Pharmaceutical Focus // Technology
Taking mid-market companies to the cloud
The move to the cloud is inevitable for all industries. At Avaya, the company’ s goal is to ensure that mid-market companies don’ t get left behind. Danny Drew, Avaya’ s MD for South Africa explains its relevance.
Let’ s be honest, being in the middle isn’ t always seen as a good thing. The‘ middle of the road’ isn’ t an especially fl attering description, while being‘ piggy in the middle’ isn’ t a desirable position. But when it comes to the midmarket, we can fi nd middle ground.
According to the Banking Association South Africa, small and medium-sized enterprises account for about a third of the country’ s GDP and provide employment to approximately 60 percent of the labour force.
That sort of performance should make the mid-market attractive to IT vendors, with plenty of offerings packaged to the sector’ s needs. Unfortunately, all too often, we fi nd that mid-market customers are overlooked. Vendors either focus on their larger enterprise customers, or provide consumer-level solutions that don’ t deliver the scalability mid-market companies need.
A good fit for pharma
Mid-market companies are facing the same challenges digital disruption presents to larger enterprises, while often having made considerable infrastructure investments they don’ t want to abandon overnight. Smaller companies can take the plunge and leverage new trends such as the cloud,
yet mid-market companies may not have as much fl exibility and agility to adapt. Still, as cloud adoption continues to grow in South Africa, small and mid-sized companies will have to consider it at some point.
To give an example, pharmaceutical manufacturers globally are increasingly looking at cloud-based solutions, with midsized pharma companies fi nding that the cloud delivers the on-demand scalability and agility they need to compete with bigger, better-funded organisations. For instance, in research and development, cloud technology can help pharma companies process the vast amounts of data needed to develop new drugs, thereby maximising their resources.
Hybrid solutions prove popular
The good news is that moving to the cloud doesn’ t have to be an overwhelming experience. Cloud migration is not a black and white, in
DID YOU KNOW? A vast amount of data is involved in the R & D process in pharmaceutical manufacturing. To better manage this data, a blog post by Manufacturing Matters says that a cloud solution can standardise the flow of information and allows for the seamless sharing lab, imagery and statistical analysis information with any number of partners, anywhere in the world. With cloud technology, you have a truly flexible collaboration platform that speeds up the entire product development process.
or out decision; it can be a continuum.
In the communications and collaboration space, we are seeing strong interest in hybrid deployments with companies looking to maintain their legacy investment while considering moving new applications such as voice, video, and the contact centre into the cloud. For our channel partners, this means there is a clear opportunity if they can deliver the same rich communications experience in whatever way their end-user customers want to deploy them – be that on-premises, hybrid cloud or fully hosted. With Avaya IP Offi ce, we offer a solution that can fi t the needs of 98 percent of all businesses out there, and we can offer it in on-premises, in hybrid cloud, or pure cloud models. This means businesses can move to the cloud at their own pace and path, adding new features and capabilities as they become needed, or while leveraging their existing investments. ·
ABOUT
Danny Drew is an experienced technology solutions professional with expertise in all aspects of communications. His areas of speciality include technology architecture, business analytics, contact centre consultancy and optimisation.
Avaya South Africa – www. avaya. com
44 | MAY 2017 | P C Review