E-Business
Need IT: Don’t Ask CIO for Advice-Report
When business unit mangers in CEE need IT, they increasingly use IT suppliers as informal consultants. According to a recent survey by International Data Corporation (IDC) of non-IT managers in Central and Eastern Europe, nearly two-thirds of line-of-business (LoB) managers speak directly to IT suppliers at the earliest stages of solution consideration. Moreover, 35% reach out to IT solutions providers before they begin formal decision procedures.
IDC notes that line-of-business leaders are increasingly savvy when it comes to IT. “Corporate leaders have stopped asking if they can do something new or better with IT,” said Mark Yates, research manager with IDC. “Instead they ask, Why can’t it be done right now? Marketing and sales managers, operations directors, HR directors, and heads of finances – when they get an idea for improving their business unit, they want the app to be ready to go.”
This is where the IT suppliers come in. Suppliers worth their salt have worked with scores or even hundreds of organizations.
They have encountered multiple compatibility issues and helped their customers solve a variety of business problems through the use of IT.
It is true that those same IT suppliers will say that their solutions are the best, and overly aggressive salespersons are likely to spend too much time pitching their products.
But LoB managers are willing to put up with this (within limits), to take advantage of supplier expertise.
The IDC survey also reveals that lines of business often pay for their own IT. Around 27% of respondents say IT projects are funded out of departmental budgets, rather than the company IT budget.
While this number is only 15% in the Czech Republic and 17% in Hungary, it soars to 38% in Romania and 39% in Poland (in North America, this number is even higher).
This budgetary split is also supported by IDC’s recently released semiannual spending guide focused on lines of business, which forecasts a significant increase in LoB contributions to IT spending over the next five years.
The shift in influence over IT decisions appears to be largely amiable. The IDC survey shows that 48% of respondents report that they have a cooperative relationship with the IT team.
Another 28% say that the IT team is supportive, taking requests seriously and using a transparent approach to assessing their viability.
Moreover, roughly 41% of IT projects requested or sponsored by lines of business are jointly led by the LoB and the IT department.
“Forward-looking CIOs see the writing on the wall,” said Yates. “They know they cannot be all things to all people – they do not have the time or the expertise. Like many IT suppliers, CIOs are therefore migrating either consciously or subconsciously to a platform model, whereby they create an IT ecosystem that allows lines of business to leverage IT for tools development, application deployment, and larger-scale innovation.”
Additional insights from the survey include:
(Lack of) leadership is a primary challenge for lines of business when it comes to IT decisions;
Command-and-control and indifferent IT departments still account for 17% of IT departments in CEE;
Operations management and BI/dashboards are the most common IT projects led exclusively by LoBs;
Around 13% of IT projects are led by business units alone – without IT involvement and
In terms of achieving goals, organizations in less-developed markets report more than twice as many obstacles as those in more developed ones.
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.
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.
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.
Chinese “threat actors” have hacked Microsoft’s SharePoint document software servers and targeted the data of the businesses using it, the firm has said.
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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