INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Vox helps South African
businesses maximise
IT investment
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organisations in South Africa has grown at
a faster rate than GDP over the past year,
with cloud computing and services driving
a large part of this. Research from the
company shows that cloud is expected to
grow by over 20% annually to reach R11.5
billion by 2022.
While more companies want to move
their workloads to the cloud, they are
not fully aware of the intricacies and the
risks; the Cloud Readiness Assessment
benchmarks an organisation’s current IT
infrastructure down to a granular level,
gain an understanding of the business
requirements, and look at the value various
services and processes that IT delivers to
the business.
I
ntegrated ICT and infrastructure
provider Vox has introduced a
comprehensive IT Advisory portfolio
to assist medium-to large-sized businesses
review current IT strategies or set new ones,
particularly making the shift from on-
premise to the cloud.
The IT Alignment Audit is a dynamic
assessment that provides companies with
a 360-degree view of their information
technology landscape and how it
compares to best practice. The objective
is to bridge the gap between business and
IT to improve financial performance or
market competitiveness.
Areas of focus include enterprise
architecture, network topology,
connectivity, voice, security, continuity,
redundancy, IT asset utilisation and
software versions status.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
“A key component is the cloud assessment,”
said Craig Freer, Executive Head: Cloud at
Vox. “We will come into your organisation,
use software to run an assessment on
your entire hardware environment and
get detailed information on application
server utilisation, software applications and
versions, and bandwidth usage.
“The outcome is a comprehensive report
and a one-on-one technical analysis of the
businesses IT environment with one of our
virtual CIOs, offering companies detailed
recommendations to reduce risk and
guidelines that should be followed in order to
achieve best practice within the organisation.”
Helping local business shift to
the cloud
Despite the prevalent economic challenges,
the IDC says that IT spending by
Vox uses this information to produce a
total cost of ownership comparison to
demonstrate the gains that can be made
by making the shift to cloud computing,
as a cloud architecture blueprint and
implementation roadmap that brings
together a public, private and/or hybrid
cloud solution for the business.
Furthermore, the vCIO service can help
businesses better understand the impact
of technology on the organisation, plan
for future requirements, improve internal
efficiencies and even screen and interview
IT job positions for a business, helping them
gain the competitive advantage.
“What we have seen is that with the
traditional IT model, businesses are investing
in IT capacity not just for today, but also for
the medium-term future, which has led to
significant underutilisation of the existing
infrastructure at present,” added Freer. “A
shift to the cloud can help local business
address this, and ensure they get the best
return on their IT investment.” n
www.intelligentcio.com