Telcos considering selling African subsidiaries

ITRealms:

After some years of operations, many telecommunications companies are considering selling some of their African subsidiaries, largely due to concerns around sustainability and profitability, ITRealms reports

According to global technology research and consulting firm, International Data Corporation (IDC), these challenges have led some global telcos to reconsider their plans for the region. Africa may well be the next frontier for growth but a number of major players have encountered serious challenges around the profitability of their investments in trying to establish a sustainable and economically viable footprint on the continent.

Etisalat Group, for example,ITRealms gathered, entered into an agreement in 2014 that saw Maroc Telecom acquire its subsidiaries operating under the Moov brand in Francophone West Africa (i.e., Benin, Central African Republic, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Niger, and Togo). 

The deal also included Prestige Telecom, a company based in the Ivory Coast that provided IT services to Etisalat's operations in the six aforementioned countries. The move was spurred by the steadily declining revenues that Etisalat was pulling in from its international subsidiaries, with all of its West African operations (including Nigeria) contributing just 7 per cent to its overall revenues in 2014.

In another development, BhartiAirtel entered 15 African markets in 2010 after acquiring Zain's subsidiaries on the continent, and has since expanded into two more markets. 

However, after five years of operations, the telco is considering selling some of its African subsidiaries, largely due to concerns around sustainability and profitability. Indeed, Orange is currently in talks with BhartiAirtel to acquire four subsidiaries in Francophone and Anglophone Africa (i.e., Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, and Sierra Leone), ITRealms learnt.

"The poor level of infrastructure, particularly in relation to electricity supply – is one of the key challenges that telcos encounter when it comes to deploying and maintaining top-quality network operations in Africa," said the director of IDC's telecoms program for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey, Paul Black.

"This issue has consistently affected the profitability of telcos due to the increased levels of capital and operational expenditure they must undertake in building and maintaining a passive telecom infrastructure. Some global telcos have also failed to adapt and implement strategies that have succeeded in other regions. Indeed, the majority of global telcos have been unable to localize their global strategies to suit the unique operating environments of the African market."

"The operational challenges facing telcos in Africa have driven growth in the continent's third-party telecommunications infrastructure management business, and IDC expects the pressing need for telcos to reduce their costs and increase their levels of control to sustain growth in this space," continues Black.

"In order to increase the likelihood of success, telcos wishing to pursue growth and expansion in the African market must focus on developing enterprise products and services that appeal directly to the wants and needs of the local market, and to small and medium-sized businesses in particular. Telcos looking to enter Africa should tailor strategies that have succeeded in other regions to the specific operating environments they encounter in Africa, while the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) route should also be considered as a potential entry strategy," he concluded.

CyriacusNnaji/GEE

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 [Remmy1]

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Enterprise Mobility to reach 80% MEA healthcare by 2017

ITRealms

Recent report published by the International Data Corporation (IDC) Health Insights has shown that enterprise mobility will have penetrated over 80 per cent of Middle East and Africa (MEA) healthcare organizations by 2017, reports ITRealms.

The report which is based on IDC's annual survey of the region's CIO community, ITRealms informs, indicates that corporate smart devices have already been deployed by over one-third of MEA healthcare organizations, with another 50 per cent planning to adopt them by 2017. Mobilizing enterprise applications, adopting mobile device management (MDM) solutions, and developing policies for enabling enterprise mobility are at the peak of priorities of the IT executives that are planning to embrace mobility.

The press release made available to ITRealms revealed that Information Technology (IT) security remains the greatest concern for healthcare CIOs, with the surveyed IT leaders identifying insider threats and staff-related issues as their most critical security challenges. These concerns are being further aggravated by insufficient budgets, the lack of mature security strategies, and a shortage of skilled IT security personnel.

The lead research analyst for Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMA) at IDC Health Insights, commenting on the report said, "The need for a mobile healthcare workforce will be one of the key drivers of mobile technology investments in MEA over the coming years. In line with the rapidly-rising importance of enterprise mobility within the MEA healthcare industry, mobile security will dominate investments in IT security solutions. Investments in MDM solutions will see particularly strong growth."

IDC Health Insights assists health businesses and IT leaders, as well as the suppliers that serve them, in making more effective technology decisions by providing accurate, timely, and insightful fact-based research and consulting services. Staffed by senior analysts with decades of industry experience, their research analyzes and advises on business and technology issues facing the payer, provider and life sciences industries, ITRealms gathered.

For the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey region, ITRealms learnt, IDC retains a coordinated 

network of offices in Riyadh, Casablanca, Nairobi, Lagos, Johannesburg, and Istanbul, with a regional center in Dubai with an international perspective to provide a comprehensive understanding of markets in these dynamic regions, and also their market intelligence services are said to be unparalleled in depth, consistency, scope, and accuracy. IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey currently fields over 130 analysts, consultants, and conference associates across the region

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE

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Return on Investment: US-DOE gives IDC 3-year grant

ITRealms:

 

The United States Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science and National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded the International Data Corporation (IDC) a three-year grant to conduct a full study of Returns on Investments (ROI) in high performance computing (HPC), reports ITRealms.

Confirming this to ITRealms, the Marketing Manager at IDC for Middle East and Africa, Anulekha Shetty, said that the full study follows IDC's successful completion of a 2013 pilot study on this topic for DOE.

In the pilot study, Shetty told ITRealms tahat IDC created the first economic models for predicting ROI associated with HPC, both in the form of innovation and financial returns. IDC tested these models on over 200 real-world examples and went through four iterations of the models.

For the full study, the marketing manager noted, IDC will use the economic models to quantify and classify ROI from thousands of examples IDC collects.

Shetty quoted the Earl Joseph, Programme Vice President, High Performance Computing at IDC as saying that the macroeconomic model depicts how HPC investments result in economic advancements.

The innovation index provides, according to Joseph, is a means for measuring and comparing innovation levels among nations based on their levels of applying HPC computing resources toward scientific, technological, and economic advancement.

"Nations and companies around the world increasingly recognize that HPC contributes enormously to science, industrial competitiveness, national security, and the quality of human life," said Joseph, who assured the full study will more deeply quantify these contributions in relation to the investments that made them possible.

The predictive macroeconomic models will take into consideration how research and development investments are currently justified and how results are measured in each of the government, academic, and industry market segments IDC has closely tracked for more than two decades, Joseph said.

Also commenting, Steve Conway, Research Vice President, High Performance Computing at IDC said they are creating tools and data that governments, universities, and companies can use to help make future HPC funding and purchasing decisions.

"Our goal for this grant award is to refine the predictive models to ensure that they correlate well with real-world practices and with a wide range of sample data representing real-world innovations," he declared.

+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms)  @IDC
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