Throughout 2023, a major trend was picked up among West African enterprises that saw businesses commencing with their IT workload modernisation plans and working to become “cloud-first”.
Up until then, many companies – specifically those that had not yet adopted cloud computing or fully migrated to cloud environments – had been cautious.
Regulatory uncertainty and concerns about future availability influenced this cautious approach, as they worried about the potential impact on their infrastructure and operations.
But now, thanks to the work of hyperscalers and other local providers, the cloud is closer and more viable for businesses than ever before.
Updating your enterprise IT to support and help realise your organisation’s current and future goals is no simple task.
It’s not a case of simply picking up your applications and dropping them into a new environment; moving away from a legacy platform to a more optimised and modernised one can have significant consequences for your overall infrastructure. And so, it’s worth reminding ourselves about what that journey entails.
Going “cloud-first”
According to research by McKinsey, while Africa’s cloud market is relatively small compared to other markets, its adoption rate is on par with the likes of North America and China.
A survey of African executives reveals that almost a fifth of their companies have all their workloads in some sort of cloud environment, with many of them being in the public cloud.
In West Africa specifically, cloud adoption is driven by multiple factors, most notably changing customer needs, new models of working and, importantly, a growing ecosystem of hyperscalers and system integrators who can help businesses migrate to the cloud.
For many businesses, becoming “cloud-first” is the ultimate goal. The strategy is two-fold: moving all or most of your infrastructure to the cloud, and prioritising cloud offerings when organisations want to start a new project or solve a problem. That being said, no organisation can become cloud-first overnight, nor is every organisation right for the strategy due to issues ranging from security and compliance to skills gaps and costs.
Any move towards becoming cloud-first requires a comprehensive and well-planned application modernisation process.
Trust the process
First and foremost, modernisation should be spread out across multiple phases. Organisations need to choose which applications to prioritise when moving to a hybrid cloud setup, thus not disrupting any existing workloads that are still on-premise.
The next step is simplifying application deployment and management through containerisation. By encompassing the entire application, containers enable organisations to consistently test and deploy while reducing costs and operational complexity.
Additionally, organisations should extend the capabilities of their applications to all developers using application programming interfaces (APIs). That way, they are made available across all cloud environments.
Enterprises may be wondering how best to take care of legacy applications that began life on-premise. The answer lies with microservices and using them to break down monolithic applications into deployable parts with individual functions. That way, developers can work on those parts without compromising overall functionality.
Microservices also form the basis for new, cloud-native applications and lower the always-on risks associated with development.
In countries like Nigeria, where businesses face stiff competition and challenging market conditions, companies need enhanced agility and to be able to respond to customers’ needs and market opportunities.
Taking the hybrid route
Discussions surrounding modernisation are inextricably linked to the hybrid cloud as the strategy remains the most popular and optimal for businesses.
Hybrid architectures provide the best of both worlds, offering the flexibility and scalability organisations need to grow their operations and infrastructure.
Hybrid cloud platforms equip businesses with a unified software foundation for their infrastructure and applications.
They enable applications and workloads to be moved effortlessly across cloud environments and offer integrated developments and operational capabilities that are essential for streamlined application deployment and management.
Crucially, hybrid platforms let an organisation transform at its own pace, giving you breathing room to outline and execute your modernisation plan meticulously.
Modernisation is not a journey businesses need to travel alone. With the help of infrastructure partners, they can receive the guidance they need and establish the systems they need to develop and deploy new, cloud-native applications.
