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A few years ago large companies were faced with the dilemma of having to upgrade servers and mainframes and ensure their online businesses didn’t collapse as demand rose. This would often lead to increased expenditure, and downtime to existing platforms. Today, as the web grows, online businesses are starting to worry less and less about this with the concept of “Cloud Computing”.

The concept of “Cloud Computing” is a relatively new one in African terms, and at Tech4Africa, we will share our insights with a couple of experts who will be taking a look at how you can ensure that your business and online presence is “always on” and available.

First up, ex Digg Lead architect, Joe Stump, will take show us that scaling in any online business is crucial to it’s success, in his talk titled “Every Cloud has a Silver lining. Scaling to infinity and beyond”.
Joe, who now holds the title of CTO at SimpleGeo, a web based GIS data provider, will take us through the process of scaling your servers to ensure minimal downtime, and ensuring your business has robust & scalable infrastructure in place.

Also taking a look at cloud computing from an African perspective is Fred Baumhardt from Microsoft South Africa. His talk, “A contrarian view to cloud computing and virtualisation”, takes a reality check and looks at the issues of the African relevance of the virtualisation and cloud computing phenomenon currently sweeping the world. He will offer advice on how businesses can take advantage of these relatively new solutions.

South African tech journalist and host of the popular ZA Tech Show podcast, Simon Dingle, will also chair a panel of local & international experts on the topic, in a panel discussion called “Is Cloud Computing Relevant?”. The panel will discuss how “The Cloud” is relevant to businesses as well as the average consumer in Africa. The discussion will also focus on what mistakes to avoid when taking the plunge into “Cloud Computing”

If your company needs to start implementing these solutions,be sure to register for Tech4Africa now. Places are running out, so be sure to register soon.

Living in today’s day and age we are bombarded with new information all the time. Community news from users on platforms such as Twitter, are breaking news before as it happens. The issue with this though, is that we are not always connected. We rely on mobile connectivity and wireless infrastructure to try and keep us connected as efficiently as possible.

At Tech4Africa, we will be discussing some of the key factors when it comes to Mobile & Wireless connectivity in South Africa & Africa.

Some of the great speakers talking about Mobile & Wireless infrastructure include Agosto Liko, Patrick Kayton, South African Internet guru Arthur GoldStuck & Angus Robinson amongst others.

The indomitable Justin Spratt will also be sharing his views in a session called “Circumventing Monopolies with VoIP and Wireless”, where he will be taking a look at how the fixed line monopolies of Africa are rapidly being overtaken by new Mobile & Wireless technologies.

Another fantastic session scheduled for later in the day, on the 1st day of the conference, is a panel discussion aptly titled “Mobile Content for Grownups, Being Clever with the simple”. Panelists include Steve Vosloo from the Shuttleworth Foundation, Fritz Ekowge & Stefan Magadalinski representing Kenya’s largest Mobile directory, Mocality, are just some of the big names talking about how our “mobile lives” have changed since the grand old Nokia 3210 ring tone days. Content is important today and they will look at where the mobile industry is going, and how to ensure it is world class.

These are just some of the exciting Mobile and Wireless infrastructure talks you can look forward to at Tech4Africa. Check our full schedule to find our more.

We are also running workshops (10th and 11th of August) featuring some of the best world’s leading minds in the fields of technology architecture, user-interface and product development; check them out here.

Be sure to register soon, as the early bird tickets are being scooped up rather quickly.

Image by Creative Commons / Google (Image)