The Africa Technology leader at Deloitte Consulting, Kamal Ramsingh has called on all business owners and chief integration officers in Nigeria to stop using cyber risk as an excuse not to adopt new technologies.
This was said at the launch of Deloitte Tech Trends 2015, with the theme ‘The fusion of business and IT,’ on Wednesday.
According to him, “cyber risk has been there forever and it would always be in existence. It can’t be the reason to not adopt new technologies.”
Deloitte’s annual Technology Trends report examines the ever-evolving technology landscape put to business use. A set of topics that have the opportunity to impact, reshape or disrupt businesses across industries, geographies and size within the next 18-24 months were selected for a global research.
And the eight technology trends reported by Deloitte this year are: CIO as Chief Integration Officer, API economy, Ambient Computing, Dimensional Marketing, Software- defined everything, Core renaissance, Amplified intelligence, and IT worker of the future.
Kamal further explained that “the concern in Nigeria is that business leaders who are non technology people don’t see the value these trends have on their business; they see them as purely technology investments. Secondly, is the infrastructure in the country ready? Some of these companies are highly dependable on the dependability and availability of bandwidth. For example, the telecommunications companies, and lastly, is the regulatory environment mature enough to support some of these things?”
When asked how ready Nigerians are to adopt new technology trends as there seems to be extreme fear for change and security concerns regarding technology and sensitive data, Martin Atta-Fynn, Deloitte Consulting leader, said “companies should be prepared to survive in an environment where threats by cyber criminals are commonplace. They should anticipate hack so that they can build protection and ability to quickly handle critical incidents.”
According to Oluwole Oyeniran, associate director, West Africa Technology Consulting leader at Deloitte, “big companies like banks, insurance companies, public sector companies, oil and gas and the likes, really need to move on with technology trends as there are huge economic benefits in the fusion of business and IT.
“For example, technology reduces cost when delivered strategically. We are trying to trigger ideas to grow businesses through technology.”
