AWS and Microsoft Azure shook up hosting in South Africa
The arrival of cloud computing services such as AWS and Microsoft Azure in South Africa has profoundly impacted businesses and the local hosting market.
One of the key reasons for this is how easily companies can use cloud services without the technical knowledge needed to build and maintain such complex systems themselves.
Absolute Hosting managing director Jade Benson said it’s adapt-or-die for South Africa’s hosting companies.
However, he also said their shared hosting services had not been affected by the arrival of international cloud platforms in South Africa, as they offer clients a simple product aimed explicitly at the .za namespace.
“Clients don’t require the skillset, software, and licensing required to deploy simple online services such as WordPress hosting, email hosting, and domain registration,” Benson stated.
While basic shared hosting services may have been relatively insulated from the rise of cloud computing, platforms like AWS and Azure have come to dominate in larger enterprises due to their business benefits.
In 2022, the International Data Corporation ran a survey of 106 South African chief information and technology officers, of which 70% said public cloud applications are essential for their organisation’s technological transformation.
80% also said cloud-based solutions had helped their organisation maintain operations during Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.
Vodacom managing executive for cloud, hosting, and security Kabelo Makwane said these statistics were not surprising.
“This is in line with our assertions several years ago when we embraced cloud hosting and anticipated that more organisations would adopt the technology to accelerate their digital transformation journeys,” Makwane told MyBroadband.
Makwane said the arrival of international cloud services aided the evolution of Vodacom Business from a telco to a technology company.
Vox cloud division head Barry Kemp said they have also been evolving their services and started offering multi-cloud products, including virtual data centre cloud facilities.
Kemp said that connecting different cloud platforms is the key to success in this area.
“The other key change has been the upskilling of staff across multiple cloud solutions to be able to offer turnkey solutions to customers.”
Kemp said the arrival of platforms like AWS and Microsoft Azure presented opportunities for local providers and South African businesses to use technologies previously out of reach.
“Platforms, products, and services that help customers to scale, pivot and innovate their businesses are now readily available,” he said.
“Local providers have quickly upskilled to build, provision and support a wide range of services delivered both internationally as well as locally hosted.”
According to Benson, companies that do not evolve with the times may be left behind as increased adoption of cloud computing services is a certainty.
“I suspect that hosts who have not invested in deploying their own cloud services that can compete with these major companies are seeing an exodus to a certain degree,” Benson said.
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