Cloud usage in South Africa

H

hammell

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I was just wondering how many people out there are using international cloud providers, specifically AWS, Azure or Google and what their experience is from a South African perspective?
 
hammell said:
I was just wondering how many people out there are using international cloud providers, specifically AWS, Azure or Google and what their experience is from a South African perspective?
Click to expand...

Tried those plus RackSpace.
Azure is the way forward and use it a lot
 
I use Azure only. Experience is good so far. Latency is not too bad at all, especially considering there are no Azure data centers on the continent.
 
hammell said:
Thanks - if I may ask what services are you using and what sets Azure apart?
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Azure, performance, price, redundancy (can replicate storage to other geo locations). Can setup site to Cloud VPN's. Microsoft software licences are included. Support is great. Plus there is now local peering from Microsoft to NAPAfrica. Also Microsoft take privacy and security seriously now. There is other addon's like Riverbed etc.
I use hosted AD, VM's, SQL. Web, backup, storage and testing onsite VM replication to Azure for instant DR
 
joeyhza said:
I use Azure only. Experience is good so far. Latency is not too bad at all, especially considering there are no Azure data centers on the continent.
Click to expand...

Thanks - what services are you using and what sort of latency are you experiencing?
 
qwertydudeza said:
Azure, performance, price, redundancy (can replicate storage to other geo locations). Can setup site to Cloud VPN's. Microsoft software licences are included. Support is great. Plus there is now local peering from Microsoft to NAPAfrica. Also Microsoft take privacy and security seriously now. There is other addon's like Riverbed etc.
I use hosted AD, VM's, SQL. Web, backup, storage and testing onsite VM replication to Azure for instant DR
Click to expand...

Interesting to hear - very promising that some people in SA are getting on board but I still see quite a lot of resistance from the local "enterprise" class customers who are still very wary of cloud - mostly from an education point of view.
 
hammell said:
Interesting to hear - very promising that some people in SA are getting on board but I still see quite a lot of resistance from the local "enterprise" class customers who are still very wary of cloud - mostly from an education point of view.
Click to expand...

I am working in the enterprise space and you be surprised on some big names that are testing or using Azure services and Office365.
 
hammell said:
Interesting to hear - very promising that some people in SA are getting on board but I still see quite a lot of resistance from the local "enterprise" class customers who are still very wary of cloud - mostly from an education point of view.
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They are slowly adapting to hybrid solutions. Azure also supports hybrid implementations.
 
Yes it does seem as though MS has the upper hand in SA with their very large and aggressive sales force. Most MS focused businesses seem to be going the Azure route.
 
You should try MWEB cloud services. I hear they have some great specials going at the moment. :)
 
hammell said:
Thanks - what services are you using and what sort of latency are you experiencing?
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Using IaaS - Windows/Linux VM's
Using PaaS - Azure Websites and SQL
Using SaaS - Office 365/Windows Intune
And storage using Microsoft Storsimple with storage tiering (SSD on premise) and old data in Azure. Also using BLOB storage in Azure for website content.

Loving the experience....so far

Oh and of course.....XBOX One on a personal level :) Uses Azure

On a side note - taking in to consideration the amount of hoops MS has to jump through regarding security and compliance - there isn't another cloud offering I would remotely consider, especially none of the local 'cloud' operators

You can test what sort of latency you can expect - http://www.azurespeed.com/ and http://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net/

SA's closest data centre is in Europe and we consistenly get around 200ms
 
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joeyhza said:
Using IaaS - Windows/Linux VM's
Using PaaS - Azure Websites and SQL
Using SaaS - Office 365/Windows Intune
And storage using Microsoft Storsimple with storage tiering (SSD on premise) and old data in Azure. Also using BLOB storage in Azure for website content.

Loving the experience....so far

Oh and of course.....XBOX One on a personal level :) Uses Azure

On a side note - taking in to consideration the amount of hoops MS has to jump through regarding security and compliance - there isn't another cloud offering I would remotely consider, especially none of the local 'cloud' operators

You can test what sort of latency you can expect - http://www.azurespeed.com/ and http://azurespeedtest.azurewebsites.net/

SA's closest data centre is in Europe and we consistenly get around 200ms
Click to expand...

