The cloud may be the focus of enterprise interest, but relatively few South African organisations are actively harnessing managed cloud services to support their digital transformation strategies and make their employees more productive.
This is according to Monique Williams, South Africa Country Manager at Hyland, who was speaking ahead of a webinar on cloud technology as an enabler of digital transformation.
Williams says that outside of the financial and tech sectors, who have embraced cloud technologies, many organisations have been slow to fully harness the cloud.
“There are still reservations in many verticals – and these are typically around cost. For some organisations, the cost issue relates to hardware refresh cycles and concern about moving to cloud before they have written off those costs. There are also concerns that the cloud may prove more expensive than on-premise hardware in the longer term, and that modernising and migrating legacy systems to make them cloud ready adds an additional cost. Latency and security are also concerns.”
Williams believes that every organisation would like to achieve digital transformation, but that most have not achieved it yet. “You want to realise full value, not just a portion of it. It’s a lot more than just an app on the front end – transformation should involve end-to-end processes. To achieve this goal, cloud adoption should be a priority,” she says.
“Our managed cloud perspective is that when half the IT department is still looking after infrastructure, they aren’t able to focus on implementing and properly maintaining applications in an optimal manner. By going to the cloud, organisations can prioritise their focus on leveraging the software they invested in to fully transform the business and become more nimble and proactive,” Williams says. “It should also be noted that the cloud mitigates the costs and business continuity risks brought on by load shedding, and also reduces the impact of the brain drain, as organisations need fewer skilled staff managing the infrastructure.”
“While organisations may think the cloud might be more expensive, when you do a true cost-for-cost comparison, it could prove more cost effective than running their own data centres, and more importantly, it will make staff more productive,” Williams says.
Hyland will host a webinar on 23 June, on cloud technology as an enabler of digital transformation, as part of the ITWeb Cloud and Data Centre Webinar Series.
This event will outline:
- how cloud-based software provides organisations with platforms where they can build, test and deploy apps;
- how cloud computing enables enterprises to access and process information, collaborate and improve productivity;
- why increasing cloud usage is a top priority for business and tech leaders.
For more information, and to register, go to https://www.itweb.co.za/webinar/hyland-cloud-technology-as-an-nabler-of-digital-transformation/
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