Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 32 | Page 25

+ EDITOR’S QUESTION SEBASTIAAN ROTHMAN, SENIOR CONSULTANT APPLICATIONS AND INFRASTRUCTURE AT ALTRON KARABINA /////////////////// 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 www.intelligentcio.com 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 25