SA prioritises the cloud

Cloud computing has been named as a technology priority for CIOs in 2011, yet SA is still behind the maturity curve, according to analysts.

Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, explains that large organisations in SA are moving very strongly into the cloud, as broadband is becoming more stable, faster and cost-effective, with companies also looking to cut costs.

“SA is still in the phase of dabbling with cloud computing; however, it will be one of the main trends for local business in 2011.”

Goldstuck explains that high costs of infrastructure and proprietary software is forcing companies to turn to cloud technologies and services in order to reduce capital and operational costs.

“For instance, Microsoft Office has become so expensive that organisations will start exploring the alternatives.”

Goldstuck predicts that within a decade, cloud computing will become pervasive in SA. He explains that in order for everything to be placed in the cloud, it needs to be 100% safe.

“Security becomes important in terms of financial services, and we've already seen a few breaches with security in significant companies.

“I think the concept of using data centres as a disaster recovery solution is going to be far more compelling this year, as Internet costs come down.”

VMware regional director for southern Africa, Chris Norton, says at the moment enterprises are turning to the private cloud, while the small- and medium-sized enterprises are moving their applications to the public cloud.

However, Norton says it's not all good news as SA still behind Europe in terms of cloud maturity. “SA is still behind the innovation stage. However, I think businesses will be a lot more inclined to embark on the journey and start preparing themselves for the next step. Cloud computing is certainly here to stay in SA.”

Norton explains that the biggest benefits of moving mission-critical applications to the cloud are because of the scalability and robustness of moving those applications to a hosted service provider. He says currently more than 97% of applications can be moved to the cloud.

“We will continue to see the large enterprises adopting cloud technologies but in more of the automation toolsets. We will also see a lot more smaller organisations turning to third party providers, and I think we will see some consolidation in the public cloud space.”

Norton adds: “I wouldn't be surprised to see more community clouds forming, where like-minded individuals combine their infrastructure and share services. This could be evident in government and public sector organisations sharing infrastructure to deliver services.”

According to Gartner's Executive Programmes Worldwide Survey released this week, CIOs in the Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region have set efficiency and consolidation as top priorities for 2011.

The research firm predicts that IT budgets will not return to their 2008 (pre-recession) levels this year, however, the majority of global CIOs will see 1% budget increases this year.

Gartner anticipates EMEA CIOs to report an average budget decline of 0.4% in 2011, while the UK would be one of the hardest hit, reporting an average drop of 6.9%.

Mark McDonald, group vice-president and head of research for Gartner Executive Programmes, says: "New lighter-weight technologies such as cloud computing, SaaS, social networks and IT models enable the CIO to redefine IT, giving it a greater focus on growth and strategic impact. These are two things that are missing from many organisations."

McDonald points out that 3% of CIOs have the majority of IT running in the cloud or on SaaS technologies, but over the next four years, CIOs expect this number to increase to 43%.

He adds that lightweight Internet service-based technologies have resulted in organisations being able to spend between 35 to 50% of their IT budget on innovation and growth.