In this What’s Next in Cloud interview, Aki Anastasiou is joined by Ahmed Mahomed and Sandile Dube.

Mahomed is the Group CEO of Datacentrix and a seasoned businessman with 22 years of experience in the IT industry. He has been with Datacentrix since 2002, having joined to head up the company’s Infrastructure division. He was then named the COO in 2007 and soon took the lead as the CEO in the same year.

Before joining Datacentrix, Mahomed held several executive management positions, including being Operations Manager at Cashbuild for 12 years and the Managing Director of Pinnacle for four years.

Sandile Dube is the Acting Managing Director for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) South Africa. He is experienced in management, having been the Country Manager for HPE South Africa and the Sales Manager for Dimension Data’s MEA region.

These two experienced businessmen join Aki to discuss how their companies are working together to deliver a unique hybrid cloud solution to the South African market.

Mahomed begins by explaining why Datacentrix is pushing a data-first strategy while others are focusing their attention on cloud-first approaches. Dube then talks about the challenges companies face when moving to the cloud, before Mahomed highlights that while one of these challenges is the cost of moving, the greater cost will be incurred if companies do not deploy one.