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EDITOR’S QUESTION
MATTHEW LEE,
REGIONAL MANAGER
FOR AFRICA AT SUSE
A
frican attitudes towards the cloud
over the years have changed
drastically with companies moving
at least some of their processes to a hosted
environment, the migration is bringing with
it a realisation of business opportunities that
are too appealing to ignore.
Cloud technology is helping businesses
develop new, innovative and agile
solutions to meet the challenges of the on-
demand, interconnected world. It provides
convenient, on-demand access to shared
pools of computing resources.
Offering businesses new ways of developing,
deploying and operating their IT solutions,
helping improve efficiency, reduce costs or
rebalance Capex and Opex expenditure.
Adopting the right cloud strategy can deliver
the flexibility and scalability to respond
quickly to new demands and drive growth,
while also providing a convenient path to
IT modernisation.
For organisations looking at strategies that
help accelerate innovation and drive digital
transformation on a larger or global scale,
cloud is the solution as it can:
• Accelerate innovation and time to market
by combining enterprise open source
solutions with the industry-leading, hyper-
scale public cloud platforms and services
• Enhance business agility and
competitiveness at the new velocity
of digital business without compromising
on the level of reliability, availability
and security your organisation’s
workload demands
• Provide easy access to secure and
scalable enterprise open source solutions
that are optimised for on-demand
deployment of preconfigured images
• Optimise how you deliver IT with the
transformative economics of a pay-as-
you-go, utility-consumption model
www.intelligentcio.com
In fact, the cloud has evolved
significantly in recent years.
Innovations are taking place on
a continuous basis resulting in
companies realising the cost and
efficiency benefits are too good to
pass up on. While the cloud once
required a complicated change in
business process, it is now easily
deployable and highly available
for business-critical applications
and systems.
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With the cloud providing
companies with the desired agility
to meet the needs of business,
staff across departments can work
closer together to capture market
opportunities. The silo approach
is no longer good enough.
Departments such as IT, business,
marketing and operations now
need to integrate how they take
on new business and the cloud
provides an ideal platform to do so.
In addition, with so many cloud
service providers leveraging
enterprise open source solutions
giving organisations the flexibility
and customisation options
they need, it really is a case of
businesses being spoilt for choice.
However, companies still need to do their
due diligence to ensure they partner with a
trusted service provider who embraces open
standards and takes the time to understand
their business requirements and not just
push a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution their way.
The cloud is also a great way for business
to scale its infrastructure and IT staff more
efficiently. This means that IT resources can
be tracked and monitored in such a way
that utilisation is never wasted. By freeing up
technical teams to no longer provision and
manage every workload that goes through
to the server, they can focus on leveraging
them for other business opportunities. This
also means that IT teams do not necessarily
have to grow ad infinitum with fewer people
being able to streamline their responsibilities.
Cloud computing in Africa is at the cusp of
pushing through traditional perceptions.
Next year could very well be the one that
companies, irrespective of size and industry,
continue their adoption rates and utilise
the cloud to capture new opportunities.
Given tightening budgets and increased
competition, they can ill afford not to.
INTELLIGENTCIO
29