Johannesburg, 12 Sep 2016
Modern data centres are key to driving business growth, so legacy systems and legacy thinking have to go, says Claude Schuck, country manager of Veeam SA.
"Organisations must realise that every business today is a software business," he says. "Business cannot run without software and applications, and many of these are inevitably moving out to a mobile platform too. These platforms need to be protected and up and running 24x7x365. Legacy can't support this."
Schuck says virtualised data centres and applications bring with them many tangible business benefits: "To remain relevant, companies cannot afford to ignore the benefit virtualised platforms can provide as opposed to legacy systems. You need to ring-fence technologies that cannot be transformed, to plan to adapt these systems up or out."
South African companies are now consolidating and migrating their IT ecosystems and looking to take legacy hardware and bespoke software into a new era, he says. "There is a roadmap for this and it consists of: virtualisation - modern storage - cloud technologies. These are the building blocks that will ensure you are able to provide for always-on, mobile applications." Companies have to start by building a robust and solid base for their next-generation infrastructures, Schuck says.
But the change process can be challenging, he concedes. "The biggest pain points are people and process. People have become too comfortable and familiar with their 'legacy' way of thinking. They are in a comfort zone. People need to be able to adapt and change. Moving away from a situation where you can touch and feel your own hardware to an on-demand state can be a difficult mindset change."
"What they don't realise is that the 'train' is approaching fast and this is a threat to those who cannot provide their businesses with a digital, scalable, always-on platform. If you can't evolve, you will be outsold and outsmarted," he says.
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