South Africa continues to tippy-toe into the cloud

It’s almost been a decade since global markets considered a phased approach to cloud migration.

Having an increased amount of trust in cloud technology, the enterprise sector is leapfrogging traditional cloud entry points and moving both critical production workloads as well as disaster recovery (DR), back-up and storage elements into the cloud.

Christian Mahncke, Enterprise Development Manager, Routed, Africa’s only vendor neutral cloud infrastructure provider, says that this combined strategic approach is preferable, but is not yet commonplace locally.

“Researnch shows that 93% of South African companies are developing a cloud strategy, and are either in the implementation stage, or in the planning stage, of their cloud journey. The classic concept of moving your DR into the cloud has grown in popularity with the majority of businesses understanding the logic of moving non-strategic administration into the cloud, relieving key personal of onerous tasks and giving them the ability to focus on their actual business. The challenge, identified by Routed, is that these same people fail to recognise that it should be DR in addition to other strategic elements and not as opposed to,” says Mahncke.

“We are still tippy-toeing into the cloud and need to start making more decisive moves.”

A 30-year IT veteran who recently joined Routed to drive the company’s enterprise development business, Mahncke says that there are several options available to customers considering cloud migration:

“Looking at cloud migration from a DR perspective is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. Taking into account the migration path globally, local enterprises should consider moving core applications, as well as DR, storage and back-up into the cloud, as part of an enlightened, pragmatic hybrid cloud strategy.”

He says that in an increasingly disruptive economy, the enterprise sector needs to acknowledge and embrace the power of the cloud and how it not only enables business, but defines approaches and significantly impacts successes:

“There are so many examples of how disruptive technologies have changed the way business is conducted. There is a wide choice of cloud products, and together with the Internet of Things, all are aimed at the customer, offering a better and more personal experience,” says Mahncke.