Intelligent SME.tech Issue 12 | Page 6

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Four of Southern Africa ’ s start-ups proceed to HiiL Justice Accelerator
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law ( HiiL ) has announced the four start-ups that will go on to the prestigious HiiL Justice Accelerator .
HiiL kicked off its annual global Innovating Justice Challenge in search of the region ’ s best justice-related social entrepreneurs in March 2021 , which attracted more than 200 applications from start-ups with high impact justice innovations .
These are the final four innovators joining HiiL ’ s global programme for acceleration , funding and tailored regional support : LegalFundi , Legal Ascend , Moloa365 and Kleva Contracts
Adam Oxford , Head of the HiiL Innovation Hub Southern Africa , said : “ After weeks of selection we ’ ve got a fantastic cohort of justice innovators who are tackling some of the country ’ s toughest justice problems . All four demonstrated that they have a strong , highly scalable solution and we look forward to working with them over the next few months to help them achieve and exceed their goals .”
Progress on UK travel green list for small businesses looking for growth overseas
While much of the discussion on travel restrictions easing has been centred on the UK ’ s travel and holiday market , new research shows the enormous impact lifting travel restrictions could have for UK small businesses . Following changes in August 2021 to the traffic light system for travel – with 36 countries or territories now on the green list – the new Hitachi Capital study of 1,500 directors of UK small businesses found that 43 % were looking at regions outside of the UK to grow their business , equating to just over 2.5 million businesses in the UK .
Comparing the responses to those formed before the pandemic , the data shows the proportion of enterprises looking to do business in the UK domestic market has fallen ( from 81 % to 77 %) while those looking for business opportunities overseas has risen from 41 % to 43 %. In some industry sectors there have been significant rises in the percentage of small business looking to secure growth from overseas markets – rising from 52 % to 62 % in the media sector and from 48 % to 58 % in the transport and distribution sector .
Of those small businesses looking to do business overseas , 46 % were looking to North America , and following the recent free-trade deal with Australia , 23 % of small businesses looking overseas were considering opportunities down under .
ActivePort collaborates with Console Connect to roll out SD-WAN hybrid solutions globally using Software Defined Interconnection
Australian start-up , ActivePort , is collaborating with Console Connect by PCCW Global to extend the availability of its SD-WAN 2.0 solution to more businesses worldwide using the power of Software Defined Interconnection .
ActivePort ’ s SD-WAN gateway enables enterprises to connect from the edge directly to Console Connect in selected locations .
Using a local API , enterprises can self-provision metro or international connectivity across the automated Console Connect fabric – flexing bandwidth up and down to meet the changing needs of their business .
Through the same API , ActivePort customers can also create a direct , private route from their edge to Console Connect ’ s growing MeetingPlace ecosystem of UCaaS , SaaS , IX Peering and other NaaS platform partners in over 50 countries . This includes direct and on-demand interconnections to all the world ’ s largest cloud providers , including AWS , Google Cloud , Microsoft Azure , IBM Cloud , Oracle Cloud , Anexia and more .
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