Johannesburg, 15 Jun 2021
The semiconductor industry recently garnered international attention as the world discovered that the technology that enables remote working and business continuity are powered by chips. The sudden increase in demand for chips to power remote workforces meant supply chain capacity couldn’t cope. Now, a domino effect is under way, with the repercussions from the global chip shortage having an increasing and measurable impact on the hardware lead-time for business-critical projects.
However, the very nature of these projects is often such that any delay in their deployment can have severe enough consequences to make them unattainable. As a result, we are seeing an increasing pivot to the cloud to accelerate business-critical projects, increase agility and enhance business resiliency.
Reaching crisis point
The global shortage in semiconductor chips hit what has been termed ‘crisis point’ by analysts in April. While production has now largely scaled back up to normal, pent up demand has been exacerbated by increasing volumes of orders from expanding business sectors such as automotive, and sudden spikes in demand for laptops, phones and other devices that facilitate remote working models.
The result has been twofold. First, there is a classic macroeconomic squeeze of shortages and rising prices that has hit multiple markets at the same time, from high-end data centre deployments to consumer durables. Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, has predicted those shortages will last until at least Q2 2022. Secondly, it has left the entire chain sensitive to shocks, with events from extreme weather to a factory fire in Japan, and US sanctions on China all having their impact.
This looks to be a challenging environment that could last for the duration of 2021 and beyond. Some even question that 2023 for a return to previous capacities may be too optimistic, suggesting that this could be a new normal. The fallout of this ongoing situation could be extensive, and the shortage of available data centre hardware is directly affecting organisations with on-premises IT that need to add capacity for new projects/workloads.
Businesses are therefore left with a stark choice – either pause programs, perhaps indefinitely, or consider the public cloud as an option in the short term.
Considering the cloud
Public cloud can provide a temporary (or, indeed, longer-term) cost-effective and rapid fix for the new projects and workloads that can’t be accommodated due to the chip shortage. Moving to the cloud provides plenty of capacity for data centres to operate, simply spinning up servers with their chosen cloud provider and shuttering them when eventually no longer required — all achieved with none of the cost penalties that would be associated with such a move on-prem.
Contrary to popular belief, the current semi-conductor shortage is a solvable issue. One solution is to bring forward purchases of servers and semi-conductor reliant hardware, either with existing capital or through financing options. However, for companies that can’t, or don’t want to, go down this route, the cloud provides an alternative solution. During the pandemic, sales of public and private cloud increased almost 10% – and many aren’t going back.
“It is important to recognise that moving to the cloud doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach,” comments Toby Alcock, Chief Technology Officer, Logicalis Group. “Logicalis recommends just moving the workloads you need to prioritise staying competitive and keeping up with customer needs until the situation resolves itself. However, it should be acknowledged that there are also complexities to cloud deployments, especially large ones, at both the transitional and operational stages. These mean that organisations should ideally partner with an expert who can firstly help manage the move to the cloud and then offer a continued expert managed service provision.”
Businesses can work with an expert partner to determine costs and outcomes before they get started. Expert partners can also manage digital transformation and cloud managed services to ensure success. Only by leveraging the full power of cloud can organisations get ahead, and stay ahead, of competition who may also be suffering.
With security, maintenance and scalability built into the cloud, it’s ideal for companies that can’t get ahold of the hardware they are looking for. Trade wars, supply problems, sanctions and other causes of the semi-conductor shortage are unlikely to go away anytime soon. With the future looking challenging for semiconductor supply, a move to the cloud prepares a business for this unfortunate reality – and whatever obstacles it may bring.
Find out more on how to leverage the full power of the cloud and scale up your business capacity with cloud here.
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