Although the notion of network-based computing stems right back to the 1960s, the modern term “cloud computing” arose in the 2000s. Yet, almost two decades later, South Africa still lags both in its adoption and its use for critical functions like business intelligence (BI).
While many believe this is largely due to a lack of local data centre infrastructure, the landing of the Azure data centres in Africa will drastically change the cloud landscape across the continent. “This effectively eradicates the fear of shifting massive datasets offshore to global data centres,” confirms Kree Govender, Managing Director of South Africa Qlik Master Reseller (SAQMR).
The current hesitance towards cloud adoption in Africa is illustrated by the Qlik implementations across the continent. Statistics show that as much as 95% of Qlik’s customers in Africa are on-premises.
“Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of enterprises will migrate entirely away from on-premises data centres, with the current trend of moving workloads to colocation, hosting and the cloud leading them to shut down their traditional data centre,” adds Govender. “If these predictions prove accurate, the new data centres will mean there’s no longer anything holding Africa back from catching up with the rest of the world.”
Adam Barrie-Smith, Chief Technology Officer at SAQMR, believes the Qlik platform is perfectly positioned to capitalise on the benefits that these data centres will offer. “This will complement extensive mobile analysis testing using Qlik’s SaaS and cloud business, leveraging Qlik Sense's multi-cloud capabilities. The first advantage is the data centre, the next will be the containerised cloud environment which is set to follow soon.”
To Barrie-Smith, one of the greatest benefits of local data centres is enhanced identity management. “Let’s consider the impact on the banking industry, for example. Most African banks still hold on-premises hardware, which is now reaching retirement age. The question now becomes, should they invest in more hardware or virtualise? With the new data centres, our banking customers will find it much simpler and more cost-effective to embrace the cloud, through a hosted layer within Azure.”
While making cloud adoption easier, the new data centres also offer rich integration capabilities, enhanced virtualisation opportunities, a more elastic environment and greater security. “With the local Azure data centres, African organisations will be empowered to embrace hybrid cloud, and we predict a much greater cloud drive,” concludes Govender.
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Qlik
Qlik® delivers intuitive platform solutions for self-service data visualization, guided analytics applications, embedded analytics and reporting to approximately 40,000 customers worldwide. Companies of all sizes, across all industries and geographies, use Qlik® solutions to visualize and explore information, generate insight and make better decisions. At Qlik, we optimize Business Intelligence (BI) by harnessing the collective intelligence of people across an organization. We focus on empowering people—by enabling everyone in an organization to see the whole story that lives within their data.
South Africa Qlik Master Reseller
South Africa Qlik Master Reseller (previously known as QlikView SA) has been a member of the EOH group of companies since 1 July 2014, facilitating a great partnership that aims to accelerate growth for Qlik in Southern Africa directly or through its specialized Partner channel. SA Qlik MR’s portfolio of products meets customers' growing needs from reporting and self-service visual analysis to guided, embedded and custom analytics. Over 1800 customers rely on Qlik solutions to gain meaning out of information from varied sources, exploring the hidden relationships within data that lead to insights that ignite good ideas.
These solutions bridge the gap between traditional BI solutions and inadequate spreadsheet applications. The in-memory associative search technology that Qlik pioneered, pioneered the self-service BI category, allowing users to explore information freely rather than being confined to a predefined path of questions. Appropriate from SMB to the largest global enterprise, Qlik’s self-service analysis can be deployed with data governance in days or weeks. The platform’s app-driven model works with existing BI solutions, offering an immersive mobile and social, collaborative experience. Headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania, Qlik does business in more than 100 countries with over 40,000 customers globally. For more information, please visit www.saqlik.com.