Businesses Address Data Sovereignty, POPIA Compliance in Cloud Adoption

ETS Prime Cloud provides local data residency, high-performance infrastructure and secure hosting. (Image source: 123RF) Businesses today are facing pressure from multiple areas. Notably, compliance challenges relating to local laws – like POPIA – and issues around data sovereignty impact on many organisations’ decisions about when or whether to move to the cloud. While enterprises appreciate the scalability of the cloud, regulatory demands mean they still require the control and compliance that is associated with on-premises infrastructure. Adding to this are challenges like unpredictable costs, an increasing need for low-latency performance and the digital transformation imperative of modernising legacy environments. Therefore, it is no surprise that there is a clear requirement for a solution that offers the benefits of cloud, while also meeting local regulatory requirements. Into this breach has stepped ETS, a local Oracle partner and hosting provider, which has launched a locally hosted cloud platform known as Prime Cloud. Ahmed Jassat, service delivery manager at ETS, explains that Prime Cloud is a response to both client feedback and increasing demands from the market. “As a proudly South African organisation, we are of the belief that Africa must solve Africa’s challenges, so we are also extending our footprint across the SADC region as we seek to deliver local solutions that meet local demands,” he says. “ETS Prime Cloud directly addresses enterprise needs by providing local data residency, high-performance infrastructure and secure hosting. Its capabilities also position the platform to serve as a reliable disaster recovery (DR) site. In essence, it is a solution designed to meet the growing demand for secure, enterprise-grade cloud services in southern Africa.” He explains that many customers recognise the benefits of Oracle cloud, but since the organisation does not have a second data centre in the country, using Oracle meant they could fall foul of data sovereignty regulations. Prime Cloud not only solves this issue but is able to offer an SADC-wide cloud in a single, accessible platform. “Prime Cloud is a virtual extension of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and offers customers both infrastructure and platform as a service options, delivering the full OCI experience, with the added benefit of ensuring data sovereignty. “The solution also delivers improved performance, thanks to reduced latency, as well as faster recovery times in respect of DR, thanks to real-time replication. Furthermore, it provides high availability thanks to its robust environment that uses the latest hardware available from Oracle.” He adds that as a data centre partner, the company has chosen NTT, thanks to the high quality of its security, along with its power and cooling facilities, and its strong connectivity. “Moreover, thanks to the latest hardware, processing power and storage capabilities, Prime Cloud consistently delivers high performance. This means customers can drive their own projects more rapidly, as whatever environment they require can be quickly spun up (or down) as needed – something that also ensures they can more effectively manage their budgets,” notes Jasat. He further indicates that while the hardware used is from Oracle, customers are free to choose their own operating system, whether it is Windows or one of the various flavours of Linux. “ETS also offers a managed operations solution that provides clients with a skilled delivery team that can assist with infrastructure optimisation, virtualisation and database and application administration. We provide complete support for whatever environment the customer utilises, while on the storage side, they will work with the client’s architects to understand and implement the type of storage required. “More crucially, we have service delivery managers that are easily accessible and will be a single point of contact for customers, whether their challenge lies with the networ