EDITOR’S QUESTION
WHAT IS FUELLING
THE ADOPTION
OF CLOUD-FIRST
STRATEGIES IN
SOUTH AFRICA?
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I
T spending in South Africa will total
R303.46 billion in 2019, a 3.9% increase
from 2018, according to Gartner.
“South Africa is still behind in terms of
overall IT spending and continues to have
a technology debt to pay off,” said David
Lovelock, Research Vice President at Gartner.
“However, by achieving 3.9% growth in
2019, South Africa will be one of the fastest-
growing countries in the world – ranked
fourth globally.”
Consumer spending was once the IT
spending highlight in South Africa, driven by
adoption of mobile phones, but no longer.
Gartner expects consumer spending on
devices such as PCs, tablets and mobile
phones to decline by 2020, and to keep
contracting through 2023.
2018
Spending 2018
Growth
(%) 2019
Spending 2019
Growth
(%) 2019
Spending 2019
Growth
(%)
Communication
Services 129,837 3.2 132,852 2.3 133,572 0.5
Data Center
Systems 9,053 16.1 8,598 –5.0 8,898 3.5
Devices 44,616 7.5 45,966 3.0 40,328 –12.3
IT Services 79,685 4.9 83,897 5.3 87,996 4.9
Software 28, 849 12.9 32,147 11.4 35, 850 11.5
Total 292,040 5.6 303,460 3.9 306,644 1.0
Due to rounding, figures may not add up precisely to the totals shown.
Source: Gartner (July 2019)
“Saturation in the PC, mobile phone and
tablet device markets has limited the number
of new buyers,” added Lovelock. “And
spending on mobile phone replacements
and upgrades won’t be enough to sustain
current spending levels.” that South Africa has largely moved past the
stage of acquiring personal devices and is
now more concerned with using them.
Spending on devices in South Africa is
projected to total R46 billion in 2019, up
3% from 2018. This growth rate has more
than halved, year over year, which shows Software spending in South Africa will
reach R32 billion in 2019, a 11.4%
increase from 2018. “Cloud computing is a
new reality in South Africa,” said Lovelock.
24
INTELLIGENTCIO
Adoption of Cloud Computing will
keep rising in South Africa
“South African organisations are consuming
significant amounts of cloud services,
including software-as-a-service, platform-as-
a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service.
“CIOs in South Africa have started adopting
cloud-first strategies. With both Microsoft
and Amazon planning to open local
hyperscale data centres in 2020, adoption
and use of the cloud will only increase in
South Africa.”
www.intelligentcio.com