Bill shocks and concerns about data sovereignty and security are driving repatriation from the public cloud and the adoption of hybrid models by many organisations across Africa, say data backup experts from Veeam.
Speaking during a recent webinar on data resilience, Ken Gilford, senior territory manager at Veeam Africa, and Rhyno Joubert, senior systems engineer at Veeam Africa, said bill shock and data sovereignty were among the biggest concerns organisations have around public cloud.
A poll of webinar attendees from across Africa echoed this, with 33% saying the cloud is not as affordable as it appears, 24% having concerns around security and who could access their data, 17% highlighting concerns about where their data was stored, a further 17% citing a lack of skills as a concern, and 7% saying connectivity hampered cloud adoption.
Joubert noted: “Bill shock is a real challenge – storage, egress and API costs are unpredictable, and systems engineers don't have cloud cost visibility.”
Gilford said: “Hybrid cloud is the way things are going. Globally and in South Africa, around 45% of workloads are hosted in a hyperscaler, but across Africa, a number of organisations are moving their production data to a local service provider and using their old data centre for backups and as a DR site.”
Veeam highlighted solutions that address key concerns around unpredictable cost, security and data sovereignty.
Veeam Data Cloud Vault v2 cloud storage for Veeam backups is a fully managed, secure and cloud-based storage service that leverages the Microsoft Azure and simplifies storing backups of mission-critical data and applications. The new release introduces two new editions – Foundation and Advanced – with low-cost, all-inclusive pricing that eliminates common forecasting and bill shock challenges. Advanced Edition supports zone-redundant storage (ZRS) on Microsoft Azure Blob and offers unlimited restores, which gives organisations the freedom to test routinely without the fear of additional costs related to read transactions, data retrieval and egress.
Gilford highlighted the portability enabled by Veeam: “Once you choose a service provider, you can leverage Veeam to keep data portable, as we support migration from one platform to another. Veeam is giving them the freedom and flexibility to try the cloud that suits them.”
Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 is an all‑in‑one Microsoft 365 backup service delivered by Veeam, enabling high‑speed backup and recovery of critical data. It offers complete protection and eliminates the risk of losing access and control over Office 365 data, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Teams.
Joubert explained: “Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 is an industry-leading technology in the backup space. It is intuitive and easy to use, and supports data sovereignty by enabling customers to choose to keep backups within their country’s borders. The benefits of using this backup as a service (BaaS) for Microsoft 365 include simplicity in management – you can have your first backup job running in a couple of minutes, without all the resources and networking associated with traditional backup.”
Veeam also addresses skills concerns by updating the resources, the security of the back end and the data residing in the cloud storage.
“It's built from the ground up for Microsoft 365, and includes features like our e-discovery tool, which helps you discover that ‘needle in a haystack’ – for example, if a compliance officer is looking for a particular e-mail from several years ago,” Joubert said.
Joubert and Gilford noted that Veeam holds number one global market share in data replication and protection, according to IDC, and offers global security certifications, multifactor authentication and built-in encryption. Veeam protects over 23 million Microsoft 365 users, they said.
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