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EDITOR’S QUESTION
SEBASTIAAN ROTHMAN, SENIOR
CONSULTANT APPLICATIONS AND
INFRASTRUCTURE AT ALTRON KARABINA
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C
loud computing is taking off in
South Africa in a big way, and as
organisations recognise and leverage
the services available to benefit how they
conduct business, more and more are
aligning with cloud first strategies.
Up to now, there have been two very big
considerations when hosting services in
the cloud.
Regulatory compliance has been a challenge
for many organisations storing personal
information in the cloud when these
platforms are hosted offshore. Secondly,
there have been many concerns related to
the performance impact by having services
hosted halfway across the world. Both
challenges have been addressed by the local
presence of enterprise grade cloud services,
making it easier for organisations to consider
cloud as the starting point when designing,
developing, and delivering services.
A contributing component leading to the
adoption of so-called cloud first strategies in
South Africa is the increasing availability of
cost-effective, high-speed Internet connectivity.
The biggest caveat of cloud computing is
that you need reliable access to broadband
Internet, something that is becoming more
and more available outside of the bigger, more
established metropolitan areas.
Additionally, the availability of big-name cloud
service providers in South Africa has made
hyper-scale cloud services a lot more accessible,
enabling smaller organisations to leverage the
same technologies previously reserved for an
elite few with vast financial and operational
resources, able to invest in massively expensive
infrastructure and expertise. Smaller and
upcoming organisations are well-positioned
to take advantage of cloud. Not having a
huge on-premises investments to consider,
having a cloud-first approach provides
a quicker time to market for services
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and solutions, enabling them to provide
robust solutions without having to invest
in expensive hardware. The operational
flexibility associated with cloud is a huge
benefit to start-ups, allowing them to grow
into their services without a great capital
expense to get started.
Even though the adoption of cloud
is arguably more mature in larger
organisations, they are taking note of the
fact that migration to cloud is a long and
tedious journey and trying to avoid this
additional step is a key driver for them to
look at cloud first when developing and
deploying new services and solutions.
Whilst many applications may already be
supported on cloud, redeveloping custom
applications to be compatible in a cloud
environment is very time consuming and
expensive. With so many vendors and
partner solutions available directly on several
cloud platforms, often with the same if not
more functionality and scalability, paying
more attention to cloud as step one has
never been easier.
In a world where any organisation, big or
small, can compete with the market by
unlocking the power and potential of cloud,
it only makes sense to get there sooner
rather than later.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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