WATCH | Does a future-proofed business lie in the Cloud?

In a future determined by many variables, technology has become an elixir of sorts: a tonic that has allowed thousands of enterprises to pivot in a volatile climate with changing demands from customers, suppliers and business partners. 

Leaders who actively engage technology to accelerate their business goals have been building life-rafts to help their organisations weather the storms of threats unknown. Hybrid cloud computing, in particular, has come to the fore in keeping businesses sufficiently agile to stay afloat and on course.

Other than Bill Gates and the relatively small group of learned members of the international research community who held views that the next major threat to the global population would be viral in origin, there were few who took note and expected the rapid onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The ensuing global lockdowns have had an impact on the free movement of people and international trade, and highlighted the real urgency of preparing for disaster, particularly in business.

Organisations that were already committed to technology pre-Covid were undoubtedly those who secured themselves greater agility when the pandemic hit. Those further down the path of digital transformation were already working towards systems to facilitate secure, robust remote IT operations using a mix of on-premises data and public cloud accessibility: in other words, hybrid cloud solutions.

The recent “NTT Dimension Data 2021 Hybrid Cloud Computing” report engaged 950 business and IT leaders in 13 countries in five sectors. More than two-thirds of those leaders agreed that business agility and the ability to respond to change will be driving decision-making over the next 12 months, particularly in the face of the growing distributed workforce model with fewer people working from the office, and more working remotely and from home.

A few takeaways from the soon-to-be published report :

• More than two-thirds of business leaders believe improving business agility in response to change should be prioritised over the next 12 months.
• Two percent of organisations say they are struggling to keep up with compliance and security obligations.
• The biggest driver towards adopting hybrid cloud lies in reducing cost inefficiencies in IT operations.

The Dimension Data FutureProof series in association with Business Day Dialogues invites you to join Business Day and FM business writer Mudiwa Gavaza in a candid interview with Liberty CEO David Munro. Munro will share more about what Liberty is doing to promote resilience and agility in the business.

Our team of panelists will discuss their adoption of hybrid cloud solutions that have enabled accelerated innovation to sharpen their competitive edge and future-proof their businesses. The panel members are Dr Setumo Mohapi, chief go to market officer at Dimension Data: Middle East & Africa; Raymond van Dongen, global director: business IT at PayU; and Carl Snyman, principal solution architect at Acacia.

Date: Wednesday, April 21
Time: 10am — 11.30am

The series of FutureProof virtual sessions brings industry leaders together to share insights and practices that promote business readiness for an unpredictable future.