Migration to cloud will grow - Amazon

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Developers had spent a great deal of time and energy over the past 10 years exploring whether companies and governments would use the cloud for mission-critical applications, as well as convincing them they could, Jassy said at Amazon Web Services's re:Invent conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

"A whole generation of builders will emerge who are not wasting energy on that, but using all their time and capabilities to build businesses we've never imagined, and transforming the customer experience among existing businesses," Jassy said.

Cloud computing refers to the use of an internet platform for database storage, IT services and applications.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in the US, the largest independent securities industry regulator in the world, completed the move of its market surveillance system from private data centres to a public cloud in July. Several thousand members of the financial services industry were attending the conference, Jassy said.

Over the past two to three years, this and industries such as healthcare had adopted a more open approach to cloud-based services. "All of these companies want to take advantage of the capabilities that everyone else can."

On the sidelines of the event, WorldWideWorx MD Arthur Goldstuck said SA was behind countries such as Kenya and Nigeria with cloud migration. "Companies in those countries are driven [to cloud adoption] by the unreliability of infrastructure and power supply," he said.

Since SA's infrastructure was more stable, there was less of an incentive. "A lot of companies remain in a comfort zone, whereas there's no comfort zone in other African countries."

Yet the cloud offered huge cost savings and speed advantages, Goldstuck said.

"As soon as companies see their cloud-embracing competitors racing ahead of them, there's going to be crisis management – rather than a steady migration – to get into the cloud."

Source: Business Day