The pervasiveness of cloud offerings and the ubiquitous use of cloud in daily consumer life should prompt companies to use cloud services while reducing their internal costs of information technology (IT) systems and equipment, says global software giant Microsoft South Africa technology solution specialist Damian Nelson-Higley.

External cloud services enable companies to establish internal IT resources that meet the requirements of critical processes, and not of limited high-demand situations, in which case companies can use external cloud services when they need greater scale.

Cloud services, despite often being hosted in other territories, offer better user experiences than traditional IT systems, owing to processing being done on the data as it enters the service provider’s environment, while business applications and other commercial functions can be used without the need for companies to have the equipment internally, he says.

“Consumers and employees are used to accessing their information from the cloud anywhere at anytime and companies should not expect them to remain restricted to official communication media. They will find a way to use the types of services they are used to, and companies should rather enable them to use similar capabilities in a multichannel internal environment.

“The concept of ‘work is what I do, not where I am’ is also growing in importance, not only for mobile workers but also for executive-level staff and their teams. This trend reduces the need to have redundant end-point equipment in offices or extra internal storage and processing capacity that will not be used to full potential,” says Nelson-Higley.

Meanwhile, business-critical applications can be hosted in an external cloud because connectivity is robust, with four marine communication cables connecting South Africa and Africa to the rest of the world, providing multiple redundancies.

Experience is the most important measure of the success of applications and services. Even cloud data centres in other countries, such as Microsoft’s Office 365 and Azure data centres, in Ireland, provide superior customer experiences, he says.

“The slight increase in latency is overtaken by the processing that can be done on the data and the services that can be provided at a lower cost than internal systems and with guaranteed high service levels,” he emphasises.

Further, cloud services also enable companies to adopt new trends and business capabilities quicker and more easily, as new technologies will not require the acquisition and internal deployment of equipment, but can instead be assimilated as another facet of the cloud service.

Nelson-Higley concludes: “This is the power of the network. The sharing of documents in real time and collaboration regardless of location, as well as assessing and using new trends and technologies, become easy for companies to do on a rational, business-case basis.”

Nelson-Higley was a speaker at the South African Institution of Civil Engineering’s Civilution conference last month on IT in civil engineering.