By Daniel Chokoe

Information Technology has evolved emansively for the past few years, South Africa has tried its best to keep up with the latest technology and continues to do so; however when it comes to cloud computing companies seems to be skeptical about hosting their IT systems there.

This can be because companies are misinformed about what cloud computing really is, or various other economical factors playing a major role.

What exactly is Cloud Computing?

The practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server.

The thought of operating on real-time and accessing data remotely is what makes cloud computing such a wonderful concept, however many organisations in South Africa are still reluctant to move to the cloud.

Factors that makes move to the Cloud difficult in SA?

Security

Most companies believe that if they host their information on premises it is more secure than being in the cloud. They believe the cloud will make them more vulnerable to data loss, viruses, spams, fishers and hackers.

Cost

The internet is very expensive for organisations in South Africa as opposed to those in Europe and America where internet is almost free. Organisations find it challenging to have all their data hosted in the cloud as it will require more bandwidth to access the information which means high internet costs.

POPI Act

There is a section in the POPI act that confuses people it states that “No information should cross the borders of the Republic” as we all know most datacenters that hosts the cloud are in foreign continents however the law is misinterpreted wrongfully. It does not prevent people from storing their data in the cloud, it simply wants people to be careful about who hosts their data.

More info on POPI act: download the policy document

Summary

In terms of security it is true that there are hackers on the internet but the reality is you are more likely to get your system hacked into when its on premise that in the cloud. Cloud services like the ones rendered by Microsoft and other big IT vendors are extremely secure.

Taking cost in consideration, companies will save more money when in the cloud as they will not require any physical servers to run in their environment. These eliminates:
-hardware maintenance costs
-electricity cost (as we know how much servers consume energy) and since we are also
-wages to pay IT technicians to monitor the server infrastructure

As much as it will take lots of bandwidth to standardise your organisation to the cloud, you get to save 60% of the money you would usually spend if you are running physical servers on premise. So the cloud is tailored to decrease capital expenditure for companies.

With all the great benefit of operating on the cloud, I am posing this Question to the CIO’s, IT Managers and Directors:

When are you moving to the Cloud?