TRENDING
South African recessionary conditions putting squeeze on IT spending
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