Any reason why you wouldn't consider AWS?
 
psypher246 said:
Any reason why you wouldn't consider AWS?
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Well, firstly, AWS does NOT have a Hybrid Cloud Storage option which MS does in the form of Storsimple. Azure has API management and AWS does not. AWS seems more focused on IAAS - and IAAS on AWS seemed extremely limited and simplistic when I tryed it out, admittedly it was a while back. Also, if I recall Amazon pricing was more than Microsofts offering at the time.

Anybody can pretty much offer a decent IAAS experience. Even, dare i say it, MWEB. When their hosting environment isn't falling over I mean. But a true measurement of great service is how well it scales, and how effective it is to transition I think. Not to mention the ease of use and effective and proper hybrid operation.

Another key factor is quite simplistic in fact. would you rather deal with Microsoft, a technology that is prevalent in most on-prem environments, affording a seamless experience or deal with Amazon, a company that is best known for an online shopping portal?
As an analogy, I would never buy a Daewoo vehicle, because Daewoo, despite being pretty decent at consumer electronics, cars though...not so much. There certainly is a market though for Daewoo buyers just like there is a market for people taking up a service and putting their trust in a company that ultimately at the end of the day remains an online shopping platform.

Each to their own though - I have no doubt there are use cases where AWS would suit somebody just fine....me...not even close. And I havent even gone into the real true benefits, like Azures scalability options, guaranteed uptime, Regulatory compliances, ease of migration etc etc etc

Just my 2 cents - and I'm certain many will not share my opinion

PS: I really didn't mean MWEB can offer a decent IAAS environment - Apologies for that. MWEB can't offer a decent 'ANYTHING'. Was merely a point to iterate how saturated the 'cloud offering' has become - especially locally. When companies like MWEB hop on to the bandwagon, and fails splendidly, it really taints the benefit of going the cloud route.
 
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Please see my responses below.

joeyhza said:
Well, firstly, AWS does NOT have a Hybrid Cloud Storage option which MS does in the form of Storsimple.
Click to expand...
That is incorrect
http://aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/
http://blog.kloud.com.au/2013/02/22/cloud-storage-aws-and-azure/

joeyhza said:
Azure has API management and AWS does not.
Click to expand...
I might be completely misunderstanding this but every service has an API and several SDKs to invoke them as well as a multiplatform Command Line Interface. In like 20 lines in a bash file I built dynamic dns into my raspberrypi which updates my hostname in Route53.
http://aws.amazon.com/tools/

The API has existed since day one so not sure where you get the idea that it has no api management. Hell they even just released a service that lets you build your own APIs (http://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/)

joeyhza said:
AWS seems more focused on IAAS - and IAAS on AWS seemed extremely limited and simplistic when I tryed it out, admittedly it was a while back.
Click to expand...
you need to try it out again.
AWS has 47 services in their console with many many options and are quite complex.
PaaS:
https://aws.amazon.com/products/?nc2=h_l3_as/#application-1
Just one section of many you should look through.

The lines of IaaS/PaaS/SaaS are getting a little blurred lately. There are at least 8 services by AWS that could be considered PaaS, even more. RDS is a great example.

If you think that AWS only does IaaS then go back and read again.

joeyhza said:
Also, if I recall Amazon pricing was more than Microsofts offering at the time.
Click to expand...
I would doublecheck your numbers. AWS has decreased it's prices several times over the years and always matched MS when they drop their prices. Prices has never increased:
http://www.aidanfinn.com/2015/06/pricing-for-azure-in-the-euro-zone-to-increase-by-13/

joeyhza said:
Anybody can pretty much offer a decent IAAS experience. Even, dare i say it, MWEB.
Click to expand...
no, don't dare. The only IaaS vendor I would consider besides AWS, is Google or Digital Ocean.

