By Kathy Gibson – Technology trends over the last couple of years have fundamentally changed the way data centres are deployed and used.
Cloud computing has become an entrenched part of business computing, while edge deployments are driving new architectures and use cases.
And, as the latest shift to using artificial intelligence (AI) gains ground, we are going to see still more – and more radical – changes in the data centre environment as vendors look to new ways of powering and cooling their systems.
Underpinning all the technology shifts is the ongoing cybersecurity risk, which is becoming more pervasive and costly.
What’s happening in Africa?
Global trends indicate that hybrid cloud is becoming the de facto choice for organisations. And, while companies in South Africa and Africa will undoubtedly take note of this trend, our uptake of it will almost certainly be patchy.
Debbie Beech, country manager: South Africa and SADC at Exclusive Networks, says hybrid cloud rather than a move to pure public cloud makes sense for enterprises as application requirements and regulations around data sovereignty laws become more complex.
But there is also a clear trend towards cloud repatriation, she adds. “Repatriation has accelerated as more business would rather own the underlying asset and manage associated data centre costs.
“These businesses are also starting to spend with intelligence, researching the true cost of public cloud versus hybrid or private.”
Craig Brunsden, MD of Axiz, thinks we will see a sustained move to hybrid cloud eventually, but it may take longer than we expect.
“We believe hybrid cloud is a trend, and it’s how the market will go,” Brunsden says. “Right now, in South Africa, we are seeing some customers moving to cloud, some still on-premise, and others that have gone into the public cloud and then come back to private cloud.”
The move to hybrid cloud is being driven by a couple of factors, he adds, including “born-in-the-cloud” organisations that have never run their own on-premise systems.
While cloud adoption is gaining traction in South Africa, it’s not as widespread in the rest of Africa, Brunsden says.
This can be attributed partly to those geographies being slightly behind the technology curve, but is more likely a result of data sovereignty and data residency concerns. “In these instances, on-premise solutions are still finding traction.”
Once these issues are resolved – most likely when in-country hyperscaler data centres are established – cloud adoption will almost certainly increase, Brunsden says.
South Africa is, without doubt, where the cloud action is, says Jon Abbott, technologies director: global strategic clients at Vertiv. “It’s where the lion’s share of the continent’s economy is and there are already a number of data centres in South Africa.”
With the availability of resources, businesses are able to develop hybrid cloud solutions that let them run sensitive or timely information and workloads on-premise, with the rest running in the cloud.
Abbott thinks the hype around artificial intelligence (AI) will probably drive more hybrid cloud adoption in time. “AI is still a bit of a catchphrase on the continent, but it will happen. No, it’s not happening as yet, but once the infrastructure is built we will see an uptake.
“I think we will see pockets of AI early adopters who run large-scale data centres and, as the cloud players move into that space, they will offer a hybrid cloud arrangement as well.”
As an interesting aside, Abbott explains that the main use case for AI in the US and Europe is healthcare, but in Africa it will most likely be for food security and agriculture.
Whatever the application, a lot more investment is going to be needed in both on-premise and cloud data centres on the continent to make AI a reality, he adds.
“But this way Africa gets to learn from the rest of the world – you don’t have to be an early adopter, but can pick and choose from what others have done and select the best solutions.
“The potential is there, the question is what the pace of change will be.”
Abbot agrees that the main issue holding back hybrid cloud opportunities are data privacy and sovereignty. “Theoretically, each country in southern Africa will need to have their own hyperscaler data centre to overcome these issues.
“So on-premise computing still has legs in Africa, and our solution portfolio reflects that.”
But as businesses move to hybrid cloud – as they are doing in South Africa – there are various opportunities for reseller partners to add value. “The opportunity lies with the standardised solutions that are available, where resellers can take the on-premise requirement and build it into standardised modules that fit all types of enterprises, of all sizes.
Data centre trends
When it comes to on-premise data centre technology, the technology is moving at pace, and we are seeing a number of significant new trends emerging.
Beech points out that the modern high performance compute environment has evolved rapidly and is no longer as simple as adding servers where needed. “Today, it is a race to the highest rack density on compute at the lowest power and cooling costs,” she says.
With AI being top of mind for many businesses, the reality is that few of them are going to have access to the compute power needed to run these applications. “The demand for the technology that can run AI applications is driving waiting periods of up to a year for certain GPU components,” she says.
“In addition, the incredibly high wattage used to run the clusters requires highly specialised cooling, interconnect, and networking technology.”
Brunsden agrees that AI won’t be driving change in data centres for a while yet. “It will come, but not at the moment.”
