Page 35 - EngineerIT December 2022

NEWS DIGEST

IITPSA names 2022 IT Personality, Visionary CIO

and Brilliance in IT Award winners

he Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA) has
named the winners of the South African IT sector’s most prestigious awards for
T2022.
The awards were handed over at a gala breakfast themed ‘Brilliance in IT’, marking
the IITPSA’s 65th anniversary, in Sandton this week.
Nyari Samushonga, CEO of WeThinkCode, was named IT Personality of the Year;
and Intikhab Shaik, Head: Technology and Solutions Delivery at SARS, won Visionary
CIO of the Year award. The Technology Excellence Award went to Justin Thomas, Head:
Strategy, Alliances and Digital Transformation at Standard Bank; the Siyavula MSDF team
won the Social Responsibility/Community Award, and Ayanda Dladla, CEO and founder
of Mowash and Runtime Solutions, was the winner of the new Dynamism in ICT Youth
Award. Christopher Guy, IITPSA fellow and membership/critical skills assessor, received a
Distinguished Service in ICT award.
With a history spanning over 40 years, the awards have continued to evolve over Nyari Samushonga
time, and this year introduced a youth award for exceptional achievement and promise
among IT professionals under the age of 35. The new Dynamism in IT Youth Award, first time, we saw a 50-50 split between
launched to support the IITPSA’s efforts to encourage and raise the profile of emerging IT men and women among the finalists,” he
professionals, was well supported, with a corps of strong nominees. said. “We see this as an encouraging sign
IITPSA president, Admire Gwanzura noted that this year’s awards also demonstrated that gender gaps in the sector are finally
progress in efforts to encourage more women to enter the IT sector. “This year, for the closing.”

Big Data and telematics: Reinventing road safety

“ he science of telematics has long been applied to keep
track of vehicles and to protect those
Tvehicles, their drivers and their cargo. Now, Big Data is
driving an explosion in the power of telematics, which presents
huge benefits for drivers and fleet owners alike”, says Cliff de
Wit, Netstar Chief Technology Officer.
Telematics is a field that combines telecommunications and
informatics and is often used in the mobility sector to gather data
from vehicles. Telematics applications then use insights from the
acquired data to provide services such as protecting drivers and
fleets as well as enhancing efficiency and productivity.
Big Data, on the other hand, involves the analysis of large and process this data, extract numerous valuable insights from it and
complex data sets to draw insights. Big Data relies on volume, then present these insights rapidly, in an easily digestible format.
variety, velocity and veracity to ultimately provide value through Technology such as the Netstar AI Camera Solution uses
the insights from the data. road-facing cameras to provide real-time output on safe
As technology has advanced, sensors and Internet of Things following distances and forward collision risks, while in-cab
(IoT) devices have become able to obtain ever larger amounts cameras monitor driver fatigue and distractions. In-vehicle voice
of data. Today, IoT generates most of the data on earth. Some notifications coach drivers in real time to rectify any risky driving
estimate that the volume of data in the world should reach 163 behaviour while they are behind the wheel.
Zettabytes by the year 2025. This application fuses telematics, AI and Big Data to source
Data is generated by vehicles, their drivers and their cargo. data and provide fleet managers with actionable insights that
Modern telecommunications allow that data to be transmitted in they can use to protect their fleets, as well as their brand
real time. Powerful processing capacity now exists to be able to reputation.

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