joeyhza said:
When their hosting environment isn't falling over I mean. But a true measurement of great service is how well it scales, and how effective it is to transition I think.
Click to expand...
Fully agreed.
BTW, Cloudharmony stats of compute uptime of all cloud providers for the last year:
AWS: 99.9984% uptime = 1.4 hours downtime across all regions
Azure: 99.9621% uptime = 49.34 hours downtime across all regions

AWS Import/Export and VM Import/Export helps you transition, quite a few more tools.

joeyhza said:
Not to mention the ease of use and effective and proper hybrid operation.
Click to expand...
I mentioned Storage Gateway above, there is also: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/vm-import/ and Direct Connect leased lines, in South Africa, to provide connectivity to a hybrid solution.
johnson & johnson seem to love it:
http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/johnson-and-johnson/

joeyhza said:
Another key factor is quite simplistic in fact. would you rather deal with Microsoft, a technology that is prevalent in most on-prem environments, affording a seamless experience or deal with Amazon, a company that is best known for an online shopping portal?
As an analogy, I would never buy a Daewoo vehicle, because Daewoo, despite being pretty decent at consumer electronics, cars though...not so much. There certainly is a market though for Daewoo buyers just like there is a market for people taking up a service and putting their trust in a company that ultimately at the end of the day remains an online shopping platform.
Click to expand...

Did you know that AWS practically invented cloud as we know it today in 2006? By a South African team in Cape Town:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Elastic_Compute_Cloud
"Amazon EC2 was developed mostly by a team in Cape Town, South Africa led by Chris Pinkham.[11][12][13][14] Pinkham provided the initial architecture guidance for EC2 and then built the team and led the development of the project."

Chris Pinkham also pretty much built the internet in South Africa back in the day. Literally the first internet line was UUNET which he was in charge for.

Azure was only released in 2010. So yes, I would rather pick a vendor who has had a 4 year headstart in innovation and stability improvements. (see the above downtime stats for proof. MS in only now learning how to get stability that AWS has perfected). Also, to equate AWS as just a side business ($7 billion side business BTW) of a company who is just an online retailer says that you don't really know much about either. Amazon itself is considered as having the highest customer satisfaction of all the companies in the world. I'm not going to comment on MS, I have no facts to back up my horrendous anecdotal experiences.

http://recode.net/2015/07/23/amazon...fastest-growing-and-most-profitable-business/
http://delight.us/earths-most-customer-centric-company/

Last year AWS had 5 times the compute capacity as ALL the other vendors COMBINED. Read that again, that includes MS, Google, Rackspace all of them. This year, it was 10 times as big. They DOUBLED the lead in capacity in a year.

http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/11/14/rare-peek-massive-scale-aws/

They recon AWS probably has somewhere between 2.8 million and 5.6 million servers across its infrastructure.

Netflix seems to think AWS can handle their scale:
http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/four-reasons-we-choose-amazons-cloud-as.html

Which one do you think can scale more?

joeyhza said:
Each to their own though - I have no doubt there are use cases where AWS would suit somebody just fine....me...not even close. And I havent even gone into the real true benefits, like Azures scalability options, guaranteed uptime, Regulatory compliances, ease of migration etc etc etc
Click to expand...

What like Autoscaling? Added as a feature in 2010, the year Azure came along. Azure got that in 2013. 3 years lead in innovation.
Again guaranteed uptime??? see cloudharmony.
Compliance?
http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/

pretty extensive list that, actually that's a longer list of compliance's than Azure.

You should also read the customer case studies:
http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/all/

Just one study: AirBnB
"Airbnb is a community marketplace for unique vacation spaces around the world. Airbnb benefits from the scalability, agility and reliability provided by Amazon Web Services, including Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon S3, Amazon EMR, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon CloudWatch, and Amazon RDS."

http://www.cio.com/article/2375303/...eb-services-to-conquer-the-rental-market.html
"At GigaOM Structure this week, I spoke to Airbnb VP of Engineering Mike Curtis about how Amazon Web Services helped them get settled in at the top -- and why they're never checking out of Amazon's public cloud."

