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EDITOR’S QUESTION
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BARRY KEMP, HEAD
OF IAAS AT VOX
W
e believe that it is better to move
to the cloud than being on-
premise. Any business in South
Africa that is not looking at moving to the
cloud is making a big mistake for a number
of reasons.
Today, we have to worry about consistent
power supply, especially with the current
load shedding that South Africa faces.
If you stay on-premise, you will need
generators, which you will need to
maintain, and need staff to look after the
equipment in the data centre and maintain
connectivity to the office.
When moving your apps to the cloud, this
– in simple terms – becomes the service
provider’s problem. You, as a business, will
not need to worry about the impact of load
shedding on your equipment and ultimately
your data.
One of the most common reasons we hear
as to why businesses want to shift back
to on-premise is security. Unfortunately,
many businesses are still in the mindset
www.intelligentcio.com
that if they see the equipment, they have
control. If you look at Microsoft and AWS
– they spend millions of rands on security
infrastructure. Microsoft alone has over
3,500 people only focused on security and
it spends around R3 billion on security. No
“
ONE OF THE
MOST COMMON
REASONS WE
HEAR AS TO WHY
BUSINESSES
WANT TO SHIFT
BACK TO ON-
PREMISE IS
SECURITY.
business has the budget to spend such
amounts on security, and this should give
any organisation peace of mind. Another
factor that comes to the fore is that
business, when having their own servers and
data centres, have their own IT staff. The
worry is that these individuals will lose their
jobs if the company moves to the cloud.
However, there is still a place for them as
they can now focus on high-value tasks such
as automation and AI. These roles didn’t
exist in the past and give these individuals
new opportunities to get involved in
enhancing the business.
Further to the above factors, businesses
often need to lower their budgets and
therefore look at staying or moving back
on-premise for the cost savings. But there
are ways for businesses to take advantage
of the cloud without blowing the budget.
Planning your migration and scoping the
migration correctly is essential. Once in the
cloud, businesses can easily keep control of
the costs by effectively using and managing
the cloud environment. n
INTELLIGENTCIO
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