We often meet people in the ICT industry that have never been inside an actual proper Data Centre environment.

Data Centres are really the backbone of the Internet. Often taken for granted by the general public, they provide the infrastructure that houses the applications and data that we access on a daily basis.

We encourage people at levels of the Internet technology chain learn more about the hardware and environments behind hosting technology, and gain a more holistic understanding of how it all fits together.

RSAWEB Data Centre tours offer you the chance to come and experience first hand the inner-workings of our flagship Cape Town Data Centre. On the tour, our team of technical virtuosos will bring you up to speed on:

• New technologies such as Virtualisation & SAN Storage.
• The nuts and bolts behind popular products such as Colocation, Dedicated Servers & Shared hosting.
• Why Data Centre environments are fast replacing onsite hosting solutions.

Want to join our latest tour? Sign up on www.rsaweb.co.za for our latest scheduled tour on 6 August 2009.

The tide is turning for Africa’s bandwith deficiency with the upcoming switch-on of Seacom, an undersea telecoms cable, on the 27th of June. The cable, which links London and India to South Africa, is set to reduce bandwith costs and increase data transmissions for African countries. Much will be said about this exciting and historical development in the coming weeks but what do the experts have to say about how this will affect our lives?

RSAWEB MD Rob Gilmour recently appeared on the eTV Sunrise breakfast show to discuss the implications of this landmark event.

Here is video footage as it appeared on the eTV Sunrise breakfast show:

Feedback from the NetProphet conference has exceeded all our expectations. Originally planned as a 100 delegate conference, then 200, it quickly expanded to 450 registered users, so much so that registration had to be closed! On the day an extra row of chairs had to be put out to accomodate all the delegates.

The speakers were fantastic, they also managed to keep the topics less technical and more informative so it wasnt just another geek event. The appeal was across industries, not just IT. They shared insights into what they do with real world examples of their experiences and advice on how to build your own web-enabled business. The content from the event will be posted with video and slides on the Netprophet website to allow more people access to the excellent content.

Some comments: Arthur Goldstuck said “I have never seen so many people at an Internet Conference before”, Peter Flynn said “All software will ultimately be web-based” and Mike Stopforth – “How conferences in SA should be run”

RSAWEB was one of the headline sponsors to make NetProphet possible, along with sister company WhiteWallWeb and the Innovation Fund. There is talk that Cape Town has become the “Silicon Cape” – the Silicon Valley of Africa and NetProphet has helped enable that!

Twitter was also a major success factor in the conference, with a twitter fountain pulling up all the #Netprophet tags. We managed to ‘trend’ into the Top 10 and got to be the 2nd most talked about topic on twitter in the world for over 2 hours.

NetProphet was conceived by the Directors of the RAMP Foundation and is a new initiative created to inspire creativity and the flow of ideas among entrepreneurs and stake-holders who operate in the internet-tech space in Africa & South Africa.

If you missed the event this year, go and register now on the Netprophet website for updates around the next event.

Here’s one for the geeks amongst us…

For the months of April & May, we’ll be giving away one of these stunning limited edition Geek t-shirts every week. To enter, all you need to do is add @RSAWEB to your ‘following’ list (not to be confused with ‘followers’) on your twitter account. Each week we’ll select a new follower to be the recipient of one of these fashion gems.

Following RSAWEB on twitter, you’ll get real time news and updates and access to industry insights from our experts. Plus, you’ll be able to join in the conversation, engaging with us and our twitter following.

Our twitter address is http://www.twitter.com/rsaweb

T’s available in #000000 only.

RSAWEB is proud to be sponsoring an exciting new initiative called Net Prophet. The conference aims to educate, inspire creativity and promote the flow of ideas amongst South Africans operating within or investigating the Internet business/technology space.

Net Prophet essentially provides a platform to introduce South Africa’s true ‘Net Prophets’, a host of industry experts who will help delegates get a handle on where the industry is headed, the technologies and companies investors are interested in, hot new trends to follow and practical ways to extract maximum business value from the Internet.

Net Prophets speaking at the event include Herman Heunis, CEO of Mixit, Arthur Goldstuck, owner of World Wide Worx, social media specialist, Mike Stopforth, Hannes van Rensburg, founding member of Fundamo, Dave Duarte of Huddleminds and Peter Flynn, MD of White Wall Web to name but a few.

Topics to be discussed include:

• Why the Digital Going is Good in Bad Times
• Harnessing the Social Web for Brands
• Successfully Integrating Web and Mobile into Your Media Mix
• Software as a Service
• The Entrepreneur’s Perspective on Vulture Capital
• The Art of Making the Transition to Transacting Online
• Opportunities for Entrepreneurs Looking to the Mobile Web

The conference is hosted by the non-profit RAMP Foundation and is FREE to attend (delegates must register at www.netprophet.org.za in order to attend).

To find out more, or register for this event, visit www.netprophet.org.za.