TRENDING

On the upside IDC sees cloud, datacentre, analytics, mobility, low cost IoT, enterprise software making gains while businesses will struggle with cyberthreats, economic and political uncertainty.

The next wave of ICT development in South Africa will see organisations across the country doing more with less while consolidating and outsourcing legacy IT, according to the latest forecasts from International Data Corporation.

“ This year has undoubtedly been a difficult year for economies around the world,” says Mark Walker, IDC’ s Associate Vice President for Sub-Saharan Africa.“ The South African economy has not emerged unscathed. Marginal economic growth and political instability have made the business environment very difficult to navigate, and organisations are looking at technology to drive down their costs, while improving the way they operate. Business confidence has also taken a knock because of the economic and political instability.”

“ We have seen a very strong focus on datacentre infrastructure and operations during the past year,” continues Walker.“ Information security and enterprise software have also been among the top three priorities for CIOs during the same period. Interestingly, cloud computing was only at number seven of the top priorities, which is unexpected considering the global rush to the cloud as a driver of digital transformation and business agility.”

Jon Tullett, Research Manager for IT services at IDC South Africa, says South Africa has lagged in cloud adoption due to the lack of local infrastructure, data protection concerns, and conservative investment strategies.“ IDC believes 2017 will see at least one major global cloud provider establishing local datacentre infrastructure to service the region,” says Tullet.

This will address key concerns and spur competition and adoption while putting pressure on local providers. New public cloud spend will overtake on-premises in areas such as collaborative applications, application development software and platforms, and customer relationship management.

Tullett recommends that organisations continue to invest in private cloud but develop the capabilities to transition workloads into public cloud as circumstances change.

Organisations should reassess their application capabilities with a view to cloud capabilities and invest in cloud skills around

12 INTELLIGENTCIO www. intelligentcio. com