Alan Rehbock, sales director, sub-Saharan Africa at Exinda

Among Gartner’s top 10 technologies and trends it predicted would be strategic for most organisations in 2011, were cloud, mobility, social technology and analytics. iWeek spoke to some of the industry players to review the impact these technologies had on the local landscape.

Ubiquitous cloud

Not surprisingly, cloud computing featured prominently – both in predictions and in review. Results from the inaugural IP Expo Corporate Cloud Survey 2011, conducted by World Wide Worx, showed a marked trend towards cloud adoption in 2011. “Out of 100 large JSE-listed corporations that we interviewed, 46% are already using cloud computing,” said World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck. “Another 6% plan to introduce it next year, and another 4% the year after, so it will be close to 60% by 2013.”

Alan Rehbock, sales director, sub-Saharan Africa at Exinda, described cloud adoption as a key trend in the past year. “We have witnessed strong adoption not just from small and medium businesses, but also from enterprise-sized companies. Even though enterprise adoption of public clouds is still weak, I have seen a stronger adoption of private clouds. I believe that the enterprise path to public clouds is through the hybrid clouds, and I see this trend as encouraging for the future of public cloud services.

“Software as a service (SaaS) is growing. Just 6% of organisations implementing ERP were deploying SaaS options in 2009. However, this number nearly tripled to 17% in 2010. In addition to the 17% that deployed SaaS solutions, another 24% implemented ERP systems that are hosted off-site or in the cloud. In other words, nearly half of companies implementing new enterprise software are doing so in the cloud. Clearly, the trend toward SaaS and hosted ERP solutions is continuing.”

Not all peachy

Despite reported uptake, the year in cloud has not been all silver-linings. “Bandwidth, despite the connection of multiple undersea cables, is still a barrier to cloud computing,” said Chris Hathaway, director at Soarsoft Africa. “This is because the local loop has not been unbundled as yet, creating a single provider bottleneck.

“Hosted services in the cloud are more cost-effective for Gauteng-based customers,” he said, “while larger coastal companies insist on local data centres. This makes true public cloud services difficult to deliver in these regions.” Ryan Miles, COO at Itec, said the lack of bandwidth locally is a huge barrier to the success of cloud locally, and there’s more hype than true benefit. “Cloud should be offering cost savings, but it’s not. Additionally, there’s a sense of profiteering in the market, with resellers ‘cashing in’ on the media and marketing hype. Currently, the market is in a bit of a frenzy.”

Mobility

Ryan Miles

Whether via smartphones or tablets, 2011 saw a convergence of mobility and the Web. Magix Integration MD, Hedley Hurwitz, said the year saw an “unprecedented adoption of tablet computers – which accelerated the emphasis on mobile computing and raised challenges for data protection and continuous, uninterrupted access to content”.

Rehbock added: “There has been a significant increase in the use of mobile technologies that enable flexible, anywhere, anytime ability to work. This has generated huge value for all concerned, including clients requiring access to real-time data and turnaround times in minutes and hours instead of days.”

Elingo’s chief marketing and solutions officer, Karl Reed, described 2011 as the year of the tablet revolution. “Rival tablet brands entered the market, and now that the iPad is no longer the only player in the game, significant competition to that old bastion of mobility, the laptop, is in play. And, by almost all objective measures, the tablet wins the battle hands down,” he said. The array of mobile devices has given rise, in the past year, to a trend that has become known as bring your own device (BYOD), said Paul McKibbin, divisional MD of Jasco Carrier Networks.

“Consumers adapt to evolving technology at a far faster rate than the corporate environment does, and want to access Web 2.0 media. People want the network to follow them, providing the ability to work ‘on the fly’ using the same devices they use for personal consumption.

Mobile access

Winston Smith, MD for Alvarion SA, said the discounted prices seen by the market since the deployment of new submarine cables in 2010 and 2011 is one of the events that impacted the IT industry most in 2011. “In many markets, the cost of Internet backhaul has reduced by more than a third, with some markets, such as South Africa, as much as 50% reduction. In addition, this has resulted in increased Internet and broadband penetration in wireline and wireless markets within the regions affected by the added submarine capacity.

“A further benefit of the competition between the Internet backhaul providers has meant that operators have also started deploying fibre ring networks from the landing points of the cables, to spread the capacity within the cities. Thus, 2011 saw an increased penetration of broadband and high-bandwidth connectivity to the corporate and consumer markets in landlocked cities as well.”

