Johannesburg, 10 Oct 2018
The manner in which the cloud helps organisations to become more agile, flexible and innovative has clearly been recognised by the end-customer, says Alden Hardouin, Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect at StorTech. What makes this obvious is that it is these players that are demanding cloud services and thus driving its adoption.
"Up until recently, most organisations had not really seen the value promised by IT, but this has changed with the advent of the cloud. A good example here would be how the business no longer has to undertake a three- to five-year capital expenditure investment in infrastructure. Instead, it can purchase cloud-based infrastructure on a month-to-month operational expenditure budget," he explains.
"Furthermore, this approach offers additional benefits in the form of no longer finding oneself locked into a long-term contract, while also having the agility and flexibility to scale up or down as required by the current business demands."
The fact is that the cloud is not some all-encompassing 'thing', he adds, suggesting what it is really about is solving specific business problems for individual customers. Whether it is something as simple as scalability they want, or something more complex like enabling a mobile workforce via a collaboration platform, the cloud provides the foundation on which to implement this. It all boils down to the cloud's ability to provide productivity, security and scalability at a decent price point.
"A good illustration of how it helps with solving specific challenges is how municipalities have been utilising the Internet of things (IOT) and artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in monitoring water usage during the water crisis. You can, of course, only leverage technologies like IOT and AI for such purposes if you are already in the cloud."
However, says Hardouin, as the cloud starts to become more pervasive, the industry is now beginning to talk about the next evolution of IT, which is the intelligent cloud and the intelligent net, which will help to drive the concept of ubiquitous computing.
"This is when the processing of information is linked with each activity or object as encountered. It involves connecting electronic devices, including embedded microprocessors, to communicate information in such a way as to have devices that deliver constant availability and are completely connected."
"A perfect example of ubiquitous computing is that of the always-on, always available personal digital assistant. Tools like these leverage ubiquitous computing for the benefit of users, saving them time, easing their busy schedules and helping them to win back time which can be used for personal matters."
And after all, he adds, isn't that what every busy person today wants, a bit more time? Ubiquitous computing will significantly boost efficiency and productivity in myriad small ways, to help users to get more time back.
"The same goes for the intelligent edge, which will facilitate the next stage in technology evolution. What we are talking about here are things like self-driving cars. There is no way these vehicles can be successful if the information being read by the car's sensors has to travel all the way to the centre of the cloud for interpretation and then back again before the autonomous driver can make a decision. Thus, we require intelligence on the edge to ensure that the interpretation comes back fast enough to be useful.
"The good news for South Africans eager to access the current and future evolutions of the cloud is that Microsoft is soon to launch its new data centres in South Africa, which will play a key role in facilitating massive growth in all iterations of the cloud. Not only will it provide a local foundation for intelligent edge solutions and ubiquitous computing, but it will also overcome some of the more prosaic cloud challenges like latency and data sovereignty," concludes Hardouin.
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