As some European countries lock down again to deal with their second wave of the pandemic, many South Africans are wondering whether this trend will occur on our shores in the near future, especially that the virus’s first-wave curve tended to lag Europe by a few months.
The truth is that the future is uncertain, says Lisa Strydom, manager of channels: Africa at Veeam. “In this environment we simply need to remain focused on opportunity and innovation. We must find new ways of working and this means we cannot sit back and take a ‘wait and see’ approach. Businesses need to be innovative in how they drive new business.
“We have seen a sharp uptake in our partner enablement programme, which indicates that upskilling to take advantage of the rapidly changing business environment is a priority. While we started this prior to lockdown, the drastic change in the business environment that has become the norm has added further fuel to the upskilling trend in the channel,” she says. “It’s a case of needing to stay relevant and competitive”.
Strydom says Veeam is actively encouraging its partners to accumulate points in this programme that they can eventually cash in, with the logic, says Strydom, of driving a behaviour change to reach a positive outcome for the partners and their customers. In essence, it is beefing up the entire ecosystem.
She adds that the year-on-year growth in their Veeam Cloud Service Provider Programme is testament to shifts occurring in the South African market. “We are seeing a growing appetite locally for a service model as opposed to buying an asset. While larger organisations, and those in highly regulated industries, have to own assets, a substantial number of businesses in the commercial space are moving to cloud and hybrid cloud models,” she says.
This trend has been a natural evolution, says Strydom, but businesses that were on the fence had their minds made up quickly by the pandemic. In addition to this, says Strydom, because of business uncertainty coupled with the need to keep the lights on, organisations need to carefully manage their spend, which makes outsourcing to a cloud service provider all the more attractive.
2021 and beyond
Strydom expects the trend of partners upskilling and customers investing in cloud service providers to continue, while a few other areas are likely to emerge as growth drivers.
“The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) is finally coming into force in 2021 and this provides a great opportunity for partners to add value to the South African market. From a Veeam perspective, how we address compliance and governance is a case of great foresight from the team that has been developing our platform over the years,” says Strydom.
Another trend likely to gather increased momentum in the new year is the need to secure data as remote working becomes a long-term reality. “It may not be in the news in every instance, but organisations of all sizes can be, and are being, hit by ransomware regularly, sometimes on a daily basis. There’s a great opportunity for the channel to make sure organisations understand how remote working opens them to the threat of ransomware, which speaks to the other trend of governance and compliance,” explains Strydom.
She says partners can look at these developments, in addition to the need for effective backup and recovery, and ask how they can find new ways to remain relevant and competitive.
“The answer is going to lie in evolving, learning new skills and pivoting as rapidly as the environment that organisations work in,” says Strydom. “Nobody expected to be hit by a pandemic, but we were and we are adapting, and now partners should ask: ‘how can I upskill and enable myself to become a trusted adviser with a finger firmly on the pulse?”