4 technology trends shaping the future of business in South Africa
Technology is an ever-evolving landscape as digital enablement continues to dominate and organisations continue to leverage networking capabilities to access local and global growth opportunities.
Here are four technology trends that organisations should be aware of for 2022 and beyond:
Trend #1: The hybrid cloud environment
IT infrastructure is moving from a multi cloud to a hybrid cloud environment. It’s therefore critical for organisations to gain visibility of their hybrid estate and understand the characteristics of the ideal deployment model for each workload.
Organisations will need the right tools, processes, and skills to architect, migrate, and manage the hybrid infrastructure that houses business applications. In addition, they need to define an approach to harness the data created by infrastructure, and access intelligence and possible opportunities in an agile environment across multiple platforms. They’ll also need to address new security challenges. This level of skills, expertise, technology, and real estate required is a huge investment if undertaken alone.
Trend #2: Compliance is critical
Organisations face a growing number of regulatory compliance obligations around energy consumption and sustainability. These increasing obligations have led to the enhanced adoption of wholesale and colocation services. The advantages of a sustainable data centre include cost reductions, a reduced carbon footprint as a result of the use of energy efficient power systems and buildings, as well as reducing the cost of power and cooling.
Trend #3: Infrastructure must be secure by design
Security and compliance become central to infrastructure design. Looking at all the trends affecting the infrastructure environment, we can expect to see greater collaboration between infrastructure designers and providers, and security practitioners. Organisations need to be aware of the myriad security risks inherent in their infrastructure so they can build in the right controls from the start. Adopting a ‘built-in’ instead of a ‘bolt-on’ approach will ensure that infrastructure is secure by design.
Trend 4: Connectivity at the edge
To fully leverage the benefit of new connectivity options, you need the right underlying management platforms and processes to deal with multiple connectivity technologies. Focusing on your SD-WAN strategy, software-defined access, and intent-based networking will help drive more agility in how you upgrade your infrastructure as and when technologies like 5G and Wi-Fi 6 become mainstream.
Staying ahead of technology trends
The volume of data pouring into data centres continues to climb, driven by ever greater connectivity demands and accelerating cloud adoption. This is fast-tracking the need for businesses to rethink their ability to evolve their physical layer infrastructure in the data center, which will ultimately be the key to keeping pace (and outstripping) competitors thanks to low latency, high-bandwidth, and reliable connectivity.
NTT launches Johannesburg 1 Data Center: more than a data centre
Johannesburg 1, is NTT’s premiere Data Centre in Africa. Combining tailored, localised experience with the power of NTT’s global expertise, Johannesburg 1 is a carrier-neutral, connectivity-rich, retail, wholesale, and hyperscale data centre that connects to a local and global network, providing a scalable and resilient platform wherever you need it.
Success is in the details
Power: Guaranteed 99.999%+ availability as standard SLA. Greater than N+1 redundancy
Cooling: Highly efficient cooling systems, specifically for ICT equipment with N+1 or 2N redundancy
Security: Secure environments accredited to ISO 27001, ISAE3402/SSAE16 as well as many other international and regional certifications, including DIN ISO EN 9001 and PCI-DSS
Space: Scalable to any size or shape — from single rack colocation to customised shell
and core buildings
To discover how the Johannesburg 1 Data Center will change the way South Africa does business and the extensive solutions available to businesses, download the white paper, reach new heights by accessing Africa’s most advanced interconnected data centre platform, here.
