Compared with other regions, connectivity in South Africa is still a commodity and not a basic service. However, there are several techniques, often used by cloud service providers, which can reduce data volumes and costs, says cloud email service company Mimecast senior sales engineer Heino Gevers.

Owing to data connectivity costs and the need to ensure the continuity of operations, Mimecast has developed several technologies to reduce the amount of data sent to international servers and between local servers.

“For example, we strip out bulky attachments from emails and only send a link, which enables the user to decide whether to download the attachment from a secure local data centre while reducing duplication of the attachment. We also retrieve information from international cloud service servers, such as Dropbox, and host them in our data centres locally, which reduces the amount of international data traffic required by customers to access services such as these.”

Internet service providers (ISPs) can also partner with cloud service providers to prioritise and provide discounted rates to cloud data over their networks, especially as the cloud service providers can help ISPs to reduce the amount of data sent over their networks and to international servers, which will enable ISPs to provide better data services to more customers, highlights Gevers.

He adds that there is significant scope for interdependent information technology industries to reduce costs and improve performance of data traffic in South Africa.

A critical issue that customers are often concerned about when approached by a cloud service provider is the amount of data that must be sent to and extracted from the cloud, he emphasises.

“We implemented new features to change how large files are managed and sent to reduce data costs for our customers. Cloud services enable companies to outsource their infrastructure to a service provider, helping them to reduce costs.”

Meanwhile, connectivity costs are not standardised and the variations in costs among users indicate that telecommunications service providers can provide discounts on bandwidth costs for large-scale users. This would enable more companies to use services over the Internet and expand the market of business users, which will give the telecommunications companies more secure annuity revenue.

“We often encounter variations in data connectivity costs of 20% to 30% among different companies using the same ISP. Therefore, ISPs can start providing tailored options for corporate users wanting to use cloud services.”

“High connectivity costs from telecommunications service providers in South Africa prevent local businesses from adopting information technology systems that require good connectivity.”

Gevers suggests the companies in South Africa use several ISPs and cost comparisons between service providers to secure the best value for money for their businesses.

Further, the cost of international connectivity forces global businesses to disconnect their local offices from their global networks, which is fragmenting companies’ information archiving, whereas most companies are aiming to reduce data fragmentation, he notes.

“Cloud services require increased connectivity and the costs of data connectivity in South Africa is reducing the business case for mobile and cloud services, despite such services increas- ingly being used locally and internationally to unify geographically dislocated companies and improve business performance,” concludes Gevers.