Change language
Change country

Message of the week 23 - 27 September 2019

Week 39 | 2019
Paper with writing on it and arrow gesture

Kyocera feedback on Gartner Symposium 2019 

As a platinum sponsor for this year’s Gartner Symposium, which was held on 16th and 18th September, we were pleased to have Bryan Turner, Data Analyst at World Wide Worx present a talk titled “Kyocera Document Solutions: From Print to Paperless. Research by Arthur Goldstuck & World Wide Worx on the 4th Industrial Revolution.”

 The Gartner stage was the first time that this research was presented to a South African based audience, and Bryan delved into current and planned uptake of emerging business technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, virtual and augmented reality and the Internet of Things.

His talk concluded that corporate South Africa seems to have a clear sense of what it needs and doesn’t need from the emerging technologies, and that the fourth industrial revolution will be cherry-picked, based on what will differentiate a business, rather than representing wholesale take-up of technologies for their own sake.

We negotiated a limited special offer of 20% off any purchase of World Wide Worx research from the Kyocera booth at Gartner, and we had a number of visitors visit our booth wanting to hear more about our own use of automation and more about our case study of our own digital transformation journey.

About 1 100 technology professionals attended this year’s conference at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, slightly down from last year’s 1 200. This perfectly illustrates Gartner analyst’s key point at the annual event namely “the global economic slowdown is sending jitters through markets, with reduced growth and earnings and trade volumes.”

What is remarkable for a country skirting a depression, is that Gartner forecasts that local IT spending will grow by 3.9% this year to R303.46 billion. This is a 3.9% increase on 2018, which means it’s the fourth-fastest growing market, worldwide.

The Gartner analysts also revealed new research in the relationship between business and IT. It showed that business units are now, in fact, hiring more technology people than the IT department. These business units are typically building a product to be used externally, whereas if it was an internal facing product, they would use people from within the IT department.

For us, being present at Gartner and reinforcing our message to C-suite in SA that we embarked on our own digital transformation journey five years ago and are able to take other organisations on their digital transformation journey, as well as learning what their expectations are around digital disruption, was certainly worthwhile.

Sharon Peché - Marcom Manager - KYOCERA Document Solutions South Africa

 

Cookies and your privacy

We use essential cookies to make interactions with our website easy and effective, statistical cookies for us to better understand how our website is used and marketing cookies to tailor advertising for you. You can select your cookie preferences using the 'Preferences' button below, or select 'I agree' to continue with all cookies.

Cookie preferences

Field is required

We use cookies to make sure that our website is working properly or, occasionally, to provide a service on your request (such as managing your cookie preferences). These cookies are always active unless you set your browser to block them, which may prevent some parts of the website from working as expected.

Field is required

These cookies allow us to measure and improve the performance of our website.

Field is required

These cookies are only placed in case you give your consent. We use Marketing cookies to follow how you click and visit our websites in order to show you content based on your interests and to show you personalised advertisement. Currently you do not accept these cookies. Please check this box if you would like to.