Author: Chris Anu

Ruth Hickin, VP of Workforce Innovation at Salesforce. Agentic AI can boost productivity in businesses by removing routine bureaucracy and ‘noise’ from the workplace, but this is only achievable with an AI fluent workforce, says Ruth Hickin, VP of Workforce Innovation at CRM technology firm Salesforce.The company says businesses are looking to emerge as agentic enterprises or those in which human employees and AI agents work together in a seamless, collaborative ecosystem. However, to achieve this goal, much will depend on their workforce’s ability to harness and apply agentic AI in their daily work.Salesforce says agentic AI is now part…

Elon Musk. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters Elon Musk is seeking up to US$134-billion (R2.2-trillion) from OpenAI and Microsoft, saying he deserves the “wrongful gains” that they received from his early support, according to a court filing on Friday. OpenAI gained between $65.5-billion and $109.4-billion from the billionaire entrepreneur’s contributions when he was co-founding what was then a start-up from 2015, while Microsoft gained between $13.3-billion and $25.1-billion, Musk said in the federal court filing ahead of his trial against the two companies. “Without Elon Musk, there’d be no OpenAI. He provided the bulk of the seed funding, lent his reputation and taught…

Rahana Vally, Director at Brilliant Link. (Image: Supplied) As organisations enter a new financial year in March, many finance and operational leaders are reviewing their technology landscape, weighing up whether their current systems can support growth, automation and smarter decision-making. For those considering a new ERP platform, the same pattern plays out repeatedly: the product impresses, the price raises hesitation and the search begins for a cheaper option. But as many soon discover, the moment they shop around, the trade-off between price and functionality becomes clear – and the cheaper alternative rarely delivers what the business actually needs.Rahana Vally, director…

The authors, Altman Solon’s Björn Menden and Switala Ventures’ Thomas Switala When the competition authorities last year finally approved Vodacom’s acquisition of a 30% stake in Maziv – the parent of Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa – they quietly reshaped the rules of engagement for South Africa’s digital infrastructure market. For years, open access has been treated as a policy ideal: shared networks, used on fair and non-discriminatory terms, driving affordability and inclusion. In practice, the market that emerged was fragmented, capital-constrained and uneven. The Maziv decision signalled a pragmatic shift. It recognised that, under the right conditions, scale can enable…

Gail Holt, Managing Director of Hardware Distribution. In today’s economic climate, many companies are under pressure to do more with less. Large-scale network refreshes are often postponed in favour of maximising the value of existing infrastructure, a strategy commonly known as “sweating the assets”. For many companies running legacy Cisco networks, SmartCare offers a practical, cost-effective way to extend network life and maintain products without immediate capital investment.SmartCare, an SLA-driven maintenance and support service exclusive to Hardware Distribution, enables companies to confidently sweat their legacy Cisco assets until they can afford to upgrade.“Too often, companies feel pressured into replacing perfectly…

Enterprise organisations face increasing data volumes, advanced cyberthreats, and higher demands for availability and recovery. Leaders are questioning whether current data resilience strategies can ensure security, governance and scalability without adding unnecessary operational risk or cost. A significant change has transformed the enterprise data resilience landscape. With Veritas’s enterprise data resilience capabilities available through Cohesity, organisations now have access to a new, unified, modern data platform. This combines proven reliability with Cohesity’s scalable, AI-driven architecture. The result is a complete solution that improves recovery, simplifies operations and boosts cyber resilience. Cohesity’s approach is grounded in five guiding principles: speed, scale,…

Ericsson has proposed staff reductions in Sweden, adding to job cuts in the global tech sector. Multinational networking and telecoms company Ericsson is looking to reduce its staff by 1 600 positions in its home market Sweden.This, as part of measures aimed at ensuring its competitive position, according to the company statement.“The proposed staff reduction is part of global initiatives to improve cost position while maintaining investments critical to Ericsson’s technology leadership and the execution of the strategy to deliver high-performing, programmable networks that enable differentiated services and new monetization opportunities.“Initiatives to increase operational efficiency will continue across the group…

Binance South Africa GM Hannes Wessels The crypto world moves much more quickly than most people realise. At this speed, there’s plenty of opportunity, but plenty of danger, too. For Binance, the way forward is simple: education before action, because nothing in crypto works, not trading, adoption or safety, unless users understand what they are doing. Binance Academy is not an add-on or a marketing tool. For the company, it is treated as the foundation. It is where users learn about blockchain, how it works and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. They also learn what drives markets, why cryptocurrency prices fluctuate and…

SMEs are leading South Africa’s digital commerce revolution. Digital payments are increasingly underpinning merchant growth in SA, with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) using them to unlock new revenue streams, expand their reach and build more resilient businesses. These are among key findings highlighted in the fifth edition of Payfast by Network’s State of Pay report, which examines how evolving payment technologies are reshaping the country’s digital commerce landscape.Launched under the theme “Powering Economic Growth Through Evolving Payments”, the 2025 report draws on anonymised Payfast platform data, as well as insights from its annual merchant and consumer surveys. While Payfast…

Oracle chairman Larry Ellison. Robert Galbraith/Reuters Oracle was sued on Wednesday by bondholders who say they suffered losses because the company chaired by billionaire Larry Ellison concealed its need to sell significant additional debt to build out its artificial intelligence infrastructure. The proposed class action was filed in a New York state court in Manhattan on behalf of investors who said they bought $18-billion of senior notes and bonds that Oracle issued on 25 September, shortly after the software and cloud computing company signed a US$300-billion, five-year contract to supply Sam Altman’s OpenAI with computing power. These investors said they…