Given the current pandemic across the globe, internet use and technology in Africa is unsurprisingly on the rise. Fortunately, within the past decade, there’s been a ‘boom’ in technological infrastructure and its use by both businesses and their patrons. Cloud computing remains a key part in shaping how this trend continues to grow and impact Africa.

Even with a potential for business excellence, businesses in Africa are plagued with mitigating factors that limit their growth, a very common issue is limited financial resources. With at least 85% per cent of SMEs in this region suffering from lack of expansion and stunted business growth due to financial difficulty, the businesses must make cost-efficient decisions in their businesses.

Technology has taken the world a step closer to solving most of its major problems and providing quick solutions to many business challenges by improving efficiency, speed to market, inventory management, and reduced production costs. One of the successful inventions is ‘Cloud computing.

 

What Does it Mean For a Company to “Move to the Cloud”?

The explosion of data across the world has left a huge market for storage and hosting of the information in formats that are easily accessible on-demand, across any device and in any location. Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Before the emergence of cloud computing, data was usually stored on hardware such as laptops, desktops and hard drives meaning that companies had to make the heavy capital investment in purchasing required equipment, hiring skilled personnel to manage equipment, provide cooling, power and other backup services to support storage etc. Now, instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical storage systems and servers, African businesses can cut down spending by leveraging cloud services on an as-needed basis with the additional benefit of paying in local currency from a cloud provider like MainOne.

What’s especially useful about cloud computing is that companies or organisations don’t need to own computing infrastructure or data centres. Instead, they can rent access to storage and applications, among other things, from a cloud service provider. This allows them to get access to sophisticated capabilities on demand. And they don’t have to spend a great deal of money building and maintaining IT infrastructure on-site. Data accessibility from any part of the world by employees has provided a means for offices to go completely remote as employers and employees can access documents and worksheets on the go thus cutting down on costs such as transportation, rent, power etc.

Moving to the cloud removes the headaches and costs of maintaining IT systems and monitoring data security as most experienced cloud provider continually invests in the latest security technology, to not only  respond to potential threats but proactively protect your data from hackers.

Asides the financial advantages, Cloud computing provides the speed, scalability, and flexibility that enables businesses to develop, innovate, and expand quickly.

Ready to start your cloud journey?

MainOne Managed Cloud Service extends across every stage of your cloud journey as our certified cloud engineers are on hand 24/7/365 to advise, access, evaluate and deploy your solutions on various cloud platforms. We will manage your cloud utilization while you focus on your core business.