It's more critical than ever for enterprises - and even government - to develop IT platform strategies that allow for efficient changes to adapt to business requirements.
This is the view of Renesh Buldeo, business unit manager for the Microsoft Platform Consulting arm of EOH's Microsoft business. He says many South African companies are trying to cope with the country's current economic woes by expanding north into the rest of Africa, which brings its own challenges. "How do they quickly and efficiently start servicing new geographies with the services and products they offer? To be competitive they need an ICT platform that scales out, is reliable and is world-class - hence cloud becomes an attractive paradigm to CIOs and CFOs."
ICT platforms need to be flexible and support business. If they are not, it results in a proliferation of "shadow IT" (the phenomenon where line-of-business departments implement their own technology solutions independent of the IT department), he says.
Companies that adopt an effective cloud strategy, and really understand how to consume cloud services, will experience a significant reduction in costs, need fewer staff and require less space. This also explains why the top Fortune 500 companies and leading global organisations have all adopted a cloud road map and engaged on a cloud journey, he says.
Buldeo believes SA is slightly behind the rest of the globe in adopting cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure. He says although local CIOs know that they have to develop a cloud strategy, they are held back by board-level concerns around costs, bandwidth and compliance with regulations such as the POPI Act. However, none of these are insurmountable and they shouldn't stop companies from moving forward with a cloud strategy.
Buldeo believes the potential of the cloud extends to government departments too. "Technology companies have a massive role to play in helping the public sector to come to terms with innovation. We have to help the government to better service citizens with what we have: the people, the technologies and the solutions," he says.
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