In recent years, digitization in Africa has gained significant momentum with various initiatives to enhance the region’s digital transformation and economic growth. The African Union launched its Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020-2030) with the intention of creating a secure digital market by 2030. The Eastern Africa Regional Digital Integration Project (EARDIP) is a transformative initiative to enhance access and economic growth in the East African region.
With such and more initiatives, the continent’s digital transformation is accelerating. However, African businesses still operate in a distinct environment with unique infrastructure challenges and opportunities. Factors including power reliability, internet connectivity, and varying regulatory frameworks across the region create a complex decision-making landscape for IT infrastructure choices.
As African organizations strive to strengthen their global presence while optimizing performance, cost-effectiveness, and scalability, they must carefully weigh the primary deployment models: on-premise, cloud and hybrid. Understanding the characteristics and benefits of each model, identifying the types of companies best suited for a specific model, and evaluating the key factors in establishing a robust IT infrastructure are critical steps in this process.
In this comprehensive guide, Victoria Kleinbort, Country Manager for Kenya at Servercore provides valuable insights to help organizations strategically navigate these critical IT infrastructure model decisions.
Before Making a Choice
Selecting an IT infrastructure model is a strategic decision that hinges on the company’s vision for future growth and the capacities required at different stages. However, this decision-making process can be streamlined by addressing a few key questions beforehand.
- Does the company face industry-specific regulatory requirements?
The reason for this is that data residency laws are prevalent in Africa.
In Kenya, the Data Protection Act (DPA) protects personal data and directs that controllers and processors handle such data following specific local requirements. For example, under Section 50 of the Act, any personal data processing based on “strategic interests of the state” must be processed using servers or data centers in Kenya or have at least one backup copy stored in a Kenyan data center.
The Act also indicates that data localization requirements apply to critical sectors, including data processing in revenue management, national civil registration systems, population registry and identity management, education, electronic payment systems management, and health and critical infrastructure to enhance security and compliance with local laws.
To comply with the law, Kenyan-based organizations need to work with local infrastructure providers with data centres in Kenya.
- Are there any cloud compatibility requirements for the software used by the company?
Cloud requirements for a Kenyan company’s software are critical because a specific application may have technical or licensing limitations concerning its operation within cloud environments. While some applications may need particular configurations or updates, others might not support cloud deployment.
Evaluating software’s cloud compatibility ensures alignment with the existing IT infrastructure, maximizes benefits, minimizes disruptions, and helps avoid hidden costs.
- Is there a sufficient budget to establish an on-premise infrastructure that ensures minimal downtime during incidents?
Typically, on-premises setups require significant hardware, maintenance, and skilled personnel investments. Without adequate budget resources, companies risk prolonged downtimes, disrupted operations, impacting productivity, which leads to revenue losses.
Thus, it’s essential to allocate a budget in advance for projected infrastructure costs and potential risks.
- What are the costs associated with unused resources?
Unused resources can significantly impact a company’s overall IT budget and efficiency.
With on-premises infrastructures, unused resources, such as idle servers or overprovisioned storage, lead to wasted capital expenditure. Unlike on-premises setup, a cloud model allows businesses to pay only for the resources they utilize, allowing for rapid infrastructure scaling as demand increases, saving cloud costs.
Understanding the costs of unused resources helps organizations avoid overspending. It also encourages efficient resource allocation and ensures IT infrastructure remains cost-effective.
- Are appropriate IT specialists available on staff?
Depending on specific needs, having more than one team of technical experts may be necessary. The success of an IT infrastructure depends on skilled personnel who can manage, maintain, and troubleshoot the system. Without the right IT staff, organizations risk inefficiencies and prolonged downtime. Ensuring the availability of skilled IT specialists helps maintain smooth operations, optimize performance, and support strategic growth.
- Are spikes in resource consumption anticipated?
Spikes occur during seasonal sales or from temporary requirements for cloud services to handle specific tasks. If not planned, spikes can lead to higher-than-expected costs.
Predicting resource spikes allows organizations to choose an infrastructure model that can handle variability efficiently, ensuring performance continuity, cost control, and a seamless user experience during high-demand periods.
Once these considerations have been addressed, businesses can move forward in evaluating potential models, whose features we will explore below.
Building an On-Premise Infrastructure
The on-premise approach is often regarded as traditional—an organization builds and relies on its local infrastructure, data storage and processing resources. Implementation scenarios vary based on the size of the business.
If a company intends to establish its own server site, it must independently purchase and configure the necessary equipment while allocating a substantial budget for the project.
Typically, on-premise models are favored by companies in sectors requiring stringent regulatory compliance. Smaller businesses may opt for this model if they only need a few servers to support their website and CRM systems.
In contrast, larger enterprises have historically built their infrastructure on-premise. However, a recent trend in the enterprise segment has emerged, wherein many companies opt to partially or fully outsource their infrastructure maintenance to specialized service providers due to the evolution of the global cloud market.
To create and maintain an in-house server site, it is essential to assemble a team of highly qualified specialists, including procurement staff, server and network maintenance engineers, and experts for configuring virtual machines and databases. Additionally, special attention must be dedicated to ensuring data storage and processing security while regulating equipment access.
