Migration to the cloud is on the rise with more businesses adopting cloud solutions to realise the benefits. Elingo, a leading IT solution and service specialist based in Johannesburg, says cloud is no longer a mystical concept, but a concrete pipeline to a more flexible, cost-effective work environment.
“The migration from desktop solutions to cloud solutions in the accounting world has been phenomenal,” said Kobus Potgieter, Chief Financial Officer at Elingo.
“There has been substantial investment in cloud solutions, which drives further migration.”
Jannie Pretorius, COO at Elingo, added that cloud is the answer to the ‘do anything from anywhere’ technology question.
“Real cloud allows services, accessibility and ‘yet-to-be-discovered ways of communication’ accessible from any location at the most relevant time,” said Pretorius.
“It truly is a technology and concept ahead of its time, with the mobile device revolution being just one of cloud’s success stories.
“Some businesses do not yet see the relevance of cloud in their space because the word cloud is simply a reference to a magnitude of possibilities, rather than something specific to that business. A deeper dive is required to see where the value proposition is: reduced Infrastructure costs and no more ‘upgrades’ (because the cloud version of that product is always on its latest release). Moreover, no VPN required while in many cases being completely operating system independent.”
Executives from Elingo list advantages associated with migration to the cloud, incorporating services and solutions, as faster turnaround through streamlined processes and delivery mechanisms, flexibility, scalability, being able to shift from a Capex to Opex finance model, and improved control over resources – especially data.
Businesses can benefit from better holistic security – the security services found in public clouds are more advanced than what many enterprises can afford on premises, and it’s much easier to implement.
“The cloud is now politically correct,” said Henning Lange, CIO at Elingo.
“Just a few years ago, the mere mention of putting workloads in a public cloud was practically like punching a co-worker in the face. Those days are over. Now you’re considered out of touch if you don’t at least consider cloud computing. The number of cloud services and solutions continue to rise and outperform the functionality and availability of existing on premises solutions.”
Limitless scalability
Pretorius added: “True cloud offers seemingly limitless scalability as it relies on independent micro services rather than fully featured applications. These services scale up and down based on demand without any impact to end users, and without any intervention from application providers.”
But there are challenges, and this is contributing towards the apprehension.
Making a full transition to the cloud can sometimes be challenging, so here is where hybrid cloud solutions will play an important role.
“With a hybrid cloud, companies can transition to the cloud at their own pace, with less risk and at a lower cost,” said Lange.
Pretorius makes the point that many businesses confuse cloud with hosted.
“They could not be more different, the same concerns that exist with an on-premise solution exist for a hosted solution – if done via a provider, it is just hidden but the end-product will still be limited in the same ways,” he said.
“Examples could be restrictive scalability, or less functionality than the traditional on-premise version of that solution. It will never be able to realise the potential a true cloud solution offers.”
