Independent software vendors (ISVs) are a crucial part of the technology ecosystem. Brainstorm and cloud solutions provider Cloud on Demand convened a roundtable in Cape Town to gauge the challenges this segment is facing.
Brainstorm: What are the drivers behind moving to cloud?
Participants mention scalability and resilience, as well as the advantages of using capex instead of opex. Some also talk about the negligible latency that cloud providers bring, as well as superior performance and cost savings, while others mention security, innovation and uptime.
Brainstorm: If you’re an ISV, what is holding you back?
Oliver Niemandt, GM, Cloud on Demand, says every business thinks it has unique problems, but, on closer investigation, they find that they all face similar challenges.
Michael Lazarus, CTO, Wonga, says the company has what he calls a “semi-multicloud” strategy. Azure is deeply embedded in its business, he adds, and Wonga also uses one of Cloud on Demand’s competitors in its production environment.
What we’re looking for is someone who knows what they’re doing, and can say, ‘With this part, you’re doing it wrong’. We need top-notch deep skills in a partner.
Stephen Bethke, Just SA
He says his board keeps asking him when some kind of AI solution can be deployed, “but I’m just worried about risk that my own business faces, and I need to put some guardrails in there to make sure it doesn’t break some of the principles that we have”.
Neo Mongwaketse, IT service delivery manager, TFG, says an ISV needs to be grilled about what value and investment it’s providing to customers. “How are you making it better for my customer?” He adds that a service provider “will come hard at you”.
“Then I think they just want to get the sale and move on. They need to walk with me on my journey.”
New world order
Stephen Bethke, enterprise architect, Just SA, says it has developed “some pretty serious Azure skills over the last couple of years, but we don’t know everything, not by a long shot. What we’re looking for is someone who knows what they’re doing, and can say, ‘With this part, you’re doing it wrong’. We need top-notch deep skills in a partner.”
Once the product is live in your environment, you’re on your own.
Thabiso Serake, Pay@ Services
Herculaas van Heerden, director, Full Stack, says the technology landscape “is pretty wild right now”. “There are opportunities everywhere. We can see the new world, and we’ve built the ships. We are scaling up so aggressively that we need extra, trusted hands to help us service the boats before we embark. We’re on track, but with scale, we’re running out of runway to deal with breadth [of demand].”
Zunaid Mohidin, CEO, Exo Catalyst, says his company does AI consulting and product development in Southeast Asia. “When I look at an organisation, I want to understand how it’s providing resilience and how it’s going to innovate with me. Is it an AI-first organisation? We’re moving from search to agentic. In the olden days, we used to have data sprawl, but now we’re going to have AI and agentic solutions. How can compute and storage be balanced?”
He adds that if he sees a spike in one of his applications, his partner needs to trigger an alert before he gets the bill, not afterwards.
They will always give you the highest spec. It will be overkill, and it will be overkill on your pocket. You’ll be paying for that machine, but you’re only using 20%.
Fahgrie Otto, Cloud on Demand
Hailey Reent, business consultant, Cloud on Demand, says it’s paying close attention to ISVs, and asking them what they need. “We don’t just have one meeting, we have multiple meetings to do a deep dive into your infrastructure and then discover how we can help you with your pain point. You also have access to our solution architects.”
Compliance
Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu, CTO, Carry1st, a gaming and fintech company, says it’s using a number of SaaS products, particularly those that focus on the prevention and detection of payment fraud. He says it now wants to start using agentic AI solutions, but it needs to be able to manage costs around these programs.
Thabiso Serake, head, cybersecurity, Pay@ Services, a fintech, says the importance of after sales service cannot be underplayed. “Once the product is live in your environment, you’re on your own,” he says, adding that any support will have to be paid for.
Brainstorm: What challenges do ISVs face?
Fahgrie Otto, business consultant, Cloud on Demand, says if a user asks Copilot or an Azure tool about the best machine to spin up in this environment: “They will always give you the highest spec. It will be overkill, and it will be overkill on your pocket. You’ll be paying for that machine, but you’re only using 20%. Those are the conversations we have pre-project.
“I may have my cloud subscription in South Africa, but then I want to run an AI project in another country. I need to integrate AI, but I also need to meet compliance and security requirements. [Cost] Optimisation is the bare minimum that you should get from a cloud provider. The least we can do is reduce your Azure costs, and assist with forecasting.”
* Article first published on www.itweb.co.za
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