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Cashless Regime: Experts Warn of Dangers of Storage, Ring Solution

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Austin Okere, group chief executive officer, Computer Warehouse Group,
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Data experts have painted a gloomy outlook for financial institutions and IT firms in the country in view of the expected explosion in information generation in the current cashless regime urging for a simplified storage facility, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt. The experts who gathered at the recent Storage Optimization Summit organized by Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) in conjunction with the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) x-rayed a range of storage enhancement innovations pioneered through their synergy. The innovations according to them can underpin the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN’s) policy on cashless economy by compressing information and reducing costs. Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that statistically, information storage requirements grow between 20-40 per cent annually and may expand to 80 per cent. In the cashless regime, financial institutions may come out worse off because of dearth of simplified storage structures. Oluwaseyi Obiyemi, client technical specialist, IBM West Africa, said that smarter systems are creating information explosion currently in Zettabytes, citing that companies that budgeted one to five per cent for storage facilities are presently struggling to maintain the tempo with attendant costs. The client technical specialist, stated that IBM’s $500 million splash on research and development annually has been yielding positive results in terms of a range of apparatus it produced to contain the looming danger of data loss by companies. He said: “Very few banks have good back up solution recovery of data; that is, their backs up automated machines are not optimally perfect. Basically, big organizations that don’t attach much importance to data might not really know the harm. However, IBM solutions are cost effective technologies meant for data compression and duplications. “In other words, we are looking at companies having the right information at the right places, while managing space. Through automated tiering, automated data migration, banks can store more with what is on the floor by virtualization and thin provisioning. This will save the corporate bodies some stress, litigation and loss of valuable data”. Obiyemi said Obiyemi added that IBM’s Storwize V7000 can help corporate bodies simplify complex IT infrastructure, particularly to lower ongoing costs, improve flexibility and reduce demands on technical staff. Nodding in agreement, Emeka Udaya, storage business development manager, Tri-Continental Ltd, said that the challenges of data protection spurred by data growth in the last few months has exposed the incapacity of storage facilities, that take longer time to back up. He said that “Apart from that, some companies thought they could maneuver the situation by acquiring more storage facilities like disks, but they end up in higher service land requirements (spaces for the facilities). “And the need to keep data intact could be envisaged in the banks merger and acquisition that deal, particularly with existing data; security challenges; remote or branch offices operation and back up on silos-the cost of managing tapes attached to servers are increasing by the day,” he added. Udaya mentioned a number of solutions the synergy between Computer Warehouse Group and IBM have introduced under Trivoli Storage Manpower to include, TSM Server products, Bare Machine Recovery; Desktop/Laptop; Application protection and Space management archiving. Earlier, Dayo Abegunde, general manager, CWL Systems; a subsidiary of CWG, said with evolving delivery models, the IT industry is changing, particularly for the banking sector that is engaged in outsourcing, low head count, managed service. Meanwhile, “Delivery requirements must be demonstrated with better or enhanced platform.” Abegunde, who represented the Austin Okere, group chief executive officer, Computer Warehouse Group, noted that although the resources spent on IT by organization has continued to grow, however, ‘keeping the Light On, demands strategizing. He said that CWG in collaboration with IBM, a renowned leader and pioneer in the IT industry, organized the summit geared towards educating their customers on how to achieve better storage utilization and sharing of data across servers’ clients while helping to lower the risks and costs associated with the installation of a SAN solution. He said this will bring about, “Lower lifecycle costs thanks to innovative storage architectures that lower both capital and operational expenses; virtualized storage in order to reduce skills requirement; easy tie-ring to match value of data to the cost of the storage system and improved data storage to reduce costs and boost efficiency.”


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E-Business

Huawei Unveils AI Computing System to Challenge Nvidia’s Flagship Product

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China’s Huawei Technologies unveiled an AI computing system on Saturday that an industry expert said rivals Nvidia’s most advanced product, as the company aims to expand its footprint in the country’s booming AI sector.

Huawei Unveils AI Computing System to Challenge Nvidia’s Flagship Product

The CloudMatrix 384 system made its public debut at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), a three-day event in Shanghai, attracting a large crowd to Huawei’s booth with its showcase of cutting-edge AI innovations.

