Interview: iOCO's Richard Vester on the brave new world of hyperscale computing

Loading player...
In this promoted episode of the podcast, TechCentral is joined by Richard Vester, executive director and head of cloud at IT services company iOCO, for a discussion on the "brave new world of hyperscale computing".
In the podcast, Vester explores the impact of the opening in South Africa of hyperscale data centres by international cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, and what this means for the local IT ecosystem.
He explains why service providers like iOCO still have a strong role to play in assisting local customers on their cloud journeys. The emergence of hyperscale cloud providers in South Africa should not be seen as a threat, but rather as an opportunity for local players, Vester believes.
A shift in thinking is, however, required, both by the local IT service provider industry and by end-user customers, many of whom are still "box huggers" in that they are relatively slow to move to the hyperscale world, he says.
Vester also discusses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and explores whether companies should be using the crisis to accelerate their digital transformation projects and the shift to cloud computing.
Don't miss the discussion!
2 Jun 2020 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

Meet the CIO | Chris Shortt on what a supermarket becomes

Chris Shortt, chief technology officer at Shoprite Group, says the work of the next five years is meeting the customer at their point of need, wherever that is – and that this does not mean the end of the store. Speaking on TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast series, brought to…
9 Sep 43 min

Watts & Wheels | Why electric trucks are beating electric cars to South Africa

South Africa has still not crossed 1% of new vehicle sales going to electric vehicles, well short of the 5% mark at which adoption typically accelerates, The Electric Mission executive director Hiten Parmar told TechCentral’s Watts & Wheels with Wills. Parmar, who heads the non-profit advocacy body and co-founded the…
3 Sep 31 min

Winstone Jordaan on building a national EV charging network

Winstone Jordaan was building charging infrastructure before South Africa had electric cars to plug into it. GridCars began developing its backend platform in 2010. The first EVs arrived in 2013. In this episode of Watts & Wheels with Wills, the GridCars founder tells William Kelly why the hardware was never…
2 Sep 22 min

Watts & Wheels S1E8: ‘Tesla lands in Africa, just not here’

Episode 8 of Watts & Wheels – TechCentral’s electric motoring show – opens with William Kelly on his soapbox, clipboard in hand, and a simple demand: keep left, pass right. Too many South African drivers, he argues, treat the left indicator as an invitation to be overtaken rather than a…
24 Aug 1 hr 11 min