Liquid C2 tackles Africa’s growing cyber threats, gets real about AI
“African businesses need holistic, proactive defence strategies that integrate AI, machine learning, and advanced threat protection,” said Oswald Jumira, CEO of Liquid C2, in the product launch statement.
Secure360 integrates four core areas: Governance, Risk, and Compliance; Cyber Threat Assurance; Cyber Defence Services; and Cybersecurity Solutions.
During an interview with Bizcommunity after the announcement, Vinay Hiralall Liquid C2 chief commercial officer spoke about the challenge of meeting Africa’s demand for cutting-edge AI technologies, particularly Nvidia H100 GPUs.
These servers, critical for advanced AI processing, are currently unavailable in South Africa.
“Whatever's headlining at that point in time, we get asked the questions,” Hiralall explains.
“Because we do cloud and cybersecurity, we get some very strange requests as well. But it's okay because we understand that from our perspective it's about education.”
Customer education journey
“It's a response that we need to create to go to that customer or customers at large and educate them,” he says.
“But you do get the ad hoc, someone's just interested, just curious, they want to know about the tech, and then we let techies have a conversation together.”
Despite this, Hiralall is optimistic about the technology's eventual arrival, estimating it could take a year or more depending on market readiness.
To help bridge this gap, Liquid C2 focuses on guiding organisations toward scalable alternatives such as AMD CPUs and integrating edge computing into their operations.
Rapidly evolving market
“Our hyperscaler partners like Microsoft do things very programmatically,” Hiralall continues.
“Here's a programme. If you're an AI startup, you want to build an application, sign up for this programme, you get $10,000, $20,000 of credits that you can utilise and you can spend.”
So we've got an ISV programme within Liquid where if someone graduates, for example, from Microsoft, AWS or Google startup programmes, and then they need a home, how do they scale? They come to us, we onboard them as part of our ISV programme, we do the necessary migrations and then we give them access to technology. So we do the connectivity, but we also give them access to public cloud.
“We launched our Secure360 framework that not only works with customers in terms of understanding their security needs, but also works with them from a network, cloud, and security deployment perspective,” says Hiralall.
“This shows that we understand their connectivity needs and secure their connectivity, we understand their compute needs – be it either edge or public cloud – and we help them with their security, also an application level to work with these organisations to make sure that whether it's access control protocols or compliance needs, we're helping them along the way.”
Managing curiosity
Chris Coetzee, business director at Boston, knows the importance of understanding customer needs before recommending technical solutions.
“We always start by identifying the end goal,” Coetzee said.
“Instead of diving into technical specifications, we work backward from the customer’s use case to design the right solution. It’s about solving real problems, not just offering technology for the sake of it.”
The beauty to AI is there is no defined end point yet. So you'll speak to 50 different people about AI and they'll give you 50 different opinions. AI is a pie in the sky at the moment and you're there to resolve issues. So we don't talk the speeds and feeds. I can't remember when last I had that conversation in an AI conversation. But that's the pull. That's the magic.
Coetzee also highlighted the role of education in demystifying advanced technologies.
“There’s often a lot of curiosity around flagship products like Nvidia GPUs, but our job is to provide context and guide customers toward solutions that are practical and cost-effective for their specific requirements,” he added.
Reality check
Hiralall could not provide a definitive timeline for when South Africa might get the H100 GPUs but suggested that the situation could change as the AI landscape evolves and new players emerge.
“As we get to chapter two, chapter three, you're going to see there's new players coming in,” he says.
“There are other players who can do things a bit cheaper. When we understand the actual use cases, that hype cycle tends to drop."