The system has attracted significant interest from the global AI community since Huawei (HWT.UL) first introduced it in April. Industry analysts see it as a direct challenger to Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72, the most advanced system-level offering currently available from the U.S. chipmaker.

In an April article, Dylan Patel, founder of semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis, stated that Huawei now possesses AI system capabilities that could surpass those of Nvidia.

Huawei staff at its WAIC booth declined to comment when asked to introduce the CloudMatrix 384 system.

A spokesperson for Huawei did not respond to questions.

Huawei has become widely regarded as China’s most promising domestic supplier of chips essential for AI development, even though the company faces U.S. export restrictions.

Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in May that Huawei had been “moving quite fast” and named the CloudMatrix as an example.

The CloudMatrix 384 system features 384 of Huawei’s latest 910C chips and, according to SemiAnalysis, surpasses Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 in certain performance metrics, despite the latter using 72 B200 chips.

SemiAnalysis attributes this performance advantage to Huawei’s strong system design, which offsets the lower power of individual chips by leveraging a greater number of them and incorporating system-level innovations.

Huawei describes the system as utilizing a “supernode” architecture that enables ultra-high-speed interconnectivity between chips.

In June, Zhang Pingan, CEO, Huawei Cloud confirmed that the CloudMatrix 384 was already operational on Huawei’s cloud platform.


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Transcorp Hotels Delivers Stellar H1 Results, Declares Over ₦1Bn Dividend

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Transcorp Hotels Plc has delivered a stellar performance in the first half of 2025, recording a 60% year-on-year surge in revenue to ₦47.57 billion, up from ₦29.72 billion in H1 2024. Gross profit climbed 71% to ₦36.21 billion, maintaining a strong 76% margin despite inflation and operational headwinds.

The hospitality giant, a subsidiary of Transnational Corporation Plc, also announced an interim dividend payout of ₦1.024 billion — offering ₦0.10 per 50 kobo ordinary share to shareholders.

In a bold move, the company unveiled Nigeria’s largest corporate venue — the 5,000-seat Transcorp Centre — staking its claim as the new leader in event hospitality. Chairman Emmanuel Nnorom described the results as proof of Transcorp Hotels’ transformative strategies and unwavering investor commitment. MD/CEO Uzo Oshogwe attributed the success to relentless execution and a resilient business model.

Transcorp Hotels, renowned for iconic assets like Transcorp Hilton Abuja and its digital platform Aura, says it isn’t just leading Nigeria’s hospitality sector — it’s redefining excellence across Africa.


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Microsoft Servers Hacked by Chinese Groups

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Chinese “threat actors” have hacked Microsoft’s SharePoint document software servers and targeted the data of the businesses using it, the firm has said.

Microsoft Servers Hacked by Chinese Groups

 

China state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon as well as China-based Storm-2603 were said to have “exploited vulnerabilities” in on-premises SharePoint servers, the kind used by firms, but not in its cloud-based service.

The US tech giant has released security updates in response and has advised all on-premises SharePoint server customers to install them.

“Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing,” Microsoft said in a statement.

The firm said it had “high confidence” the hackers would continue to target systems which have not installed its security updates.

It added that it would update its website blog with more information as its investigation continues.

Microsoft said it had observed attacks in which hackers had sent a request to a SharePoint server “enabling the theft of the key material by threat actors”.

Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting firm, a division of Google Cloud, told reporter, it was “aware of several victims in several different sectors across a number of global geographies”.

Carmakal said it appeared that governments and businesses that use SharePoint on their sites were the primary target.

A number of adversaries who stole material encoded by cryptography were then able to regain ongoing access to the victims’ SharePoint data, he said.

“This was exploited in a very broad way, very opportunistically before a patch was made available. That’s why this is significant,” Carmakal said.

Carmakal said the “China-nexus actor” was deploying techniques similar to previous campaigns associated with Beijing.

Microsoft said Linen Typhoon had “focused on stealing intellectual property, primarily targeting organizations related to government, defence, strategic planning, and human rights” for 13 years.

It added that Violet Typhoon had been “dedicated to espionage”, primarily targeting former government and military staff, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, higher education, the media, the financial sector and the health sector in the US, Europe, and East Asia.

Meanwhile, Storm-2603 was “assessed with medium confidence to be a China-based threat actor”.

 

 

 


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