Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 49 | Page 48

FEATURE : CLOUD SOLUTIONS solutions are performing against expectations . Often the easiest way to measure the success of cloud solutions is in the on-going experience of discovering far greater visibility over processes and areas for improvement ,” he said . “ Crucially , CIOs must also ensure that they make the right decision when it comes to the speed of cloud migration . For some , it makes sense to migrate entire applications at once – for others , it may be more sustainable to migrate to the cloud component by component . This is especially important if you have one service or component inherently reliant on the operational ability of another .”
helping them navigate new challenges and changing requirements . One of the most consequential cloud projects introduced is the financial services-ready public cloud . Banks operate in a complex environment and have a myriad of challenges to tackle as their workloads move more to the cloud ,” he said . “ To address these issues , we launched the financial services-ready cloud . And to reinforce this , IBM has unveiled a programme for Independent Software Vendors ( ISVs ) and Software-as-a-Service ( SaaS ) providers . The programme helps them demonstrate that they have met the stringent security , resiliency and compliance requirements of IBM ’ s financial servicesready public cloud .”
Second , added Ratshefola , IBM is offering IBM Cloud Satellite which extends IBM Cloud services anywhere a client needs them , delivered As-a-Service on-premises or at the Edge . “ Clients can increase their business agility by automating deployment and management of cloud-native services across all of their computing environments-for both development and operations . This means that with IBM Cloud Satellite our clients can run workloads where it makes the most sense ,” he explained .
Cloud integration
Al-Zoubi reiterated that prior to enacting cloud migration , CIOs must first determine their level of cloud integration – whether this involves ‘ shallow ’ or ‘ deep ’ cloud integration and a single cloud provider or multi-cloud environment , depending on the needs of the business .
“ It is always essential to set KPIs and metrics which can measure how well the newly implemented
Cohesity ’ s Garcia explained that whether large or small , enterprises have travelled a long journey to move to cloud technology to manage their resources in a better way . At present , cloud technology is dominating the landscape across development and infrastructure . “ While the traditional life cycle was still a massive challenge for the organisations to deal with , and the critical business drivers for every industry may vary , different organisations ’ business criteria are also other . In such circumstances , modern cloud technologies can be the best because the continuum of cases is broad , ranging from data-intensive . The use of virtual machines , containers or serverless as a default system can be the right choice ,” he said .
“ As one of the most important things is being used for customer services currently is the use of SaaS-based systems . SaaS models have proven themselves with salesforce in the enterprises . The chief point of the SaaS model is the need to get and run infrastructure at scales that can divert the core business purpose for an enterprise , and this provides such portability and fidelity across different environments .”
With 2021 expected to witness massive cloud solutions adoption in the Middle East , pundits believe this will also see the acceleration their Digital Transformation strategies .
According to Al-Zoubi , there is no doubt that cloud adoption has been on the increase and will continue to grow in the year ahead – as organisations accelerate their Digital Transformation strategies and recognise cloud as a key enabler of businesses continuity and growth .
“ In October 2020 , Cisco introduced a new Wide Area Networking ( WAN ) Edge platform to deliver secure and automated access to applications . Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platform accelerates cloud adoption by providing businesses with flexible options for secure connectivity and visibility to applications across cloud , data centre and edge ,” he said . p
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