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How cloud, IOT change the IT game

Cloud computing, convergence and the Internet of things are catalysing major change in organisations and the way their IT is structured, says MTN Business.

By Tracy Burrows, ITWeb contributor.
Johannesburg, 28 Oct 2015

Business is changing, IT is changing and what companies need from their service providers is evolving accordingly, says MTN Business. The company is moving to meet these changing needs, says Greg Hatfield, General Manager: Marketing, Products & Solutions at MTN Business.

"Disruptive trends such as cloud and IOT are changing business, and this informs how MTN Business functions on the supply side of that equation. Being agile and productive, and sticking to your core focus, are the requirements of a successful business today, which has far-reaching implications on IT. Every organisation has the same challenges and the same pressures to do more with less, and to do it yesterday. That's business these days. We're aiming to help companies be more efficient and more effective in this changing environment."

"What we're seeing is a need to consolidate across organisations, in terms of procurement, suppliers and technology. This has informed MTN and our competitors' need to offer a broader range of services. For IT organisations, this means they need to address the challenge of evolving from being technology factories to being service brokers, supplier managers and business liaisons. We are also seeing a migration of technical skills from the enterprise to the service provider. These big IT shops with hundreds of engineers and deep technical skills are on the decline, because organisations are realising they are not IT companies. So they are continuously in a process of consolidating suppliers, outsourcing and downsizing their internal staff complement and evolving the way IT functions, to move from being a technology factory to being a service broker. They are moving to understand what the technology industry can bring to the business in line with the business's strategy and needs, and being the intermediary between those parties."

Technology is today's business enabler, MTN Business believes, and the company is moving to offer end-to-end ICT services throughout the stack to enable its customers' businesses. "Our partnership approach, and our growing focus on security, cloud and IOT on the back of our mature managed network and unified communications offerings, are designed to empower business in a changing environment," he says.

Hatfield says the broad range of cloud-based solutions and services now available to business means everyone from an SME to a blue-chip enterprise can harness the cloud to enable business. "The smaller the business, the more they are looking for repetitive standardised, self-help, easy-to-use solutions and fairly commoditised offerings. The higher up the market you go in terms of size and level of maturity of the business, the more they are looking for their IT partners to add real strategic value to their business. You talk of being a trusted business advisor or a strategic partner, as opposed to a solution seller or a transactional commodity provider."

MTN Business is moving to achieve a balance that puts it at the heart of Africa cloud and IOT ecosystems, establishes it as a trusted strategic partner to large enterprises, and also delivers commoditised business solutions at scale for the broad SME market.

The company is helping pioneer cloud and IOT innovation, which it believes can change the face of local business forever. Hatfield says: "The challenge is going to be educating business on what these new technologies can actually do for them. As a technology partner, you can sense what they might enable for the business, but unless you actually work in that business, it's difficult to articulate what it could mean for them in practice. Probably, the easiest way for them to harness these disruptive technologies is through quick wins and growing it from there. The cloud and IOT use cases are so broad that it shouldn't be difficult for companies to find those quick wins."

To catalyse widespread adoption of cloud and IOT, he says: "It's a question of finding the organisation with the right appetite at the right time, and they become the early success stories."

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Tracy Burrows
MTN Company Zone