Gett is a ridesharing app boasting drivers in over 120 cities. It is the largest on-demand car service company by revenue in Europe and is being used by more than 17,500 companies worldwide. It’s safe to say Gett is up to something big. When the company began storing data in the cloud, they chose to protect their critical data with Backupify to ensure they were safe from unexpected data loss. We’re happy to tell their story.

Grove, a cybersecurity reseller and distributor, today announced that IBL Group, a leading international conglomerate in Mauritius, has signed a deal to adopt Mimecast’s cyber resilience solutions. IBL has identified cybersecurity threats as a top business risk for the next years. “African businesses must strengthen their cyber defences in a world that is becoming more and more connected”, said IBL’s Group Information and Technology Executive Laurent Fayolle. “Future proof organisations need to secure their technology ecosystem to protect their finances and data and keep their reputations intact.”

ER24 teamed up with Grove in 2017 to run a Schedule Optimisation pilot in three of their branches in the Western Cape region. Using Grove’s advanced predictive analytics solution the objective of this project was to ensure that ER24 deploy their ambulances at the best time and at the best place to ultimately provide help faster and smarter—a first for EMS internationally! Although the project introduced a new and improved way of working, the overall ER24 business operations did not change. The results clearly showed an increase in branch performance, while maintaining the same amount of staff and shifts. This year, after a successful pilot project, ER24 decided to roll out the new roster nationally over two years. The first version of the revised rosters was implemented in Gauteng and the Western Cape and is now being tested in KwaZulu-Natal as well.

Founders Charlie Trietline and Richard Phillips, teamed up with Grove to develop their latest pioneering equestrian social media app with GPS ride tracking. The brief was to build a social media network for the equestrian community to give them riding freedom with safety in their pocket. ​ In Forge and Farrier Richard Phillips explained that this is an app for the equestrian community. “We’ve added what riders want—the aim was to give the riding community the app they deserve.” ​ Having reached out to the equestrian community for direction on what features to add, Huufe has repeatedly been described as ‘revolutionary’ and ‘the app that we’ve been waiting for’, by top equestrian publications like Horse & Hound and Horse Nation.

In servicing city infrastructure for the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, Dean Fanoe, owner of Designer Lighting and his team is not only tasked to maintain the upkeep of street lights, traffic signals and road surfaces but also with the managing of the city fault reporting call centre. As lighting contractors, the company had an existing app which did not fulfil their requirements to maintain street light and traffic light infrastructure in the Eastern Cape. They partnered with the Grove software development team to create an app and web portal for the internal team to manage resources for fault reporting whereby residents can report ,via the mobile app, high mast lighting issues in their areas enabling them to quickly identify and respond to infrastructure issues in the designated areas.

​As 2019 approaches, we expect the following technology trends to disrupt, shift and change the way we do business. The application of these game-changing technologies is becoming ever more pervasive, and their worldwide adoption is growing steadily. It is clear that disruptive technology trends like Cloud, AI, Blockchain, Robotics and Virtual Reality are going to propel the future—and that no industry will go untouched by digital transformation.

Mauritius is the most committed country to cybersecurity in Africa. Globally, it comes in at number six—a shining example of good cyber practice for the rest of the continent. This can be ascribed largely to good policymaking and foresight on behalf of the business sector, which embraces a policy of email compliance and corporate governance in terms of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (implemented in May 2018) and the Data Protection Act of Mauritius (implemented in December 2017). The objective of the data protection law was to attract European ICT companies to invest in the country—one of only a few outside Europe to feature such a law.

Many executives that we speak to are concerned with how their organisation will approach their digital transformation. As a result, many CIOs are addressing how their organisation will digitally transform, but jump right to infrastructure, and how they host and access information internally. Digital Transformation has, however, grown beyond storage to encompass everything that relates to how employees get work done today. By neglecting to address the collaboration tools, you are forcing your workforce to utilise archaic systems and processes that hinder their ability to achieve their full potential (e.g. takes longer to complete deliverables, more employees need to staff projects, frustrated employees are less productive). Your workforce is evolving technologically, and even more importantly, culturally. They do not conduct business like they did 5 or 10 years ago and in the coming years, these work habits will only evolve at a more dramatic rate.

