Dale Slabbert, CEO, TrueMark SA

While there may be the perception that South African organisations are progressive in terms of their cloud adoption, this is not entirely the reality and there are companies lagging behind or just starting their journey. This was uncovered at a recent TrueMark roundtable on application modernisation, supported by accumulating local market insight as TrueMark continues embedding its presence and making inroads in South Africa.

“This should not be a criticism of those CIOs or CTOs who are holding back and still evaluating their needs,” says True- Mark SA’s CEO, Dale Slabbert. “There are workloads that are still operating well in datacentres and could suffice with ongoing modernisation for efficiencies by the organisation that designed and managed them. The criticality of moving into the cloud depends on the workload and the business.

“Companies need to think strategically about how they move into the cloud and determine the benefits available on cloud platforms and the degree of elasticity and innovation they are looking for. Cloud offers many benefits that can be competitive game changers, but there are some golden rules to follow, one of which is to aim for a cloud-native platform and leverage from cloud-native technologies.”

Another factor raised by Slabbert is that if considering an agnostic, multi-cloud approach, always pick the right cloud for the right workload. In addition, avoid having the same workload in the cloud and in the datacentre, but target specific workloads. He also cautions that a hybrid solution can mean limiting technologies and undo some of the cloud positives, such as being unable to avail yourself of the over 300 services that AWS offer, which affords a tactical advantage.

Another topic discussed was around data sovereignty and compliance and keeping data in the country. The bottom line is that depending on needs, companies can use cloud tools to share data across borders, but the onus is on the client and is at a company’s own regulatory and governance risk.

“On the subject of cybersecurity, it was mentioned that network segmentation was critical, as well as pushing autonomy and control down the hierarchy, while providing guidelines and security control policies to teams and business units. What is evident is an encouraging degree of security maturity in South Africa.

“Our stance is that major workloads in the datacentre are crunchy on the outside and squishy on the inside and once breached, perpetrators can pretty much do what they like. It’s very important to keep the datacentre crunchy enough on the outside so that criminals cannot get to the vulnerable inside. If the security in the cloud is correct, data is much more secure there than in the datacentre.”

Slabbert says application modernisation and other issues require skills and if clients don’t have the skills in-house, they should choose the right partner with care. The general sentiment around the skills gap – and drain – is that once people get trained up, they leave, either to other companies with deep pockets or overseas due to South Africa’s flagging GDP generating concerns around salaries not increasing.

“The philosophy we use, which has really made our staff retention work in America, is to capitalise on the fact that engineers love to be on the bleeding edge of technology. If they are having fun and feel they are creating value, they will work incredible hours and stay loyal. There is no reason why following this approach is not possible in South Africa,” Slabbert concludes.

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