An increase in the number of cloud services providers and their respective capabilities in Southern Africa is driving businesses to invest in cloud as an alternative 'home' for data as part of a disaster recovery plan.

This is according to Kate Mollett, regional manager for Africa South at global intelligent data management specialist Veeam.

Mollett commented on the company's Q3 2018 results and specifically the Africa South region which experienced an increase in bookings by 30%, with licence and upgrade bookings up by 19% year-on-year.

According to Veeam, the quarter also saw 264 Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) transactions, up 27% year-on-year in Q3 "which can be attributed to mid-market businesses adopting cloud services."

In a blog posted about the results, Co-CEO and President Peter McKay said in Q3 the company's cloud business grew by 26% year-on-year.

"Bookings grew by more than 20% year-over-year (YoY), which is traditionally a slower quarter across the software business due to summertime. Our traction in the Enterprise customer segment continues to thrive, increasing by almost 25% compared to Q3'17."

Mollett added, "Businesses are using the cloud as a second home for data as part of a disaster recovery plan, because the expense of having a second physical site is too high in South Africa. Businesses are speaking with resellers about Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) where they have an offsite copy of their data in the cloud that is now replacing tape, or they're adding Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS). This trend is being driven by the increase in capabilities of local cloud providers.

She anticipates heightened interest in the public cloud as a result of the imminent arrival of Microsoft Azure datacentres.

"... and with Amazon's AWS to open here soon too, it will entice more businesses to try the cloud, or to move more of their existing infrastructure into cloud storage or use cloud-derived software," said Mollett.

ITWeb recently reported that Microsoft announced the landing of two Azure datacentres in SA "before the end of the year".

At the Microsoft Partner Awards 2018, hosted in early October 2018, MD Zoaib Hoosen was quoted as saying, "In the past 12 months, there's been amazing cloud growth and energy. The hyperscale cloud hasn't landed in the country yet, and still we're seeing the growth. Our customers have responded to the fact that there's an opportunity to leverage in the new world and they're all getting ready."