Due to the increase in public cloud adoption there is a definite decrease in traditional data centre infrastructure spend, says Dennis Naidoo, senior systems engineer: Africa and Middle East region, Tintri.
ITWeb Events interviewed Naidoo, who will be presenting at the upcoming Data Centre Summit, on 25 July at the Focus Rooms in Sunninghill.
ITWeb Events: What are your thoughts on the value and life expectancy of the traditional data centre infrastructure? Is cloud technology going to take over?
Dennis Naidoo: We have seen in over the last five years many of the large data centre infrastructure vendors redirecting more research and development spend and resources to cloud enabling and cloud integration technologies over their traditional data centre products. Some are even divesting from and selling-off these product lines due to shrinking sales.
Although the demand for traditional data centre technology is decreasing, it unquestionably still has its place today. Most organisations will choose a hybrid approach, by taking advantage of the low-hanging fruits of public cloud and moving some of their lower risk applications and services out to the cloud. However, they may choose to keep the more sensitive, business critical or performance demanding applications on premises. For these applications, customers are looking for a new type of data centre technology. One which delivers the benefits of public cloud, but within the controls and of their own datacentre.
ITWeb Events: Should the corporate users of large data centre infrastructure continue investing?
Dennis Naidoo: Not all data is created equal and not all data may be suited to the public cloud. Data sovereignty or regulatory requirements may require keeping sensitive data on-premises.
Performance demanding applications may be better suited to a dedicated data centre infrastructure, especially where large datasets need to be accessed quickly. Moving these workloads to the cloud could be expensive, time consuming and may require code changes in some cases. Calculating the costs to run these workloads in public cloud over a three- to five-year period can also be significantly higher than the investment required in data centre infrastructure either in-house or in a collocated data centre.
However, choosing to keep some enterprise applications in-house does not mean that customers should sacrifice all the benefits of public cloud.
With the right choice of intelligent technologies for your data centre you can simplify deploy an enterprise cloud that will deliver the benefits of public cloud, like self-service, automation, orchestration and analytics, within the controls of your data centre.
ITWeb Events: In your opinion how expansive is cloud adoption in SA and how does it compare to other adoption in other countries?
Dennis Naidoo: Cloud adoption in SA is increasing at a rapid rate. It makes sense for smaller businesses to adopt cloud as opposed to the capital outlay required for data centre infrastructure. We are, however, also seeing more of the larger businesses retiring their legacy applications, and moving their other non-essential services to the cloud, and shrinking their data centre footprint over time.
The large public cloud vendors, like AWS and Azure provide attractive price points, and mature cloud offerings. However we are susceptible to a volatile rand in SA that can make dollar-based billing highly unpredictable, which is impeding a greater adoption.
Digital transformation is driving cloud adoption, with greater use of analytics and the agile infrastructures that help to deliver faster products and services to clients. With more local-based cloud service providers emerging, South African businesses will continue to increase their adoption of some type of cloud platform (hybrid, private, public) to assist them in their digital transformation journey.
Naidoo, senior systems engineer: Africa and Middle East region, Tintri will present on the agility of the cloud within your organisation at ITWeb Data Centre Summit 2017. He will share the stories of organisations that have deployed enterprise cloud to guarantee performance, enable self-service, quiet shadow IT and manage a massive footprint with a fraction of the effort. Key takeaways include: finding the right mix of cloud models for your organisation; debunking the myths of public cloud; delivering public cloud agility inside your data centre and customer use cases.
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