It is mind-boggling to see the staggering scale on which targeted breaches encapsulates the current threat landscape. For any business, moving to the cloud requires not only careful planning and hard work but also something more fundamental: trust. You need to trust that your cloud provider will keep your data safe, prevent threats, and on top of that also do it transparently to keep you in control. As threats increase in complexity, trust requires a cloud provider that is always working to create new ways to protect you by being on the forefront of security innovation. When it comes to security, Google Cloud continues to deliver innovative ways to help enterprises be more secure. Consequently, they’ve recently been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Public Cloud Platform Native Security, Q2 2018 report. Their impeccable approach to security was also highlighted during the recent Google Next’18 event. From context-aware to shielded VMs, and binary authorisation, Google announced a variety of security tools and capabilities, to secure data and the operating environment.

Have you ever asked yourself, "How quick do our sales team reply to our customers?", and "How long does it take the customers to respond to my sales team?" Do you know? I've been working in the customer service and sales sectors for about 15 years, and one of my pet hates is when companies do not get back to me as a consumer. Each of the companies I've worked for, during my career, would look for high performance from the sales and marketing teams by implementing KPI’s, Performance Metrics, Targets and SLA’s with the intent of maximising sales and customer satisfaction. The bottom line is getting always getting sales and showing a return on investment (ROI).

For business leaders in South Africa, corporate cybercrime is taking centre stage as a major risk to the enterprise. The ‘hacking economy’ is now thriving globally, and local businesses and organisations have been falling prey to sophisticated attacks for some time now. These attacks often come in the insidious forms of encryption and ransomware. Worryingly, for businesses that are already being challenged by a fragile socio-political environment, targeted cyber attacks can prove to be crippling. Often, the reputational damage cannot even be properly quantified. We have already seen major SA businesses, media organisations and government entities come under attack: here are some examples of hackers causing financial and political havoc in South Africa.

Brian Pinnock’s LinkedIn profile says he has a proven track record in technical, pre-sales, sales, and pre-sales and innovation management within enterprise-focused communication companies in the ICT industry. This is all true, of course, but only part of the truth. Brian is also the high-spirited, inspirational guy you can laugh with over a beer about the curved balls of life . One valuable life hack, he says, is to never to be the smartest person in the room for any length of time. Brian also eats, breathes and lives cybersecurity. During an Grove Innovators’ Club meetup, Brian shared the lessons he had learned on his journey to becoming a leading cyber-resilience expert in South Africa. He says it is no longer good enough for companies to use first-, second- and third-generation technologies to protect themselves against fourth- and fifth-generation attacks. ‘Today, that is not even like bringing a knife to a gunfight. It’s like showing up naked to the duel.’

ICD Group wanted to create a more connected and collaborative work environment across its entities to facilitate the creation of cross-company mastermind groups and thereby engender innovative thinking. This compelled them to look into either Office 365 or G Suite for cloud email and collaboration requirements. In this instance, Grove as a Google partner offered ICD Group more hard-line value. Stacey Hines, Group Strategic Planner at ICD Group, elaborates that the primary drivers looking into G Suite Business was firstly the value proposition of a collaborative platform that could be leveraged across multiple companies in a relatively quick and straightforward way. “Secondly we were impressed by the time-saving benefit added to our IT-team members who would now be ‘free’ to work on other things instead of placing much focus on managing the on-premise email server and taking care of traditional Office Suite challenges.”

Leading cybersecurity vendor, BDO IT Consulting partnered with Grove, cybersecurity experts in the EMEA region, to form a strategic cyber alliance in Mauritius earlier this year in which they will assist enterprises in delivering advanced cybersecurity technologies to tackle network and email security challenges and mitigate cyber crime. The partnership experience covers a wide range of industries in the EMEA region. Together, they’ve worked on projects in South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, not excluding the Caribbean and UK regions.

On her LinkedIn profile, Stacey Hines is described as a “strategist, business techie, muse and boundless enthusiast” but many more tags could be added to that list – entrepreneur, facilitator, inspirational speaker, author, expert communicator, a networker of note, proud mother of three and breast cancer survivor. As one of the most dynamic leaders in Jamaica’s IT sector, Stacey is keenly aware that she is a role model for other women in tech.

Is your company sitting on client information that could cost you millions in fines because it’s not managed correctly? Do you know if your company will be able to protect customer data in accordance with far-reaching new laws? When the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect 25 May 2018 in the 28 EU member states it will have big repercussions for every business with interests on the continent. Being unprepared is not an option.

Few people embody the vibrancy and potential of Jamaica’s booming tech industry quite like Sheldon Powe, CIO of JMMB and president of Jamaica’s Computer Society. With his passion for technology and innovation combined with a knack for networking and empowerment Sheldon has played a big part in bringing the digital revolution home. The fruitful collaboration between Grove and Sheldon came about because of his starring role in the Jamaican ICT space. Grove has been a supplier to JMMB for cybersecurity and management since 2009 and last year Grove launched the first Innovators Club event alongside Sheldon and the Jamaica Computer Society.

