deployed in the push t ..read more

Michael Cade, Senior Global Technologist, Veeam, shares with us how the four walls of the data centre have collapsed and increased the attack vector as organisations in MENA embrace and promote remote working. Almost three-quarters of professionals across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region prefer jobs that allow them to work remotely, according to a new survey by job site Bayt.com. The impact of the pandemic is likely to see this trend continue as 90% of respondents said they expect that remote work will increase over the next decade. Now that organisations and employees have seen ..read more

Patrick Lastennet, Director of Marketing and Business at Interxion, A Digital Realty Company, examines the roadblocks facing the acceleration of AI innovation. He says it is important to develop a strong infrastructure strategy for AI deployments from the start. The hunger for Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing. Companies in every industry are exploring ways that AI can accelerate innovation and deliver a powerful competitive edge. However, designing AI infrastructure is complex and overwhelming and, as a result, 76% of businesses regard infrastructure as an obstacle to AI success. Still ..read more

Big data is seeing organisations becoming more mindful of aligning their data management practices with newer paradigms such as data lakes, elastic and cluster computing, and real-time data. Stefan Kruger and Peter Gaertner, senior data architects at Decision Inc, say that the cloud provides an environment capable of managing the volume and scale required to do so. There has been a continued drive to improve the mechanisms for dealing with the processing and analysis of big data volumes, such as Machine Learning (ML). However, despite these innovations, challenges such as bad or biased ML mode ..read more

The cloud, IoT and even hyperconverged infrastructure require a robust and solid network to relay the information to and from the data centre they are connected to. But an old, legacy network can severely hamper this and lead to downtime and sub-standard connections, which is why Netshield South Africa is offering businesses an alternative, to ripping and replacing ageing and unstable networks at enormous cost, with its media converter range. Media converters are small and cost-effective devices that when installed in the network upgrade the existing (often copper) network ports to SFP-based p ..read more