True Digital Transformation depends on more than licences, deployments or vendor promises. It requires measurable business outcomes, disciplined cloud cost management, developer adoption and the right data foundations for AI.

Oliver Niemandt, GM of Sales at Cloud on Demand, unpacks the findings of the 2025 Cloud on Demand CXO Priorities Survey and shares what South African organisations need to do to convert technology investment into strategic advantage.

Can you introduce the 2025 Cloud on Demand CXO Priorities Survey: Technology Adoption and Strategic Impact report and explain what the research aimed to achieve?

Our research set out to secure an honest, unfiltered view of how South African organisations are using Microsoft technologies in practice.

There is a substantial gap between what has been licensed and what is successfully deployed on the ground.

We wanted to understand not just what they are buying, but what they are actively implementing, the strategic drivers behind those choices and precisely where their teams are getting stuck.

The ultimate goal here is to provide CXOs with a realistic

Our research set out to secure an honest, unfiltered view of how South African organisations are using Microsoft technologies in practice.

benchmark against their peers. By stripping away the usual vendor narrative, we are delivering the raw ground truth so leadership teams can make informed, data-driven decisions.

Many companies resist cloud or face strategic indecision. What is the single most detrimental consequence of this and what first step breaks this cycle?

The most detrimental consequence of inaction is the compounding of technical debt. Every month of delay further widens the gap, exponentially increasing eventual migration costs.

To break this vicious cycle, the critical first step is a time-boxed proof of value. My recommendation is straightforward: select a single workload, move

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