Smith said the year was not a glowing one for ICASA and the Department of Communications, however: “They are often seen to be dragging their heels on the spectrum auction in the licensed 2.6GHz and 3.5GHz bands, preventing further competition in the market. This has a direct impact on the broadband penetration or lack thereof in this country, and with the change of minister recently announced, it is likely that 2012 may still not bring the desired changes so desperately needed.”

Getting social

Divided into networking, collaboration, publishing, and feedback, Gartner predicted an integration of social technologies with business applications by 2016.

“The strategic use of social media has expanded well beyond the regular daily use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube,” said Rehbock. “The reality is that social media has become completely pervasive in our society, and is a core component of business and marketing. It also requires robust networks to carry its increased usage.”

A Fuseware/World Wide Worx study, South African Social Media Landscape 2011, showed: “South Africans have embraced social media as a core pillar of Internet activity, along with e-mail, news and banking. MXit and Facebook lead the way in user numbers, while Twitter has seen the most dramatic growth in social networking in the past year, and BlackBerry Messenger is the fastest growing network in the second half of 2011.”

“The question of how many South Africans use each of the major social networks comes up so often, it became a priority for us to pin down the numbers,” said Michal Wronski, MD of information analyst Fuseware, and co-author of the report. An analysis of Fuseware’s extensive database of Twitter usage, in conjunction with World Wide Worx’s consumer market research, showed there were 1.1 million Twitter users in South Africa in mid-2011. This is a 20-fold increase in a little more than a year, he said.

Law

“Legislation is increasingly making an impact on organisations, forcing them to reassess their processes and procedures in an effort to reduce risk and increase transparency,” said Gary Alleman, senior consultant at Master Data Management. “This is evident with the introduction of Solvency II, the Consumer Protection Act as well as the Protection of Personal Information Bill. These acts have all required companies to reassess their data quality, making this no longer a nice-to-have, but rather a compliance issue.

“We’ve seen organisations spending an enormous amount of time and money on data governance. As organisations start to understand that IT risk is enterprise risk, data governance is no longer the concern of the financial industry alone. Business has progressed from asking ‘What is data governance?’ in 2010, to ‘How do we do it, and what are the data governance best practices?’ in 2011.”

A perhaps unexpected impact on the IT industry in terms of legislation has been the promulgation of the Consumer Protection Act, and the spin-off for smaller resellers. “Smaller players in the technology industry are struggling because of tighter lending requirements and tough new laws such as the Consumer Protection Act. Against this backdrop, only the most innovative small technology companies with compelling business models will be able to survive. As a result, there is a wave of consolidation that is reshaping the reseller channel,” said Itec’s Miles.

Security

Kaspersky Lab" rel=tag>Kaspersky Lab’s Global IT Security Risks Survey says 91% of companies globally have experienced an IT threat over the last 12 months. Over the period, 61% of the attacks were due to malware infection, 48% of companies have noticed an increase in the number of cyber attacks, and 30% of companies have lost critical business data.

“2011 was not, by any means, a boring year,” said Kaspersky Lab’s Christian Funk. “Increasingly, the last 12 months was marked by an increase in attacks on certification authorities.

“By attacking the authorities, cyber criminals gained access to legitimate signatures and certificates. This tactic has become a common practice this year – and it has allowed cyber criminals to sign their evil creations with legitimate signatures, which bypass AV programs, as they are seen as legitimate and clean.”

Additionally, the explosion of tablet computers and other mobile devices has changed the security industry landscape “dramatically”, he said. “One year ago, we saw 30 new malicious centres for mobile platforms. This year, more than 850 malicious centres have been registered. The SMS Trojan is almost exclusive to 2011. More and more, the mobile phone is becoming the platform to target, as these devices hold more sensitive information.”

Cyber criminals, said Funk, are pushing hard to make malware more effective, efficient, and more complex. “From 2005 to 2009, it was all about quantity, with malware instances almost doubling every year. In 2010, this stopped, and we have seen the quality of these attacks improving.”

And, concluded Jasco’s McKibbin, as the BYOD trend picks up, so business’s concern about security will spike. “With all of these various devices running different operating systems and software, all connected to the corporate network, control can prove difficult and can leave the wireless network open to outside attack.