Companies planning local infrastructure may also encounter inefficiencies related to the utilization of computing power, as resources are frequently only utilized at 60-70% capacity. Such firms also have the option to rent racks or dedicated spaces in a provider’s data center. In this scenario, companies procure the necessary equipment and manage its maintenance.
The servers are housed in a specialized room, where the service provider ensures external security through 24/7 surveillance, video monitoring, and maintaining specific conditions and microclimate, as well as protecting against power outages.
The Cloud Path for Business
Cloud infrastructure consists of a collection of remotely accessible computing resources. These include dedicated servers, virtual machines, containers, storage solutions, and other services. These enterprise-ready-made solutions from cloud providers allow businesses to host and develop their IT infrastructures such as the following:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Companies can quickly access computing resources—either dedicated or cloud servers—to host their IT projects and install any required software and applications. Businesses select the most suitable IaaS solution based on their specific tasks and workloads.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): Companies receive a fully developed platform and solutions for service development and testing. Startups and small businesses seeking to rapidly bring digital products to market often utilize PaaS to accelerate application development and deployment without the need to hire additional highly skilled IT professionals. Conversely, larger companies view platform services as an effective means to manage processes, optimize operational costs, and swiftly test product hypotheses.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): Companies pay solely for the provider’s services, allowing them to use the software for their needs. Customizing SaaS solutions can be challenging, as integration is typically limited to APIs. Nevertheless, this often represents the optimal choice for small businesses, eliminating the need to assemble their own development teams and build platforms from scratch.
A McKinsey survey says many African technology leaders have shifted about 45% of their workloads to the public cloud environment through IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions.
Currently, the cloud model offers an excellent option for dynamic business projects that do not rely on legacy systems and seek rapid product evolution. These companies appreciate that cloud servers can be launched in seconds and facilitate easy infrastructure scaling when necessary.
For large enterprises, time to market is critical. Building IT infrastructure is generally not a primary focus for these organizations. By outsourcing this function to a provider, companies can concentrate on developing core products and enhancing business efficiency.
Cloud infrastructure also supports companies aiming to expand beyond their regional or national boundaries. In such cases, they can rent the provider’s capacity, launch their services, and avoid the time-consuming process of purchasing and setting up their equipment in new locations.
On the contrary, long-established companies with extensive legacy systems may find migrating their infrastructure to the cloud financially and labour-intensive. This transition can take six months to a year; not all companies are prepared to undertake this journey.
The Hybrid Approach
A company with a hybrid IT infrastructure combines cloud services from specialized providers and its on-premise IT infrastructure. It may involve multiple providers with established communication channels to integrate different infrastructure segments.
The decision to adopt a hybrid infrastructure is driven by the desire to accelerate time-to-market and minimize challenges associated with equipment procurement. The primary advantage of the hybrid model lies in its ability to blend the best features of cloud services and on-premises infrastructure within a unified IT landscape. This approach enables businesses to store various data types efficiently, reduce costs, and scale effortlessly. Organizations can select the most suitable environment for each task and rapidly adjust computing power as needed.
Additionally, the popularity of the hybrid model continues to grow due to its efficient distribution of workloads. When properly designed, this type of IT infrastructure organization is the most disaster-resistant, enabling key IT services to operate in the cloud even if a server or server cluster fails. In fact, due to challenges such as unreliable infrastructure and regulatory challenges faced by many African businesses, there’s a high interest and projected growth of the hybrid model in the region.
Companies frequently use cloud services to test new product hypotheses while allowing their core business processes to continue functioning on their on-premise hardware. This approach accelerates market adoption and requires minimal investment, as utilizing a cloud provider is significantly more cost-effective and faster than purchasing hardware, which can take months for delivery.
Another common application of hybrid infrastructure is establishing a backup site at an external data center to enhance system reliability. Some companies prefer to retain backups at their facilities while migrating their primary operating systems to a cloud provider, often offering superior scalability. In such cases, multi-cloud is a popular option, where multiple providers back up IT systems simultaneously.
To ensure the security of hybrid cloud solutions, customers must consider several factors. The most vulnerable points in hybrid clouds are often endpoint devices, as they connect to the same network, which can be susceptible to hacking. To safeguard communication between local infrastructure and cloud servers, some providers offer secure dedicated communication lines that are not connected to the Internet or provide encrypted connections using certified equipment. Additionally, businesses can strengthen protection by implementing supplementary security software and utilizing firewalls.
Cloud providers also routinely monitor their infrastructure to identify and address potential vulnerabilities to minimise the risk of incidents.
Conclusion
For African businesses, choosing between on-premises, cloud, or hybrid IT infrastructure models is not universal—every business is unique. Additionally, each model presents specific characteristics and challenges that must be evaluated against individual business needs, conditions and objectives, regulatory requirements, technical requirements, and other factors.
Implementing any of the above strategies requires comprehensive planning and ongoing maintenance to increase computing power and infrastructure stability as well as reduce risks while maintaining cost efficiency.
Organizations should focus on developing flexible, scalable and cost-effective systems that align with their business objectives while meeting the unique challenges of operating in the African market and modern technological capabilities.