Kathy Gibson reports – Covid-19 has driven a paradigm shift in how business uses technology, which is now relied upon to drive businesses.
Abdul Moosa, Chief Technology Officer of CoCre8 Technology Solutions, explains that business is no longer siloed, but rather working collaboratively, while customer engagement today is largely online.
This means that many of the technology issues that were important in the past are today largely irrelevant.
The focus today is about analysing data, and monetising information, he says. “But, with this, comes a massive security concern. Just as your data is valuable to you, so is it valuable to cybercriminals.”
For instance, ransomware is now a massive concern, and accountability has become more important than ever.
“In reality, we know that, at some point, we will all be breached. What is important from a regulatory point of view, is that you have the correct controls in place to ensure you can prove you were trying to prevent that breach.”
Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity have changed the way businesses run, and technology is key in overcoming the challenges, he says.
“Customers need to understand what their digital transformation needs to achieve, and have the technology discussion from there.”
The traditional implementation cycle was slow and monolithic, centred around a data centre and centralised data warehouse.
In the virtualised eta, deployments were quicker and more agile, but still very structured and centralised, Moosa says.
“Where we are now, we talk about replatforming applications, deploying native services directly to business. Systems are developed in an integrated way to deliver value.
“But in all of this, security is often not mentioned – because, often, people believe the cloud providers are looking after it.”
Throughout the development of business models, the same security solutions have been used – despite increased threats.
“But the cybercriminals have become far more sophisticated and their threats more complex than ever. So companies are looking at how to address the issue – and the CISO has come to the fore.”
CoCre8 Technology Solutions was previously Fujitsu South Africa, and became a locally-owned entity in 2020.
“This gave us the opportunity to become a solution provider across the board,” Moosa says. “We are no longer a pure-play hardware vendor. Today, we provide innovative solutions from the edge to the core to the cloud as a key enabler for digital transformation.”
CoCre8 offers a variety of hybrid cloud services, offering on-premise and private cloud as well as hyperscaler services, underpinned by security solutions from Absolute and Fortitude.