Legacy information technology (IT) systems are becoming increasingly obsolete because of the maturity, efficiencies and cost effectiveness of cloud-based IT services, says information and communication technology major T-Systems subsidiary Intervate head Lionel Moyal.

Legal and regulatory hurdles have also been cleared, enabling local companies to use international or local cloud services to meet their requirements, he adds.

Software giant Microsoft South Africa product business lead Uriel Rootshtain notes that significant analytics and machine-learning capabilities can be deployed much more efficiently as cloud-based systems than as in-house systems.

Intelligence generated from these machine- learning systems can also easily be personalised for individuals, teams or various parts of the organisation. Such systems can also derive general information from third-party sources, including, for example, publicly available information from stock exchanges, industry bodies or industrial forums, besides others, he says.

“Some of these functions are only available in hyperscale public cloud environments. The computing resources required to do machine learning are significant and are often only viable as an engineering feat carried out at hyperscale.

“Thus, we are seeing a divergence in the capabilities and use of on-premise systems and cloud-based systems, though both retain their strategic, but differentiated, uses,” Rootshtain explains.

These considerations should be foremost considerations for companies planning their migration to cloud or even as considerations in a more general cloud strategy.

He emphasises that hybrid systems, comprising cloud services and on-premise systems, will remain the most dominant form of cloud strategy, as companies aim to draw value from their legacy systems and also often do not want to outsource some of their critical IT systems.

The movement of IT functions, processes or documents into and out of cloud services from the company’s on-premise systems will remain important, and Microsoft focuses on policies and governance to secure these movements.

“Companies can, thus, plan their migration to more cloud-based services with much more surety and visibility. Companies usually link movements to the cloud either to hardware replacement cycles or improving the efficiency of specific processes by moving them into cloud services.”

Another key consideration is the cost effectiveness of cloud-based systems, specifically of public cloud services, notes Moyal.

“IT costs and complexity are increasing, yet companies are expected to keep abreast of the trends while remaining agile, even though these are often contradictory demands.

“By outsourcing IT functions to cloud services providers, companies change their IT consumption model from one of reaction to pay for use.

“The cloud service providers are required to stay on top of IT trends to compete against other cloud service providers for business by providing up-to-date systems and services. Their customers gain a large measure of agility, as they can change, reduce or expand their consumption of cloud-based services as their business needs dictate,” concludes Moyal.