Women Entrepreneurs embrace the benefits of Cloud services as a necessary tool for SMMES

Entrepreneurs attending Huawei’s Women in Tech digital skills training programme, say they are now open to embracing Cloud technology, following a three-day course showcasing the value of Cloud for SMMEs.

The session opened with a survey amongst the women delegates of their knowledge of the uses and application of cloud computing. On a scale of 1 to 4, there was a resounding 0 or 1 response, but by the end of the 3rd session, this had soared to 3s and 4s, with commitments by many to join further Huawei training and accreditation opportunities.

Said Vanashree Govender, Huawei’s Media Relations and Communications Manager, “After the success of last year’s inaugural women in tech training we were excited for this year’s edition, receiving a fantastic response. Whilst Huawei brings expertise and infrastructure to the digitisation of businesses, South Africa faces is a skills deficit, women in particular are most affected and this training is aimed at bridging that digital gender divide, and we hope it will give them an edge in the digital economy.”

A vast range of businesses sectors was represented by delegates showing there is an appetite amongst female entrepreneurs for knowledge of how to grow their small enterprises into larger, thriving businesses.Sandi Sobahle, Huawei Cloud, Senior Manager Business Development presented on Day One and took delegates through what, why and how cloud computing could be relevant to different business models.

“Using the illustration of the total cost of ownership of an on-premises data centre, I was able to show the value of Huawei’s cloud hosting packages for these businesses and for their clients,” he said.

Siphiwe Matore, Huawei Cloud, Senior Manager Solutions Architect, presented on the scalability of cloud computing with the emphasis on Huawei’s ‘pay as you go’ model.

“Growing businesses require growing technology,” she says, “and that is what this course was designed to illustrate. It demonstrated that a small business could entrust the migration, upgrade and maintenance of its data delivery, storage and retrieval to a cloud provider, leaving them to focus on their core expertise.”

The final day’s presentation by Matshidiso Jabane, Huawei Cloud, Partner Development Manager gave the delegates more information about Huawei’s technical and commercial support, their training and certification programmes and the Huawei R100 million Cloud Spark acceleration programme for tech start-ups and SMMEs, which is set to provide support to more than 1000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the next three years.

“The cloud is already part of our everyday lives, even if people don’t realise it. These three days of training de mystified cloud computing and gave women the confidence to confront and embrace the future and incorporate cloud computing into their respective businesses,” she said.

“By the end of the final session, the women were networking, exchanging ideas and email addresses, and so we hope that in addition to a greater awareness of the meaning and value of cloud computing, many new relationships and business connections will be made through this training,” added Govender.

Delegate Sihle Gili of Norina Enterprises commented, “I am excited that we are onto something revolutionary that will change the African narrative and the politics of access to information”.

Kgomotso Motshidi of black female owned consulting company The Zora Group said, “What stood out for me is that there’s investment in both security as well as infrastructure that provides assurance to ourselves and clients. We fully envisage providing managed services as well as digital migration for our clients.”

Mala Makan-Giasi, Airtime Account Manager commented, “This has been most insightful. I work in a full-on cloud environment at Telkom, so now at last I have a frame of reference to talk from. I plan to be more involved with cloud solutions and ideas for my customers, for their efficiency, ease of business and security.”

Huawei’s Women in Tech training continues with sessions on digital marketing and leadership development, but getting down to the basics of cloud computing and how to leverage tomorrow today provided some 100 women with food for thought and a reason to keep moving their businesses forward.