With the cloud services market expected to grow at a rate of 28% over the next five years to top R23 billion by 2023, Ralph Berndt, Director \u2013 Sales and Marketing at Syrex, says that South African companies have finally woken up to its potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Research shows that cloud services have steadily been gaining momentum in 2018 (31% growth) and 2019 (projected at 35%). And with the likes of Amazon and Google waiting in the wings, the environment for hyperscale computing is such that organisations can finally start realising the business benefits that come from having access to more innovative technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through Azure, solutions like Artificial\nIntelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Edge Computing, Automation, the Internet\nof Things (IoT), and others, are finally democratised making it accessible for\nanyone from a start-up all the way up to an enterprise looking to expand into\nthe rest of Africa. The only limitation now is budget which can be scaled up or\ndown according to requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Locally, companies have signified\ntheir intent to migrate their primary loads into the cloud. This can encompass\neverything from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to Customer Relationship Management\n(CRM). It is about moving as much of the workload as possible to an off-premise\nenvironment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Securing it all<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But irrespective of the platform or\ntechnology used, or even the processes involved, an integral element behind the\nshift towards the cloud is in the cybersecurity aspect. Yes, the cloud does\nprovide a significantly more secure environment to store data, but what we have\nseen happen this year is that companies do not understand what is necessary\nwhen it comes to their defences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The amount of security options\navailable to companies make choosing what is required (and ultimately\nbeneficial) a difficult task. This is where a relationship with an experienced\npartner is vital. Ideally, such a company must be vendor-agnostic to ensure the\nbusiness can build the right security solution that fits its unique\nrequirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Questions should therefore revolve\naround not only what the cybersecurity deliverables are, but also how it can\naugment compliance to run the business effectively within the corporate\ngovernance framework. It is as much about ensuring all the pieces between the\ncloud, company data and processes, and security fit together to form a cohesive\nwhole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is understandable that the costs\nof doing so effectively can quickly spiral out of control. However, this should\nonly happen if the advice the partner provides is not right. Even more reason\nto rely on someone who is experienced, understands the local market and can\ntranslate that to components that form part of the business strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To this end, a service provider who\nis vendor-agnostic and able to leverage solutions from a large pool of\nresources become a critical business-enabler. It becomes less about product and\nmore about a solutions-driven approach. And if the cloud is to continue to grow\nin momentum in 2020, this will become an essential steppingstone for such\nenablement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the cloud services market expected to grow at a rate of 28% over the next five years to top R23 billion by 2023, Ralph Berndt, Director \u2013 Sales and Marketing at Syrex, says that South African companies have finally woken up to its potential. Research shows that cloud services have steadily been gaining momentum […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":31047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4950,182,5,275,10675,13],"tags":[496,872,386,620,1252,5672,388,7366,243,517,622,155,390,392,5732,453,1804],"class_list":["post-31046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-cloud","category-enterprise-security","category-intelligent-technology-newsletter","category-thought-leadership","category-top-stories","tag-ai","tag-amazon","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-azure","tag-crm","tag-customer-relationship-management","tag-cybersecurity","tag-edge-computing","tag-enterprise-resource-planning","tag-erp","tag-google","tag-internet-of-things","tag-iot","tag-machine-learning","tag-ralph-berndt","tag-south-africa","tag-syrex"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31046"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31120,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31046\/revisions\/31120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}