By Tony de Sousa, General Manager, Technology Solutions at Datacentrix
With the narrative around cloud computing gaining renewed momentum amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, many enterprises have been forced to realise that there is a right size for everything – including a commitment to the cloud.
Indeed, there are some key questions, which companies that are mulling cloud adoption should be asking themselves: Is cloud-based IT the answer for my business? Will migrating from an on-premises environment to cloud services help me save on IT costs?
Experience has taught us that the answer is maybe because, in reality, the issue is not that simple.
Early adopters who jumped on the public cloud bandwagon soon realised that cloud computing is not a silver bullet for all businesses. Many of those that went to cloud providers were left disappointed and learnt some expensive lessons.
Similar to any other innovative technology solution, the cloud is essentially just another tool that must be used correctly to be effective. That is why for many enterprises a hybrid cloud architecture is the ideal solution. Especially for those who want to bring the public cloud experience and flexibility to their on-premises datacentre.
Cost unpredictability
Organisations that rushed to the public cloud were disappointed with cost unpredictability, as well as the costs associated with data ingress and egress. Additionally, many soon discovered that not all applications and workloads are suitable to be moved to the cloud and that they needed to retain control of their data. As a result, many applications and a lot of data remain on-premises for business reasons.
The new Datacentrix multi-cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), locally-hosted, can address many of these issues. This powerful multi-cloud model is all about leveraging the cloud to define the customer experience. It is not only technologically innovative but is also a direct response to the needs of the modern South African enterprise.
It is ideal for organisations that want the flexibility that they cannot get from a one-size-fits-all public cloud offering. The Datacentrix PaaS solution significantly lowers the capital expenditure required due to its ability to give customers the flexibility to only pay for what they use and to scale up services as and when needed. Also, since the solution is locally hosted, this cost predictability is coupled with fixed rand-dollar pricing that is set for five years, so there are no surprises in terms of costs.
A multi-cloud/hybrid cloud solution such as this will deliver the cloud experience across datacentres, multi-clouds, and edges, along with providing data insights to better manage capacity, performance, compliance, and cost.
Additional capacity
It also means that customers never have to worry about building a dedicated datacentre. Customers receive access to a cost-effective cloud platform, where they can obtain extra capacity in the datacentre and managed services when they need to, for solutions such as back-up and data recovery, as well as storage and compute.
The cost of managing infrastructure can be significant, yet the Datacentrix hybrid cloud offering also removes the burden of customers having to source or develop their skills while providing 24/7 live support.
An offering like this comes at a great time. South African enterprises will now not only have a greater variety of choice in terms of cloud solutions but will also benefit from having the public cloud experience in their on-premises datacentre.
What’s more, enterprises can benefit from the flexibility of the cloud while leveraging the Datacentrix service and interconnection platform. This provides enterprises with cost-effective and secure interconnections to dense ecosystems and cloud-on-ramps.
Companies cannot take everything to a public cloud provider, but the Datacentrix hybrid cloud solution gives customers significant flexibility by enabling them to pay for the services and capacity that they use rather than having to invest upfront.
The Datacentrix multi-cloud platform is a significant development for organisations. Most are currently pursuing a hybrid cloud adoption strategy that side-steps the challenges of the public, yet delivers the benefits of a private cloud solution, coupled with the attractiveness of a pay-per-use model in rands.
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