In a business environment defined by volatility and the constant pressure to do more with less, South African organisations are leaking capital through a common but often overlooked channel. According to Dominique Yeates, head of product operations at Qwerti , over-provisioning services has become the silent budget drain in local IT sectors, resulting in significant financial waste on resources that provide no operational value.
The practice of over-provisioning involves allocating more IT resources, such as server space, cloud storage, or processing power, than is actually required to run workloads. Historically, this was done as a safety net to prevent downtime during traffic spikes. However, in the modern era of elastic cloud computing and scalable services, Yeates argues that this 'just in case' mentality is outdated and expensive.
Paying for resources you do not use is money left on the table, she says. For many companies, this stems from a fear of under-performance. IT managers often overestimate their needs to ensure uptime, but the gap between what is purchased and what is utilised is where the budget evaporates.