That's quite a long list of customers who think AWS is good enough for them. Even the CIA:
http://www.cio.com/article/2383569/...ud-really-says-about-amazon-web-services.html

Despite IBM being cheaper, they chose AWS due to features and reliability.

joeyhza said:
Just my 2 cents - and I'm certain many will not share my opinion
Click to expand...

Obviously entitled to your opinion. I'm obviously pro AWS, it has been a great experience using their services and I can't keep up with the innovation at all. It has been very lucrative for me managing my customers on AWS over the past 3 years. Clearly none of the concerns you have are not concerns of me and my customers. They either are already fully migrated to AWS or in the process of doing so.

AWS's innovation, breadth of services and features is by far outpacing all others, including MS.

Don't even get me started on AWS Lambda, by far one of the most interesting and innovative things I have ever seen. Link Lambda with AWS Alexa and it will blow your mind with the possibilities.

I'm just trying to clear some of the FUD and misconceptions people have, probably perpetuated by the legions of MS Sales Clones. I'm a linux guy, so yeah not a fan of MS.

Take that as my opinion, but I urge you to look at the facts listed above because from your comments there are some glaring omissions. MS is not the only player in town and by no means the leader. As the Gartner report says.

joeyhza said:
PS: I really didn't mean MWEB can offer a decent IAAS environment - Apologies for that. MWEB can't offer a decent 'ANYTHING'. Was merely a point to iterate how saturated the 'cloud offering' has become - especially locally. When companies like MWEB hop on to the bandwagon, and fails splendidly, it really taints the benefit of going the cloud route.
Click to expand...
Good there is no way I would consider MWEB to host anything.

I welcome your comments, admittedly I have ONLY ONCE logged into Azure so I cannot comment on the features and interface. I have only spoken to others who have used it and AWS and they prefer AWS too. All I can point to are that some of your assertions are false about AWS and recommend you give it another go.
 
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joeyhza said:
Well, firstly, AWS does NOT have a Hybrid Cloud Storage option which MS does in the form of Storsimple. Azure has API management and AWS does not. AWS seems more focused on IAAS - and IAAS on AWS seemed extremely limited and simplistic when I tryed it out, admittedly it was a while back. Also, if I recall Amazon pricing was more than Microsofts offering at the time.

Anybody can pretty much offer a decent IAAS experience. Even, dare i say it, MWEB. When their hosting environment isn't falling over I mean. But a true measurement of great service is how well it scales, and how effective it is to transition I think. Not to mention the ease of use and effective and proper hybrid operation.

Another key factor is quite simplistic in fact. would you rather deal with Microsoft, a technology that is prevalent in most on-prem environments, affording a seamless experience or deal with Amazon, a company that is best known for an online shopping portal?
As an analogy, I would never buy a Daewoo vehicle, because Daewoo, despite being pretty decent at consumer electronics, cars though...not so much. There certainly is a market though for Daewoo buyers just like there is a market for people taking up a service and putting their trust in a company that ultimately at the end of the day remains an online shopping platform.

Each to their own though - I have no doubt there are use cases where AWS would suit somebody just fine....me...not even close. And I havent even gone into the real true benefits, like Azures scalability options, guaranteed uptime, Regulatory compliances, ease of migration etc etc etc

Just my 2 cents - and I'm certain many will not share my opinion

PS: I really didn't mean MWEB can offer a decent IAAS environment - Apologies for that. MWEB can't offer a decent 'ANYTHING'. Was merely a point to iterate how saturated the 'cloud offering' has become - especially locally. When companies like MWEB hop on to the bandwagon, and fails splendidly, it really taints the benefit of going the cloud route.
Click to expand...

+1 I would say the best enterprise cloud option in general is Azure, it seems most clients are moving in that direction!
 
psypher246 said:
The API has existed since day one so not sure where you get the idea that it has no api management. Hell they even just released a service that lets you build your own APIs (http://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/)
Click to expand...

Thank you, I did not know about this. You just saved me at least a week's work on my current project and this will be much better than anything I can roll myself. :D
 
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