Software Developers & ISVs Embrace The Cloud

A great partnership between Intercept and First Distribution supports Software Development Houses and Independent Software Vendors (ISV) in embracing the cloud.

This partnership enables software developers across pan-Africa to leverage the benefits of First Distribution’s Azure ISV Services.

“Intercept and First Distribution work together to maximise one another’s scaling possibilities,” according to Intercept CEO Job Verhagen. “Where First Distribution has a strong partner channel and sales forces, Intercept has a strong technical team and expertise around Azure.

“Together we can build a strong environment with local awareness, market understanding and technical expertise with our unique offering. Intercept and First Distribution are both Microsoft preferred partners. First Distribution has a great understanding of the Microsoft business as well as an ecosystem and sales capability within the pan-African markets.”

Cloud computing has really taken off over the last year as the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns hit hard. Today, software companies and IT organisations that aren’t offering their solutions in the cloud run a very real risk of being left behind.

Indeed, organisations around the world have realised that the only way to ensure business success and continuity is by adopting a cloud strategy that will see at least part of their IT consumed as a service in the public cloud.

Research indicates that at least one-third (31 per cent) of companies have migrated workloads to the cloud is a trend that will only continue to accelerate.

This creates a dilemma for organisations that rely on software running on-premise.

Fortunately, it can be solved, according to cloud migration expert Intercept.

“We empower software-driven organisations with Microsoft Azure,” says Deni Harrewijn, global lead: ISV at Intercept. “They can take full advantage of the capabilities of Azure and focus on building software while we migrate, optimise and manage their environments.”

Intercept starts with the premise that software-driven organisations that want to be innovative, scalable, commercially successful and secure will be best off in the public cloud in the long run.

“For this reason, we support independent software vendors (ISVs) and IT organisations every step of the way. From on-premises and legacy to a full SaaS application, we are the absolute specialist on Azure.”

Intercept offers software companies a roadmap to a secure and scalable cloud environment, providing scope for innovation. It focuses on the Microsoft Azure platform since around 60 per cent of organisations moving to the cloud are opting for Azure, which saw 50 per cent growth in the last quarter.

Intercept takes software companies through the entire journey to the cloud, Harrewijn explains. “Whether you start your journey assessing and migrating your on-premise application, or if you ‘hop on’ to optimise an existing Azure environment, you will have a clear path – and we’ll make sure your team gets all the Azure knowledge they may need down the road.”

The journey starts with Cloud Design, which helps software-driven companies to confirm if the move to Azure is financially, functionally and technically viable.

The Cloud Design report serves as the foundation for hosting an application on Azure safely, scalably and optimally.

Employing Cloud Design means that software companies can decide whether the design fits their business case before they start, and how long it will take to migrate. And it ensures they will end up with a scalable, robust and compliant design for their application or environment; a clear overview of the estimated monthly recurring costs of Azure; and both a long-term and short-term migration path that fits the company strategy.

The journey continues with app migration, where Intercept guides ISVs and IT organisations through its custom-developed migration methods.

Intercept works with both IT organisations to migrate their datacentres, and with ISVs to migrate their software solutions.

IT organisations are looking to transform operations and replace legacy IT, recognising that a complex or poorly-functioning infrastructure gets in the way of the business’s development.

There are many benefits to moving to Azure, not least of which is that the IT infrastructure can quickly and easily be scaled as required, with no additional one-off capital investments in hardware, and a pay per use model. Security is an ongoing concern for IT organisations, so they will welcome the extremely secure Azure environment, which complies with all compliance legislation.

Intercept helps with the transformation of the datacentre to Azure, which helps to simplify the infrastructure to improve availability, scalability and compliance.

Through tooling and a standardised project methodology, Intercept ensures uniform project implementation. Workloads in the current datacentre are inventoried with the help of an automated scan and a business case is drawn up. The migration is then done using custom-developed methods, ensuring the project objectives and outcomes are achieved.

ISVs, on the other hand, can quickly transform their existing applications using Azure Cloudify.

“Whether you have a legacy application, your applications are partially – or completely cloud-based, or your organisation is born in the cloud, you want to be permanently relevant to your target group,” states Harrewijn.

Cloudify offers ISVs a roadmap that includes processes, tooling, automation and best practices.

Once applications have been migrated to the cloud, Intercept offers ongoing support to both IT organisations and ISVs.

“CSP Premium Support creates peace of mind by keeping customers’ environments safe, efficient and running,” he adds. “Our goal is to offer support that fits the needs of your business.”

The team’s Azure experts work with the customer to continuously manage and improve their environment so they can focus on crafting solutions.

They also engage with Azure to ensure that Azure workloads, governance, Azure DevOps environment, Azure costs, and every other Azure-related challenge is anticipated and resolved.

Overall, Intercept offers a range of benefits for both IT organisations and ISVs. “We manage and continuously improve the Azure environment,” Intercept states. “Plus customers get full-stack monitoring with 24/7 availability and support,” says Harrewijn.

A value-add feature is access to the Customer Portal that includes governance management, recommendations, insights, best practices, and automation.