A study by data analytics firm IDC found that spending on public cloud services will nearly triple over the next five years, from R4,29-billion in 2017 to R 11,53-billion in 2022.

We are seeing a phenomenal uptake of public cloud across a spectrum of businesses; from micro organisations that want to back up their data to the cloud in a cost-effective way, to the most complex ones such as financial services organisations that are using Microsoft Azure as the foundation to drive new levels of productivity, create intelligent data-driven experiences and deepen business trust.

Businesses need to be agile, move quickly and respond to market demand. The power of the cloud allows them to drive agility and speed, but it also enables them to be flexible, which is important in these challenging and uncertain times.

Organisations that are scaling back or ramping up their products and services can leverage the power of the cloud and an opex model to respond accordingly.

Those businesses that run an on-premise IT environment are struggling to put in place plans that will allow their employees to work remotely coupled with the necessary business continuity and disaster recovery plans.

However, the reality is that many businesses are going to be in a hybrid state for some time as their IT environments are evolving and becoming increasingly complex.

听Managing a hybrid state and the edge

Applications are running on different hardware across on-premise datacentres, multiple clouds and the edge.

Exxaro Resources, one of South Africa鈥檚 largest heavy minerals mining companies, moved its headquarters to a new green building and migrated its on-premise datacentre to Azure, effectively reducing the entire company鈥檚 energy footprint while increasing both its data security and operational agility.

All mining sites located in dispersed rural locations, where connectivity is an issue, are now connected directly to Azure. This move cuts out a bespoke model where the sites were connected to the corporate building in the past, with the aim of creating a digital mining company.

Managing disparate environments at scale, ensuring uncompromised security and enabling developer agility and innovation are critical to success. Hybrid cloud capabilities must therefore evolve to enable innovation anywhere, while providing a seamless development, deployment and ongoing management experience.

We have introduced Azure Arc for businesses that want to simplify complex and distributed environments. It includes a set of platforms and tools that allow companies to manage their multi-cloud environment, from on-premise applications to those running in Azure or even on the edge.

More importantly, it allows them to manage other hyperscale cloud environments and helps them deal with the administration burden of running a multi-cloud environment.

听Driving innovation

The increased utilisation of public cloud services and the additional investments into private and hybrid cloud solutions will continue to enable South African organisations to focus on innovation and building digital businesses at scale.

We are seeing significant growth for 51风流on Azure. We offer on-premise 51风流customers the ability to take their workloads into Azure as part of the Project Embrace initiative between Microsoft and 51风流announced last year. It is centred around the customer journey to 51风流S/4HANA and 51风流Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure.

One such customer is Standard Bank South Africa that is making the move to significantly improve the experience customers have with the bank, while enabling it to introduce new solutions to market more efficiently.

The work that we are doing with Standard Bank is the first local demonstration of this partnership and 51风流on Azure is one of the fastest growing services that we run locally in Azure.

Additionally, several organisations have decided to move their developer environments into Azure. The acquisition of GitHub and the massive global community that comes with it, sets our customers up for success in terms of driving their developer environments in the cloud.

The presence of local听cloud听technology means more opportunity for economic growth and innovation. Some of the innovation we鈥檙e driving are cognitive services and the Internet of Things (IoT), which accelerates customers鈥� digital transformation and opens the door to build interesting applications.

An example is AB InBev South Africa that is improving its cooler management and gaining new insights with IoT.

听Enabling innovation through partners

Our partners remain key to our strategy and are at the forefront of building solutions that will enable business innovation and digital transformation.

We believe that local service providers will continue to find ways to drive their value.听Managed service providers are showcasing innovation in how they鈥檙e levering the power of the public cloud to extend their services and value proposition to customers.

They see the presence of hyperscale platforms as positive for the market because it enables them to provide customers with cloud solutions that might not otherwise be available.

Whether organisations are adopting a pure or hybrid cloud solution, this move will enable the foundation to drive digital transformation, reduce costs, gain insights and achieve business innovation.听

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The post Cloud Computing Goes Beyond the Platform appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

With proven business benefits for adopting cloud computing, the prediction of the global marketing intelligence firm, International Data Corporation (IDC) that 90 percent of businesses will use multiple cloud services and platforms by 2020, comes as no surprise. However, many businesses have dabbled in the cloud whilst retaining their legacy infrastructure or have taken a tactical approach to it, without making the necessary changes to their operating models to sustain long-term growth.

Accenture agrees that the cloud is indeed ready for fully committed, enterprise-grade computing, and we believe it鈥檚 time for businesses to future-proof their businesses by rebooting their cloud strategy accordingly. We also understand that migrating to the cloud is a journey, but this journey is not impossible, and it does not have to be overly long. However, it does require the use of appropriate approaches, subject to each business鈥� unique circumstances. Most importantly, the chosen approach should be strategic, rather than tactical.