Grove’s partnership with top international cybersecurity experts offers an essential safety net to help clients weather the storms of cyber threats. Predicting the evolution of information technology is even more difficult than predicting the weather. Non-stop innovation and new developments are coming at us at the speed of light. But just as global weather patterns are getting more intense, risk experts agree that the biggest storms that will happen in technology over the next few years will centre on cybersecurity.

A wise woman once said that adaptation is a profound process. It means that you figure out how to thrive in an ever-changing world. In a world driven by vast technological changes, adapting is no longer a matter of choice. Success is now determined by how well you and your company go with the flow of the digital revolution. The buzzwords that are flying around when technology experts make predictions for 2018 would have made little sense not so long ago. Yet these days, even old-school business leaders have to take cognisance of concepts such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain technology, Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Cloud.

December marks the winding down of the business year and the start of the “silly season”, as people sit back and enjoy the festive period. But festive shopping also poses excellent opportunities for cybercriminals - especially those who specialize in email fraud. Everyone loves a gift, but many appealing emails turn out to be nothing but an empty promise. In most cases, this unhappy chain of events starts with a user clicking on an authentic looking email that creates a sense of urgency by implying that there was some problem with a recent purchase or a bill or limited time offer.

If you’re looking for a new archiving solution, Grove and Mimecast have you covered. For the third year in a row, Gartner has named Mimecast a Leader in the 2017 -Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving. In addition, Mimecast has been placed highest in “ability to execute” among all vendors considered for the third consecutive year. This is a copy of the report so that you can see a market overview and learn why Mimecast was named a Leader. To get more information on a Mimecast email security, continuity or archiving solution for your business contact a Grove Expert today!

The Grove Innovators’ Club had a bustling year with seven exclusive meetups in Johannesburg and Cape Town, where thought leaders had the opportunity to rub shoulders with trendsetters and out-of-the-box thinkers. ​ Our guest innovators covered an array of hot and newsworthy topics and, apart from the excellent networking that always happens at Innovators’ Club meet-ups, the exposure to fresh perspectives left those who attended inspired. Grove Innovators’ Club even made an impact overseas when we launched the first such meet-up for people with a passion for technology, innovation and social change in Kingston Jamaica.

Grove’s international reach was highlighted when two of our stars went to Jamaica recently to share our expertise and hosted Grove’s first Innovators’ Club meet-up on the Caribbean island. Over the past few years Grove has forged relationships with multiple companies in Jamaica such as JMMB, the ICD Group, The Gleaner and RJR Communications, General Accident Insurance and JP Tropical foods. This trip gave Grove the opportunity to meet with existing clients and to showcase its focus on European business, presented by Shabeer Ramsingh of our UK office, with Chad Bartlett of our South African team unlocking access to African markets and possibilities.

South African farmers are a hardy species, but even the most traditional old-school folk have started to change their way as they become part of a wave of progress taking agriculture by storm. All over the world farming is undergoing a revolution as new technology impacts on the agricultural, manufacturing and food production sector. Faced with challenges such as a severe drought, the depreciation of the Rand, rising fuel prices and investor uncertainty, South African farmers are increasingly looking for technological solutions to help them cut cost and increase productivity.

Grove’s Innovator’s Club tackled a hot topic when Sonya Kuhnel, one of South Africa’s foremost experts on the digital currencies industry and the bitcoin craze, shared her insights and tips with fellow thought leaders. In 2015 Sonya founded the Bitcoin Academy, later renamed to the Blockchain Academy, which provides training and consulting for financial institutions, corporates, developers, entrepreneurs, startups, schools, government and interested individuals on digital currencies such as bitcoin and blockchain technology in South Africa.

Why customers trust Grove with cloud platform collaboration and advanced email management At Grove, we know if you want to be the best, you’ve got to work with the best. In the digital economy, transformation is a priority for organisations that aim to foster new work styles and approaches in their workplaces through adoption of cloud, mobile and consumer technologies.

A fruitful collaboration between the Grove Group, ZZ2 and Retro Rabbit has kicked off which promises to take a leading South African farming enterprise to new heights using Google Cloud as a technology and innovation partner.

The times they are a-changin’ and you’ve decided digital transformation is the direction your business should go. The digital world moves fast, so you and your team took the first step in assessing where your business currently is. You want to work faster, more efficiently. Process and agility are after all the two driving forces for a digital brand. You’ve completed a staff readiness evaluation and implemented a SMART strategy to equip your employees with the necessary digital skills.

