t cht lk
respondents globally, including over 150
from Africa and the Middle East, found that
43% of respondents in Africa and the Middle
East said lack of IT staff skills or expertise is
preventing their organisation’s DX plans from
going ahead. Other barriers in Africa and
“
COST HAS ALWAYS
BEEN A VITAL
CONSIDERATION
BUT AS WE HAVE
SEEN AROUND
THE WORLD,
THE COST OF
NOT DIGITALLY
TRANSFORMING
HAS BEEN
MADE EQUALLY
APPARENT.
the Middle East were dependent on legacy
systems (40%), limited budgets (29%), lack
of buy-in from senior management, at 23%,
and lack of time (16%).
In a post-pandemic world, the drivers may
well overpower these barriers – which makes
the design and implementation of intelligent
software even more important.
Cost has always been a vital consideration
but as we have seen around the world, the
cost of not digitally transforming has been
made equally apparent.
The result is that the C-suite want to
improve their businesses but many decision
makers don’t know where to start. Artificial
Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, the
Internet of Things (IoT) – these innovations
can, and do, improve business processes but
the possibilities can be overwhelming.
The captains
Essentially, there are two tiers of IT
decision-makers in an organisation, and
these speak to two different, yet interlinked
considerations. At the executive level,
considerations will focus on efficiency, cost
savings, governance and compliance. This
level controls the budget.
But none of that would be meaningful
without working extremely closely with the
technical level at the organisation. How are
operations going to be improved, which
technology is required to make this happen
and how can we redeploy current skill sets?
Marrying these two tiers, so that they
speak the same language, creates the
key, or legend, which demystifies the DX
roadmap. Like any map, there needs to be a
methodical approach of placing your finger
on the spot where you are currently, and
then navigating or scaling on a needs’ basis.
Demystifying how to kick-off meaningful
transformation in an organisation is as
simple as modernising your backup, enabling
a hybrid cloud strategy and then if you are
moving data around – which you will be –
you need to ensure this data is kept safe.
Backup modernisation
Businesses should be free to move their data
and workloads, efficiently, safely and securely
wherever they want, whether that is onpremises,
the public cloud or private cloud.
According to the Veeam 2020 Data
Protection Trends Report, over a quarter
(28%) of Africa and Middle East businesses
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