FEATURE : 2021 TECH PREDICTIONS and align closely with business leaders to provide a secure environment that fuels innovation and growth .
“ There are lessons to be learned today that can help shape a better tomorrow . Just like work , cyberattacks can happen anywhere , anytime . And in order to successfully protect the systems and information people need to get things done , wherever they happen to be , security organisations need to become more intelligent and flexible . In doing so , they can create the secure environments needed to keep employees engaged and productive and fuel innovation and business growth .” Muggie van Staden , MD at Obsidian Systems draws similarities between past discussions with corporates regarding open source adoption and use , and current discussions regarding the cloud .
“ Over the years we ’ ve gotten better at explaining to people why these things make sense . And if we think specifically around cloud , it is interesting about two or three things ago , if you spoke to the banks about the cloud , most of them would say ‘ sorry it ’ s not something we are considering , regulatory reasons , security reasons etc .’ until probably about 18 months ago , suddenly every bank had an executive responsible for the cloud . So , they went from ‘ it ’ s impossible ’ to ‘ now we need a cloud executive to make sure we do it right ’,” said Van Staden .
Van Staden added : “ I think in the South African context , the biggest challenge that people still have is around the understanding of governance , with things like the Protection of Personal Information Act ( POPIA ) and GDPR . But I think as more and more big banks start engaging with Software-as-a- Service ( SaaS ) or just Infrastructure-as-a-Service from different cloud providers , those things are being addressed with the regulator . And now that we have most of the big cloud players having data centres in South Africa also helps . But it is still a slow process , I think that that is one of the big drivers .”
While it ’ s difficult to tell the outlook for the enterprise IT market on the continent in 2021 , pundits predict it will be the continuation of what characterised majority of 2020 .
Data management
Kate Mollett , Regional Manager , Africa at Veeam , said 2021 is almost certainly going to be a continuation
Kate Mollet , Regional Manager , Africa Veeam
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