Today’s extremely competitive business landscape sees enterprises, both big and small, desperately seeking opportunities to cut costs, improve productivities and gain competitive advantage.
Many are looking to IT as a way to realise these goals, and in particular, cloud solutions. Considered a disruptive technology, particularly within the enterprise, the adoption of both private and public cloud has had a daunting effect on business, but is undeniably a technology that is here to stay.
Quinton Pienaar, CEO, Agilitide, the first African reseller of Salesforce.com says that businesses can’t delay the inevitable any longer. He says business must start now and assess, plan and manage the impact of cloud in context of business goals as the uptake continues to increase.
“The adoption of cloud will continue to accelerate and grow as modern business demands solutions that solve pressing and specific business problems. We have seen growth and adoption in both SME and larger enterprises. Some in niche areas and other on a larger scale, but there is definitely a significant drive toward cloud platform adoption.”
Pienaar says Agilitude will be an exhibitor at this year’s Enterprise Technology Show discussing of the increasing impact cloud solutions are having on business.
“Cloud is yet another way for a business to focus on solving business issues and not technology problems. This can be done quickly and with relatively low initial outlay. In a market with pressure on pricing and rising costs, cloud solutions provide options that were previously out of reach for many local businesses.”
He says that South Africa’s limited skills base has also created opportunity for cloud solutions.
“By pushing non-core activities to the cloud the pressure to outsource is reduced. The business can simply focus on its core activities and not spend time managing complex infrastructure and applications,” says Pienaar.
He admits while there are still naysayers when it comes to admitting that cloud already exists locally.
“To some degree it is ‘business as usual’ already. Most businesses and consumers are using some form of cloud service such as Dropbox, Gmail, Salesforce or Skype. Cloud services have already embedded themselves into modern businesses, often as a fairly cost effective and efficient way to solve business needs.”
Pienaar says the company’s presence at the Enterprise Technology Show will highlight the benefits of cloud technology and how, by embracing it, businesses can improve their IT systems, increase sales and reduce operational costs.
“We have international representation from Salesforce.com at the show and look forward to many interesting conversations in terms of how a cloud solution can positively impact strategic business goals,” concludes Pienaar.
