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EDITOR’S QUESTION
TRENT ODGERS, CLOUD AND
HOSTING MANAGER FOR
SOUTHERN AFRICA AT VEEAM
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T
he ways businesses leverage cloud
to manage and maximise the value
of their data continue to evolve.
Following the launch of Microsoft Azure
and Huawei Cloud in South Africa recently
and with Amazon Web Services (AWS) set
to open new data centres in the first half of
2020, the years when adopting cloud-based
solutions felt like the first step into some
brave new world are well and truly behind us.
However, this is ushering in a new era of multi-
cloud deployment, which is a nod towards
the fact that businesses are increasingly using
different clouds for different purposes at
different times. For example, a business may
wish to store data from its fastest growing
business unit in Google Cloud for scalability
at relatively low expense but use AWS for its
R&D databases to enjoy the benefits of AI
and voice-assisted search.
Yet, multi-cloud is not a silver bullet that can
fix all availability challenges. Things like data
storage, control, backup, continuity, costs
and complexity of implementation need
to be considered, especially given how the
service offerings from cloud providers differ.
In South Africa, many companies are
looking at either reducing or eliminating
tape backups from their environment. This
migration will not only improve the customer
experience, thanks to the better availability
of data, but also ticks the regulatory boxes
in terms of data storage and business
continuity services.
Some of the cost factors that need to
be considered when it comes to a multi-
cloud strategy are the monthly costs of
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connectivity and bandwidth, compute,
storage, shared services, compliance tests
and very important, ingress and egress costs
(the cost of getting data into the cloud
provider or getting that data out). Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) with
lower operational overheads and improved
SLAs. Most businesses start with BaaS as it
has the least impact on the ecosystem and
can provide fantastic benefits.
Some cloud providers have partnered with
telcos to reduce or eliminate ingress and
egress costs which is a major draw card, thus
making it much easier to get into or out
of cloud-based services. This also reduces
vendor lock-in. The operational overhead and cost of
tape, along with the slow RTOs have made
it easier to justify BaaS. This along with
seeding fast tracks the onboarding process
even further.
Veeam enables cloud service providers to
deliver Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and
Companies should put in place an action
plan to ensure they are ready for this new
cloud dynamic.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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