Could computing is still in its infancy in SA.
Companies continue to use basic services, such as shared hosting, firewall/VPN services, e-mail filtering/archiving services and cloud applications like SalesForce.
This is the view of Perry Hutton, regional director for Africa at Fortinet, who says the fact that major global cloud players like Amazon AWS and Rackspace do not have data centres on the continent shows that SA is just not there yet.
"Once we see companies in South Africa getting ready to truly go cloud-based, then we will see these vendors enter our local market," he says, adding there is a strong interest in cloud and how organisations can leverage it in SA.
This interest means most service providers are already planning or building cloud-based models to grow their businesses but are hampered by the uncertainty of security and regulatory compliance, notes Hutton. "As private clouds put the organisation in more control of the environment than any of the other models, we will probably see bigger growth of this model than the other two in the future."
According to Hutton, most local CIOs know that, when properly implemented, cloud computing can dramatically improve the firm's agility and productivity, while cutting infrastructure costs. However, he says, while every organisation wants a piece of the cloud action, not all of them will get the results they desire.
Thus, Hutton calls on organisations to ensure they have a cloud roadmap in place that leverages service models - infrastructure as a service, platform as a service or software as a service - based on public, private or hybrid deployment models, while understanding the complexity and benefits of each.
Many view cloud environments as always-on and low-cost solutions, but companies need to select and build their cloud environments carefully to avoid fracturing their computing capabilities, locking them into a single, higher-cost environment, cautions Hutton.
"Your cloud security and corporate security policies must be integrated. To modify your policies for cloud, you need to consider similar factors: where the data is stored, how the data is protected, who has access to the data, compliance with regulations, and service level agreements.
"You also need to do a comprehensive review of the provider's security technology and processes, and check how they secure your data and their infrastructure. Never think that outsourcing your applications or systems means you can abdicate responsibility for data breach," he says.
"Data that is secure in one country may not be secure in another. In many cases though, users of cloud services don't know where their information is held."
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