A new study by a market intelligence firm widely watched by the tech industry shows that 84% of executives are either pursuing or planning hybrid cloud strategies, a trend likely to benefit companies such as Dimension Data, EOH and Altron.
Cloud computing has been in the ascendancy over the past decade. It refers to the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user. But now companies are realising that a mix of on-premises data storage in conjunction with cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), is best.
In practical terms, cloud computing has become attractive for companies looking to reduce the cost of building their own data, networking and storage infrastructure, outsourcing to players such as AWS and Microsoft Azure. Given the uptake, local firms, including Telkom subsidiary BCX, MTN Business, Vodacom Business and Liquid Telecom, have stepped up their cloud offerings in recent years.
The new study by global computing firm IBM, conducted in co-operation with market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), polled more than 500 C-suite executives across 12 industry sectors, including highly regulated industries such as government, telecommunication and banking in SA, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
According to the study, executives in SA are prioritising the implementation of hybrid cloud strategies to benefit from flexibility, cost savings, testing and development, as well as disaster recovery.
Data from market research company Allied Market Research estimates the global hybrid cloud market size was valued at $36.1bn in 2017, and is projected to reach $171.9bn by 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 21.7% from 2018 to 2025.
Harish Dunakhe, the IDC’s research director for software and cloud computing in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, says, “It is clear there is strong awareness of the benefits organisations can leverage from hybrid cloud. As the awareness grows, we expect enterprises to encourage adoption across their organisations to fully benefit from hybrid cloud programmes.”
The IDC says just more than half the executives polled expected flexibility and significant cost savings from implementing a hybrid cloud strategy, while 58% viewed the cloud as useful for conducting testing and development before moving their business-critical workloads to a production environment.
But while a mix of a company’s own infrastructure and that provided by third parties has it benefits, there are risks, particularly around cybersecurity when different systems are talking to each other.
Veeam Software — which develops back-up, disaster recovery and intelligent data management software for physical and cloud infrastructures — has been stepping up its efforts to cope with increased demand, particularly in Africa. With an estimated $1bn in annual revenues, the US-based company is considered the market leader for such services.
Veeam’s research found that “over the next two years, most organisations expect to gradually but continually reduce their physical servers, maintain, and fortify their virtualised infrastructure, and embrace ‘cloud-first strategies’.” The company says this will result in half of production computing being cloud-hosted by 2023, “forcing most organisations to re-imagine their data-protection strategy for new production landscapes”.
In an interview with Business Day, Ian Engelbrecht, Africa lead for systems engineering at Veeam, said while digital transformation has been accelerated in many parts of the world, trends such the move to cloud computing presents challenges for companies in Africa, including in SA where issues such as load-shedding have become a burden on businesses. Unlike companies overseas, “these are additional outages companies need to prepare for”, Engelbrecht said.
With companies around the world benefiting from hybrid cloud systems, issues such as inconsistent power, lack of affordable and widely available bandwidth, and legacy software still hamper business in Africa from fully embracing cloud technologies. For local businesses, the solution may have to focus on investing in new online systems, while protecting sensitive data on legacy infrastructure and making provisions for unique local challenges such as back-up power.
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