Africa’s IT industry is gearing up toward the clouds on the opening day of the annual summit conference.

Hosted by international business-to-business conferencing company, Kinetic Events, the 3rd annual Cloud and Virtualisation Summit Africa, is being held today and tomorrow at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg.

The summit was officially opened by Derrick Plank, Director of ClearSpace Consulting with an interesting take on the increasing impact of cloud computing on business technology. Derrick will also be moderating the event this year.

The world’s largest restaurant company in terms of system units, with nearly 38,000 branches in over 120 countries and territories, Yum’s success during this period can be attributed to its operations in China, which contributed more than half of Yum’s $3.6 billion revenue during the period.

Founder and president Paolo Trocca talks about an engineering company that has made a name for itself in the Middle Eastern oil business by playing it straight.

There is an oil and gas industry in Italy – but not much of one. In 2008, the BP Statistical Energy Survey estimated oil production there at an average of 121,000 barrels of crude oil per day or 0.15 percent of the world’s total.

East Asia Minerals (EAS) is proving it is possible to overcome obstacles to mine gold from challenging locations using sound management, local knowledge and a lot of determination.

Having established a reputation for solving tough industrial drying problems, particularly in the minerals industry, South African engineering company Drytech is now taking that expertise globally.

Chief executive officer Daniel Szasz talks about how the company is contributing to the development of Macedonia’s telecommunications industry.

In the years since gaining independence from the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia has undergone considerable economic reform. In fact, its development of an open economy saw the country ranked as the fourth ‘best reformatory state’ out of 178 countries rated by the World Bank in 2009.

Jimmy Johnston, project director for the St Helena airport project, discusses the work being undertaken to deliver the island its own international airport and the benefits this will create.

Through this agreement, Marathon, a refining, marketing and transportation company headquartered in Florida, will pay $600 million in cash, $1.2 billion for the plant’s inventories and a further $700 million depending upon future output and margins.