Burgeoning demand for virtualised IT in Africa

"We're seeing major demand for green-fields virtualisation in Africa," said Halsted. "Financial institutions launching retail banking services, for example, don't have decades' worth of old systems and design to accommodate - so they are able to make the most of all the benefits of virtualisation. It gives them a huge cost advantage."

Halsted said that lack of connectivity is no longer a major obstacle. "There is still some instability, but it's a lot better than it was. Things are workable. International bandwidth is available and there is a lot of competition in the market for last-mile service providers."

Extra needs for data protection and back-up

Warren Olivier, territory manager of back-up and replication software vendor Veeam, said that most of these businesses are working across borders, which creates extra needs for data protection and back-up. "It's very typical to find a company that is headquartered in, say, Botswana, with operations in Uganda and Nambia, and infrastructure housed in South Africa. From both a compliance and an operational point of view, they need to be very rigorous about protecting all their data and systems."

"Veeam is a critical part of the service we provide to our customers," said Halsted. "Protecting their data and enabling business continuity is just part of it - we're also seeing Veeam being used in development and test environments."

Olivier explained that a Veeam back-up of a virtual machine can be copied just like any other file, and that a virtual machine can be restored from back-ups within a couple of minutes. "It provides a quick-and-easy way for software development teams to make and test system changes without posing any risk to operations," he said.

Halsted said that because virtual environments can be managed remotely, clients are able to take advantage of a global skills and resource base. "We can have a development team in India, working on a system in Joburg that's supporting a business in Kampala," he said. "It's easy to add new virtual machines, allocate extra storage or processing power or restore from a back-up when a developer's code causes system issues - all without any risk to the business."