​Grove’s Innovator’s Club has become a popular hub for people with a passion for technology, innovation and social change to connect. The purpose of these exclusive meet-up’s is to disrupt the status quo by cultivating a positive community of meaningful thinkers. The meetings introduce out-of-the-box thinkers to share inspirational messages with fellow thought leaders.

Whaling attacks are the new buzz word in email security. But what does this mean, how can it affect you, and what can you do to prevent this type of malicious attack?

Grove were privileged to be invited by the United Kingdom's Department of International Trade (DIT) on two trade missions to China and Portu

The world has gone mobile with an ever increasing number of people now finding business via their mobile devices, transacting via mobiles, banking on their smartphones, and viewing your business branding and digital presence on their smartphones.

Grove is pleased to announce that they have been invited as one of 8 UK companies on the UKTI (UK Trade & Investment) Big Data Trade Mission to China. Accompanied by a Minister and Tim Berners-Lee, Grove will have the opportunity to understand more about the market and the BigData opportunity in China.

Grove today announced that it has launched a new Extract, Transform and Load (“ETL”) tool to enhance Grove’s Big Data Prescriptive Analytics proposition.

Grove was pleased to showcase our BigData analytics solution at an InnovateUK briefing session in response to an Industry Challenge. Grove scoped out an Intelligent Airport Management solution that will utilise state of the art artificial intelligence algorithms with embedded machine learning to help the Challenge partner, in this case London City Airport, to maximise the utilisation of resources.

Mobile app development is a key driver in innovation and in solving process problems, be it business-based, consumer-based or for organisations that are fighting global phenomenons such as Ebola. Two South African brothers, and Stellenbosch University graduates, have developed an app that is helping fight the ebola crisis.

Grove is pleased to announce it has been named as one of UK’s fastest growing technology companies. The Deloitte Fast 50, one of the UK’s foremost technology programmes which celebrates innovation and entrepreneurship across all technology sectors is awarded on the basis of revenue growth. Grove last night was named 4th amongst the fastest-growing technology companies in the UK since 2011 with growth of 6,649%.

Grove is awarded Gold Partnership status by ClearFormat as both companies work together to optimize operations and services. The ClearFormat Corporate Email Branding Solution has transformed during the last couple of months and is now running smoothly on its new V2 management system that has all the other premium capabilities of V1, but with even more features! Grove would like to congratulate ClearFormat for its dedication to industry leading innovation and suppor and thank them for the new status.

Grove is proud to announce the signing of a memorandum of agreement with UNISA, South Africa’s largest distance learning education institution and the SABC, South Africa’s national television broadcaster at a ceremony in Johannesburg on 23 June 2016.

Six of the 10 fastest-growing world economies are African, and the International Data Corporation (IDC) expects overall IT spending in Africa to total $33.4 billion over the next five years. In fact, according to the IDC, one third of all Kenyan enterprises view the implementation and expansion of cloud capabilities as a key priority for the future. With this fuelling its trajectory through the continent, leading cloud services company Mimecast has partnered with Grove Group to launch Mimecast's unified information management services into Africa and the Middle East.

How do you improve your sales teams’ email response times by 400%, while capturing accurate data to boost performance throughout the organisation? We caught up with Joe Fego, customer service manager of New Jersey-based Phillip Jeffries, to hear about how timetoreply has driven efficiencies, created clarity and is set to transform company culture a year after being implemented. ​ The Email Challenge in a Global Luxury Market Back in 2015, Joe Fego of Phillip Jeffries was grappling with a seemingly insoluble problem. The company needed to measure its customer service and sales teams’ email responses. Doing this would tell them how efficiently they were communicating with customers – a vital metric in what is a notoriously competitive and fast-paced industry. The goal was simple: respond to customer emails faster and exceed expectations around customer service.

​Please remain safe and secure and vigilant as perpetrators are especially out on the prowl over the festive period as we all become a little more relaxed at home or in the office in our online endeavours. It is our belief that these threats will remain a challenge to businesses and will continue to evolve and find new ways to penetrate security levels in place. That is why it is so critical to adopt processes and procedures to minimise the risk and damage to data should your business become affected causing your organisation to lose both their reputation and market confidence. Cyber risks are increasing not decreasing. Everyone and every company at some stage will be the victim of a cyber attack. It is happening all the time. At Grove, we believe it is not about the attack but how you prepare for it and how you mitigate the cyber risk. To that end, we have teamed up with some of the best players in the market to offer a comprehensive suite of services to protect you against cyber risks and give you confident cybersecurity protection.