Market Conditions

The IT landscape as we know it is changing. The traditional servers, storage and software are in the process of rapidly becoming outdated as hardware and software morph into the provisioning of services in the cloud. There's a good chance you've already used some form of cloud computing. If you have an e-mail account with a web-based email service like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, then you've had some experience with cloud computing. The software and storage for your account doesn't exist on your computer -- it's on the service's computer cloud.

Cloud gives businesses and users the ability to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. The results can have dramatic effects on business profitability. Instead of significant capital expenditure upfront, which can have a negative impact on cash flow, the business model shifts to a monthly operational expenditure model, not only working out cheaper, but smoothing cash flow too. Efficiencies are further improved through multiple-user provisioning, essentially portioning out services and storage where they are needed most.

Naturally the market shift to the cloud will not happen overnight. Although on the rapid rise, there is still much money in traditional forms of software and hardware. When adopting cloud services, resellers need to realise that it may take some time to start realising a profit from cloud services and must make plans to manage this accordingly.

CBS Africa offers consulting services to help manage this change in business operations to a predominantly cloud-based environment and the resultant shifts in the revenue flow. Changing one’s business model to incorporate a new technology can be a dramatic shift and CBS Africa wants to help put in place procedures and practices to minimise the negative effects and maximise the positive ones.

The growth of cloud over the last few years has been phenomenal, and has seen an accompanying massive shift towards cloud technologies within the IT industry. Gartner predicts continued strong growth in public cloud services, with end-user spending on public cloud services likely to hit a global figure of $180 billion by 2015. It clearly pays to be a part of the move towards cloud, and CBS Africa is well-positioned to enable your business to ride this new wave of profitability.