When your data is stored locally, within the data centre of a reputable cloud services partner, you might think that it\u2019s as safe as it could be. Not necessarily, says Riaan Terblanche, Solutions Architect at First Technology Digital, a specialist IT consulting company. Terblanche refers to a real-life example, where an African independent insurance broker, which learned its lesson the hard way, lost all of its data residing with a local ISP due to a technical malfunction, only to then learn that there had also been no recent snapshots or backups of this data by its partner. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bitter pill to swallow, whatever the size of your company, and a very real risk for local businesses moving onto the cloud; one that could potentially threaten the very existence of your organisation moving forward,\u201d Terblanche explains. <\/p>\n
So, what are the alternatives? Companies opting for an on-premise solution over cloud are looking at investing a good R10 million on infrastructure, Terblanche adds, and that\u2019s just for hardware. \u201cYou can easily add another three to four million to this amount, and that\u2019s without even splashing out on a backup solution and storage area network (SAN). Not only this, but within two to three years, this technology will need to be refreshed; there\u2019s just no end to the costs. <\/p>\n
\u201cCloud services hold a definite cost advantage over on-premise solutions, but it\u2019s important to select your partner carefully.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the example given above, First Technology Digital was able to assist this local company to successfully migrate to the cloud, using Microsoft Azure, a growing collection of integrated cloud services that developers and IT professionals use to build, deploy, and manage applications through Microsoft\u2019s global network of data centres. <\/p>\n
\u201cBy migrating to a trusted Azure environment, we were able to ensure that the organisation\u2019s data is backed up automatically as an ongoing concern. The successful migration has also provided the company with strong cybersecurity controls and multi-level protection as well as a service level agreement of 99.95% availability \u2013 which equates to a mere 4.38 hours of downtime per year. <\/p>\n
\u201cAzure offers flexible pricing on a pay-as-you-use basis, allowing for improved budget management. It\u2019s easy to check exact costs upfront too by using the online pricing calculator, which can track actual account usage and bill at any time. There\u2019s also a total cost of ownership (TCO) calculator available that compares the TCO of an on-premise solution with a comparable Azure deployment. There are no hardware costs involved, and software updates all take place automatically at no additional charge.\u201d <\/p>\n
And companies hesitant to make use of international cloud services providers will be reassured to learn that Microsoft will be delivering cloud services from Azure data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town from 2018, a move that not only shows Microsoft\u2019s commitment to Africa, but is also significant in helping businesses across Africa to accelerate their cloud journey, Terblanche states. <\/p>\n