Examples of companies who successfully adopted cloud computing through such a strategic approach include Exxaro and Mercedes-Benz.io.

Exxaro unlocks new revenue streams and ways of working with cloud

Accenture collaborated with Exxaro to help digitally transform its business and unlock new revenue streams by managing the migration of its 51风流solutions, and other centrally-run applications used by Exxaro business units, to Microsoft Azure. This supports Exxaro鈥檚 ambition to establish a secure, agile, cost-effective and scalable platform that will improve business processes and continuity.

Accenture created a cloud transformation strategy for Exxaro that defined the business case for migration to a public cloud, a move, which offered the lowest total cost of ownership, improvements to core systems resiliency, and the agility needed to meet customer demands.

In line with Exxaro鈥檚 requirement for a swift and secure transition, Accenture designed and built a cloud platform in the South African Azure data centers. This included optimizing Exxaro’s 51风流systems to take advantage of cloud architecture benefits and building a more resilient and available architecture to improve business continuity. Accenture then seamlessly migrated Exxaro’s enterprise applications, which included more than 280 Microsoft Windows virtual machines, onto Azure with minimal disruption, while also integrating multiple remote mining locations in South Africa.

Mercedes-Benz.io drives innovation and enhanced customer experiences through cloud

As Mercedes-Benz鈥檚 internal digital services provider, one of the responsibilities of Mercedes-Benz.io, is to help Mercedes-Benz reimagine how the company delivers digital marketing and sales solutions for customers globally. To that end, Mercedes-Benz.io sought to consolidate Mercedes-Benz鈥檚 fragmented online presence with a cloud- based solution dubbed 鈥淥neWeb.鈥� Mercedes-Benz.io teamed with Accenture to build and deploy a powerful Infrastructure-/Platform-as-a-Service solution on Amazon Web Service (AWS), which was subsequently rolled out to 22 companies initially (with 30 more in the queue).

With OneWeb鈥檚 rapid provisioning of compute power, Mercedes-Benz can now quickly respond to customers鈥� demands for information and functionality, thus delivering a better customer experience. Currently, more than three million unique visitors鈥� access OneWeb every month, and traffic continues to grow as new markets are added.

Establishing a business case to justify the cloud鈥檚 value proposition

From a business case perspective, there are many such case studies that demonstrate that cloud computing and as-a-service business models can create new and differentiating capabilities that can help enhance a company鈥檚 business strategy, drive competitive advantage and improve financial models. It is however critical to develop a solid business case for your cloud computing strategy right up front and to justify the cloud鈥檚 value proposition, especially as it relates to existing large investments in legacy technology infrastructure, including data centres. This should include evaluating traditional financial measures such as total cost of ownership, return on investment (ROI) and payback period. To maximise shareholder and business value, companies should also evaluate cloud benefits, key performance indicators and value realisation.

Common signposts on the cloud migration journey

As soon as you鈥檙e ready to embark on your cloud migration journey, it is important to note that the journey to cloud isn鈥檛 linear, and that one phase doesn鈥檛 necessarily build on another. The journey can be an intricate and multi- disciplinary exercise with many organisational dependencies. Every enterprise is unique and has different short- and long-term goals. Nevertheless, some common signposts on the journey to cloud can help guide you on the way. These include strategy and business case, operating model, applications, infrastructure, security, organisation, management and governance, and operations and managed services. Thinking strategically about cloud also involves a number of imperatives, including desired business outcomes, investment priorities, deployment model, service providers, talent sourcing and cloud policies.

Best approaches for implementing an enterprise cloud technology strategy

From an IT perspective, cloud technology requires IT teams to approach enterprise technology strategy in an entirely different way, focusing on three layers: infrastructure, applications and operations. It鈥檚 important to bear in mind that, when one transforms one layer, those actions then impact the other layers. The middle layer, the application layer, is a good place to start because of the positive ripple effects on the other layers. When one migrates operational applications to the cloud, that results in less demand for data processing and frees up server space. So, infrastructure is impacted (fewer servers are required), which then impacts operations (less effort and costs are required to maintain servers, effort that one can then redirect to more strategic business activities).

During their journey to cloud, organisations should consult experts in the particular domains of each layer, who also understand the interdependencies among those domains. Essentially, moving to the cloud is a complex endeavour and should be thoughtfully planned and executed. Companies need to carefully consider each component of the enterprise cloud journey both separately and in relation to others, because components can intersect at many different business points. Such an integrated approach enables companies to create a unique and successful cloud roadmap; ensure their plans are executed based on a strong foundational strategy; and ultimately experience an efficient and timely transformation that is aligned to their business goals and desired outcomes.

The post Is It Time to Reboot your Cloud Strategy? appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.