Karl Reed, Chief Solutions Officer at South African-based ICT company Elingo, gives his thoughts about how you can migrate to the cloud.
Migrating to the cloud is no longer the complex process it once was. Thanks to the evolution of technology, moving from an on-premise environment can be done much more efficiently than before. Even attitudes towards this strategic shift have changed.
Going the cloud route does not require a big bang approach. Instead, organisations can phase it in over several months (or even years) as their budget and business processes allow. In the past few years, accessibility to the cloud from an Internet and capability perspective as well as the speed to deployment has changed for the better. In fact, our recent experience shows customers are approaching us wanting to migrate instead of needing the hard sell.
Mindset shift
Contributing to this enabling environment is the upcoming arrival of several multinational data centres in the country. Granted, it might only account for approximately 20% of the reason businesses are considering migrating, but combined with more user-friendly technology, the market is ripe to start benefiting from this natural technology progression.
Perhaps most importantly, the business mindset is changing. A year ago, decision-makers were still apprehensive about the cloud. Fast forward to the present and they are less resistant about moving. Now, they are much more open towards cloud discussions reflecting trends elsewhere in the world.
The country is basically there, we are fast approaching a time where every organisation will be connected to cloud in some form or another. Just consider how all your personal information is already stored in the cloud. It is only natural that this will start extending to business data as well.
Regulatory needs
Furthermore, the regulatory environment is also playing its part in getting companies to migrate. The likes of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) create complex environments. Fortunately, the cloud fully supports it and provides local businesses with a significantly more secure environment than if they had to build it themselves.
Given how the compliance requirements for cloud service providers are significantly more complicated than for ‘standard’ businesses, they do everything in their power to ensure the safety, reliability, availability and accessibility of cloud-based offerings, systems and data.
Unique approach
With every customer environment and requirement unique when it comes to the cloud, service providers must be able to adapt their processes to accommodate. For example, expectations from an insurance company will be different to that from a courier business in terms of cloud migration and offerings. So, even though there is still complexity involved in making the transition, it is not insurmountable.
One of the most appealing things for any business when it comes to the cloud is the return on investment that is on offer. For one, the cloud enables the company to manage spend on a monthly basis instead of a massive upfront payment.
Secondly, there are the savings that companies do not even realise they are getting. Just like every computer in the business needs power, software licences, access to the Internet, and so on, so too do on-premise servers. Furthermore, these servers need to be maintained and upgraded every few years. Even the air-conditioning units in the server room need power, maintenance, continually adding to the cost of on-premise solutions. With the cloud, there is none of that.
Given the ease of use and speed of deployment, the cloud will soon become the default approach for many local organisations. The cloud is already everywhere. Now is the time to capitalise on it.