Issues around cooling are current in the global space, especially as AI becomes more widespread. “But, in the local context, issues like cooling are most often outsourced to the co-location data centres like Teraco, Africa Data Centre, Liquid Telecom, and others,” Brunsden says.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) compliance is a requirement in theory, but not necessarily seen in practice, he adds. “We are seeing ESG being adopted in isolated instances, but local companies have not really embraced it. The social and governance portion of it is well understood in terms of BEE frameworks, but we are not seeing much movement on the environmental side of ESG.”
Abbott, whose company Vertiv is intimately involved in building and commissioning data centres, believes South African implementations are closely mirroring what we see on the international stage.
“For instance, energy is a big issue around the world. And it’s particularly relevant in the Africa context where energy scarcity is a lived reality. This ties in with the global trend to decarbonisation,” he points out.
Data centre densification is another trend that’s taking off around the globe, and which is almost diametrically opposed to the desire to use less power.
Abbott explains that the industry has been steadily driving down energy requirements, which are now at about 20kw or less for about 75% of the racks deployed today.
“But that is going to rise,” he says. “When we talk about AI, we are talking about up to 140kw per rack. And the technology required to extract the heat that creates is huge.”
While some vendors are looking to liquid cooling for its efficiency, Abbot says Vertiv is inclining to further densification by bringing cooling closer to the source of the heat.
“Cooling is a big topic at the moment because it is really just waste – using energy to get rid of heat – and so there are many developments going on in this area.”
Another big trend in the data centre environment is automation. “Any way of making the network or the factory more efficient is a good thing,” Abbott says.
With skills and resources shortages a constant global issue, schools and universities are just not providing the new skills sets for the digital economy as quickly as they are needed.
“The manual jobs are rapidly disappearing and we are struggling to reskill people for the digital jobs,” Abbott says. “In the meantime, organistions are automating as much as possible.”
The reseller opportunity
“For resellers, this is a huge opportunity,” Abbott adds.
To remain ahead in a constantly changing market, reseller partners should be nurturing their relationships and local knowledge in the market, he says.
“Customers have an ocean of software and hardware choices to make for whatever technology direction they move in. They are going to turn to the reseller to help with those choices.
“For the vendors, resellers have a reach that they don’t have – especially in Africa – so the resellers’ interpersonal relationships and local knowledge are invaluable.”
Brunsden believes there is big reseller opportunity in services: first of all in migration services and later in management services and security services
“On the one hand there is a risk that the channel becomes disintermediated as customers move to the cloud,” he muses. “But there are still skills required – and often the customer doesn’t have these skills. So resellers, with their services offering and skills, can help customers with the migration journey, and the cloud architecture, and later with hybrid cloud management using some of the new tools that are available.”
Moving to the cloud is not a simple process: there is a tremendous amount of technical complexity involved – and many organisations don’t have the skills they need, Brunsden points out.
“For instance, billing can be a major challenge for customers, so resellers can add value by advising them on which workloads to run in the cloud and in finding the most cost-effective instances.
“The costs associated with public cloud can quickly run away if they are not managed properly, and reseller partners are in a good position to offer the skills to do that.”
Resellers can also add value through data skills. “And security is a huge concern, which will only get bigger.”
Beech agrees that services are paramount for resellers.
“The migration to a hybrid environment allows the customer to purchase bespoke solutions that are a perfect fit to their current requirements, rather than a ‘one size fits all’ solution from a cloud service provider.
“Most of the public cloud providers have incredibly complex billing systems based in foreign currency and customers must pay excessive penalties to remove their data from these environments,” she adds.
The networking paradigm
As fundamental technology changes impact the data centre, the network is changing too.
“The world is changing, and so is communication,” says Beech. “We are seeing a greater requirement for strong compute at the edge. Gone are the days of large batch transfers from an edge or remote device to a core system. Newer edge technology allows for enterprise-grade compute to be deployed in very small footprints at the edge of the harshest of environments.”
There is a lot of competition in the networking environment, some of it from non-traditional players, Brunsden points out.
“For instance, the telcos are starting to position themselves as network service providers direct to customers,” he says.
Arguably the biggest trend in the networking space is security, as the threat landscape shifts to the network and to companies’ data. “The network is under increasing attack and the industry as a whole is having to come up with solutions for customers,” says Brunsden.
“You can see how important it is by the actions of some of the biggest IT vendors – Cisco has bought Splunk, HPE has acquired Juniper, and the list goes on.
“The aim is to embed security into the network making the system secure by design.”
Overall, reseller partners are having to develop new and specialist skills, Brunsden says. “Partners are going to be the ones having to ensure that customers’ networks are secure and securely managed.”