Burgeoning volumes of data, an increasingly stringent regulatory environment, and skyrocketing energy consumption are challenging data centre operators across the board. In fact, the IDC says by 2025, worldwide data will grow 61% to 175 zettabytes, with an equal amount of the data residing in the cloud as in data centres.

“This massive growth rate in data is putting ICT infrastructure under pressure,” says Angela Mace, CRM and Events director at ITWeb.

“Let’s face it, there are probably only a handful of organisations that can afford to increase their data storage by nearly 30% a year,” she adds. “This is why many businesses are looking to adopt more and more services from the cloud to meet their needs.”

According to Mace, this then raises the question of cloud security. 

“For businesses using the cloud, this means, to a certain extent, relinquishing some control over their data. There are also questions of data residency and sovereignty that need to be carefully considered to avoid falling foul of regulatory bodies.”

Then there’s digital transformation, she says. 

“When it comes to digital transformation, the common maxim today is ‘adapt or die’. Businesses that do not transform risk being left behind, and losing market share to the nimble, digital incumbents who are not hampered by legacy technologies. Keeping up with the pace of change is challenging for even the largest enterprises.”

She says during the ITWeb Cloud, Data Centre & DevOps Summit, happening on 11 February 2020 at The Forum in Bryanston, experts from around SA will discuss these and other trends that are affecting businesses across the board.

“For example, data security is a top priority for all businesses, but particularly those in sensitive industries such as healthcare or financial services. Therefore, understanding who, between the company and the cloud provider, is responsible for protecting what, is key. All businesses need to find the best way to process their data securely and quickly, and this means asking themselves whether to modernise their existing data centre, use a colocation facility, or turn to the cloud.”

Another trend that is proving challenging for businesses is the integration of multi-cloud environments. 

“Organisations of every type need the assurance that they can run their cloud applications on a variety of public cloud platforms, irrespective of where they are located. To do this, they need to have a multi-cloud strategy in place, which can be complicated given the slew of platforms, providers and applications that every business today employs.”

Certain data needs to be kept under stricter control, and those needs will be met by a specialised, local cloud provider, or on-premise, adds Mace. “Other, less sensitive data and apps can benefit from the massive economies of scale that hyperscale providers such as AWS, Azure and Google offer. Having a vendor-neutral multi-cloud strategy enables exactly that: combining the necessary security with the flexibility and scalability needed.”

She says these trends and more will be unpacked in detail during the event. For more information, or to register please, click here.