Johannesburg, 10 Feb 2023
Having stabilised their IT operations after the disruptions caused by the pandemic, businesses across the country have started the new year confronted by two new challenges: massive unforeseen costs and data loss risks when running on-premises data centres during prolonged load-shedding. These new challenges are set to drive more cloud adoption and more strategic selection of cloud services, says Jay Zhou, Managing Director of Huawei Cloud.
Zhou says: “In 2023, most local organisations had hoped to focus on innovation and growth, but instead, they have had to prioritise resilience, continuity and cost control in the face of prolonged load-shedding.”
He says running an on-premises data centre with a generator can cost organisations hundreds of thousands – or even millions – of rands when load-shedding occurs for several hours a day. In addition, organisations are incurring additional costs in terms of having operational staff onsite around the clock to manage the backup power environment when grid power goes down.
“These costs eat into budgets that were already constrained,” Zhou says.
Another costly risk caused by load-shedding is that of data lost during power outages. “If the grid power or generator goes down while systems are online, and there’s a gap in time between the outage and the last backup, new transactional data will be lost, he says.
Mitigating risk and more
Moving into the public cloud can address these challenges, helping organisations overcome unpredictable costs, eliminate the risk of data loss, ensure continuity and position organisations to innovate and scale, says Jay Zhou.
However, he notes that not all clouds are equal. “Huawei Cloud has invested heavily in R&D, capacity, redundancy and specialist technical support in the country, to ensure that customers moving to our cloud can focus on digital transformation, rather than keeping the lights on,” he says.
With three availability zones in South Africa, equipped with world-class infrastructure and power generation capacity, Huawei Cloud has not recorded a second of downtime since its arrival in South Africa three years ago. Huawei Cloud’s in-country resources address any concerns about latency, data sovereignty and compliance, while its local technical support assists partners and clients to move to cloud and transform their businesses – even if they lack advanced cloud skills.
“Huawei Cloud has invested in a local team of solution architects and an extended global network of technical experts who understand the South African market and how challenges like load-shedding impact their ability to keep systems running and avoid data loss. We offer free support for businesses of all sizes – from simple lift and shift cloud migration through to advanced integration, re-engineering and re-architecting. We also offer free certified training for our implementation partners, so they can assist clients in harnessing the infrastructure and tools they need to innovate and grow.”
Huawei’s Africa strategy will support organisations scaling across the continent, with plans in place to establish data centres in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Egypt in the next two to three years.
“Our roadmap aims to make Huawei Cloud the number one hyperscaler in Africa from a localised infrastructure point of view,” he says.
Globally, Huawei is committed to continually growing its cloud value proposition, with Huawei rotating chairman Eric Xu stating that the cloud is where digital transformation takes place. He cites cost benefits, flexibility and access to an on-demand resource as key cloud drivers, and notes that every year, a third of the company’s global revenue is directed towards R&D in the cloud.
Zhou concludes: “Business continuity and resilience might fast-track moves to the cloud, but Huawei Cloud offers much more than this: it gives organisations the ability to do things they could never do before. Once they are in the cloud, a whole new world opens up: they can start using data lakes, run analytics to understand clients and do forecasting, and innovation is literally a few clicks away. It’s transformative for business.”
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