The Data Sovereignty Dilemma: How we’re challenging the status quo in Rwanda, Part 1

Often data sovereignty laws require that certain types of data must be stored and processed within the borders of the country. This can conflict with the desire for efficiency and cost-effectiveness that comes with using cloud services and global data centres. Companies often need to decide whether to comply with these laws, potentially sacrificing efficiency, or risk non-compliance.

We are excited to share that ADEPT Decisions recently deployed our innovative ADP Runtime Environment in Rwanda, leveraging the powerful Azure Stack Hub and Kubernetes platform. This deployment has been a game-changer, enabling us to rapidly bring the ADEPT Decisions Platform (ADP) to the Rwandan market. ADP has a full suite of features that include robust security measures, comprehensive full-stack monitoring capabilities, and a consistent environment that seamlessly aligns with our cloud offerings.

“…includes robust security measures, comprehensive full-stack monitoring capabilities, and a consistent environment that seamlessly aligns with our cloud offerings”

The benefits have been remarkable, notably in terms of time-to-market, as we were able to roll out a feature-rich solution in record time, catering to the specific needs of our Rwandan client. This accomplishment underscores our commitment to delivering top notch services globally, while maintaining the highest standards of security and performance.

What Efficiencies did we Risk Outside of Cloud?

To understand what is at risk, let’s delve into the advantages of our ADEPT Decisions Cloud Platform, which delivers a spectrum of efficiencies designed to benefit organisations.

Imagine a dynamic environment that effortlessly adapts to your changing needs. This results in substantial cost savings, thus freeing up resources for strategic investments. Resource optimisation, which is akin to an expert conductor, orchestrates your infrastructure to enable peak performance.

All of these benefits listed below come without the complexities of managing your own data centre:

Scalability: ADP’s cloud platform easily adjusts resource allocation according to changing needs. This scalability ensures that you only pay for the computing resources required, minimising unnecessary costs. Furthermore, ADP efficiently hosts multiple tenants on a single platform, optimising resource utilisation.
Cost Savings: With ADP, there’s no need for significant upfront investments in hardware and data centres. The pay-as-you-go model means you can achieve cost savings compared to traditional on-premises infrastructure.
Resource Monitoring and Alerting: ADP provides comprehensive resource monitoring and alerting on the platform. This ensures that computing power, storage, and network resources for all tenants are all proactively monitored and potential issues are mitigated before there is an outage.
Rapid Deployment: ADP’s cloud services offer rapid provisioning and pre-configured templates for various workloads. This accelerates the deployment of applications and services, reducing time-to-market for all tenants on the platform.
Global Reach: ADP’s cloud infrastructure spans the globe with data centres in multiple regions. This enables organisations to expand their operations globally and serve a diverse audience without the need for physical infrastructure in each location. Multiple tenants benefit from this global presence.
Redundancy and High Availability: ADP offers redundancy and high availability options that are often cost-prohibitive to implement on-premises. This ensures continuous accessibility, even in the event of hardware failures, benefiting all tenants hosted on the platform.
Managed Services: ADP provides a wide array of managed services, such as databases, machine learning, and analytics. These services offload maintenance and management tasks, freeing up your team to focus on innovation and development.
Security and Compliance: ADP invests significantly in security and compliance measures. Leveraging ADP’s expertise helps organisations meet stringent security requirements without the need to build their own security infrastructure. This security benefits all tenants on the platform.
Automatic Updates: ADP takes care of software updates and patching for the underlying infrastructure and services. This reduces the workload on IT teams and ensures that systems remain up-to-date and secure for all tenants.
Disaster Recovery: ADP’s cloud-based disaster recovery solutions are reliable and cost-effective. They offer data backup and recovery capabilities, enabling organisations to recover quickly from unexpected events, ensuring business continuity for all tenants.
Collaboration and Mobility: ADP’s cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools facilitate remote work and provide access to resources from anywhere with an internet connection. Multiple tenants can leverage these tools to enhance collaboration and mobility.

The On-Premises Dinosaur

Let’s talk about on-premises deployments – they’re a blast from the past that is difficult to drive to the halls of extinction! So you’ve got these clunky servers taking up space, chewing through electricity bills, and don’t even get started on the headache of maintaining and upgrading all of that big metal. It’s a never-ending cycle of IT pain. Plus, when things go south, you’re stuck playing detective in your own data centre.

So what are these well-known challenges?

Capital Expenditure: Hosting a solution with traditional on-premises infrastructure presents several significant challenges. First and foremost, it requires substantial upfront capital expenditures for purchasing and maintaining hardware, data centres, and networking equipment. This capital investment often leads to high initial costs and can be a barrier to entry for smaller organisations.
Scalability and Resource Management Hurdles: Additionally, on-premises solutions demand careful capacity planning, making it difficult to rapidly scale resources up or down to meet changing demands. This limitation can result in underutilised or overburdened infrastructure, affecting both efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Maintenance and Update Complexities: Maintenance and updates are another concern with on-premises hosting. Organisations are responsible for the ongoing upkeep of hardware and software, including security patches and upgrades. This task can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, diverting attention from other critical IT responsibilities.
Data Security and Disaster Recovery: Data security and disaster recovery become complex and costly tasks in on-premises set-ups. Ensuring high levels of security and business continuity often requires significant investments in both technology and expertise, placing a burden on IT teams and budgets.
Overall Impact on Agility and Operational Costs: In summary, the challenges associated with hosting solutions on-premises can collectively limit an organisation’s agility and increase operational costs. These hurdles often prompt many organisations to explore cloud alternatives, seeking greater flexibility and efficiency in their technology infrastructure.
Project delivery burden on internal IT teams: Hosting a solution on traditional on-premises infrastructure places an additional burden on internal IT teams. This dependency extends the project timeline, as internal IT teams have to allocate time and resources to set up the necessary hardware, networking, and software environments. Delays or resource constraints in these early stages can hinder project progress and impact the time-to-market.
Ongoing operational burden on internal IT teams: Introducing the responsibilities of hosting and maintaining additional on-premises infrastructure can overwhelm these teams, leading to stretched resources and potential burnout. This overburdened state can hinder the IT department’s ability to respond swiftly to emerging challenges, innovate, and support strategic initiatives.

Summary

In the next half of this article we will cover running a lean runtime footprint and more details on how we implemented Kubernetes and Azure Stack Hub.

Our recent deployment of ADP in Rwanda, which is a seamless blend of Azure Stack Hub and Kubernetes, exemplifies our commitment to solving complex data sovereignty challenges without sacrificing the advantages of our cloud platform.

Whether you require in-country or on-cloud decision processing solutions, we invite you to contact us.

Our expertise ensures that your specific demands are met, and you can enjoy the best of both worlds – local data sovereignty or the unmatched efficiency and security of our cloud-based offerings.

Reach out today to explore how we can empower your organisation’s decision-making processes while ensuring compliance with local regulations or benefiting from the cloud’s scalability and flexibility. Your solution awaits!

About the Author

Jason Kretzmann is the Chief Solution Architect and has been with ADEPT Decisions since inception in 2015, playing a key role in designing, developing and managing the platform.

About ADEPT Decisions

We disrupt the status quo in the lending industry by providing FinTechs with decisioning software and analytics to level the playing field, promote financial inclusion and support a new generation of financial products.