With the cloud computing era promising to take the management burden associated with running an organisation’s infrastructure, software and support environments away, you’d think that CIOs would be looking forward to a future filled with Piña Coladas and walks on the beach.
Instead they’re finding themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“That’s because,” says Greg Pothitos, HP ESSN business unit manager at Tarsus Technologies, “Cloud in the context of the South African market is a few years away from being the panacea businesses have been promised.
“Yet at the same time, because it’s so close to becoming a reality, most businesses have put a freeze on their infrastructure spend,” he says.
“And quite frankly,” says Pothitos, “doing nothing is the worst thing to do.”
“CIOs and IT managers should be looking at what their infrastructural needs will be when they begin adopting cloud computing, and seek out solutions that will tide them through the interim and serve them well into the future,” he says.
“And thankfully, there are number of solutions that meet that criteria,” he adds.
Perfect examples include storage solutions designed to perform the dual role of centralising data and performing a caching function; and appliance-type server/storage solutions that are designed expressly for use in the collaboration space.
“Because the local loop in South Africa’s telecoms landscape needs serious upgrading, even once organisations have made the move to a cloud environment they will in all likelihood need supplementary onsite infrastructure that’s designed to speed up their cloud operations,” Pothitos says.
“And by looking at this kind of equipment today, they get to solve their current IT issues and make available solutions that will supplement their cloud strategy in the coming years,” he says.
“This equipment works great as both a stopgap between their current IT environment and their cloud-based future, and as part of a cloud-acceleration strategy once the move to offsite datacenters has been made,” Pothitos says.
“What’s important is that customers don’t sit idly by and wait for the cloud era to arrive,” he continues.
“There are important steps to take in the interim and we encourage our resellers and their customers to come and speak to us about what options are available,” he concludes.
Staff Writer
