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2010 roadmap for ICT in Africa

By Leigh-Ann Francis
Johannesburg, 18 Mar 2010

Africa's IT market is headed for recovery in 2010, with growth levels expected to reach $22.53 billion in 2010. The state of the market comes as growth rates return to pre-crisis levels, setting in motion a number of key trends that will reshape the IT landscape in Africa.

This is according to global ICT advisory firm, International Data Corporation (IDC), which hosted the annual IDC Africa CIO Summit 2010 in Johannesburg this week. IDC senior vice-president of research for the EMEA region, Steven Frantzen, noted that the coming years will be a fascinating period for the development of Africa's IT and communications markets.

The new normality for African ICT is one driven by cost reduction, IT and business alignment, and risk and compliance management, said Frantzen. IT will remain under budget pressure and be viewed as a tool to support process, innovation and streamlining, with increased focus on new metrics and tools to align business and IT, he explained.

“Regulatory compliance remains a major driver of IT investment and strategy development and will certainly be even more so in the wake of the financial crisis,” stated Frantzen. He explained that regulations will continue to put CIOs in the spotlight as organisations re-evaluate their overall business practices and the IT systems and processes that support them.

Security, telecoms dominate

“Security remains at the top of the CIO agenda in Africa,” noted Frantzen. He explained the region would see stronger spending on encryption, stronger authentication, and other robust security and business continuity solutions.

Centralisation and data centre consolidation will help improve physical security, he advised. Frantzen also noted the increased role of African governments in attempting to reduce cyber crime.

Africa's telecoms market will continue to grow, but will have to adapt to changing dynamics. “Submarine fibre connectivity will drive major drops in bandwidth pricing and boost Internet adoption,” he noted.

Frantzen predicts that telcos in Africa will begin to focus on small to medium-sized businesses, offering bundled managed ICT services. Telcos are destined to become major players in the channel, he stated.

Concentrating on consolidation

Data efficiency remains a top priority for CIOs, with increased focus on consolidation. “Some leapfrogging will take place in 'developing' Africa due to limited legacy infrastructure,” observed Frantzen. Virtualisation remains the most important data centre issue in Africa, but due to the lack of skills in Africa, adoption rates may be limited, he added.

In line with data centre consolidation, Frantzen predicted further focus on application modernisation and consolidation, particularly for companies with multiple regional operations. The goal, he believes, will be to create unified application environments that support business flexibility and agility.

Frantzen explained that key areas of modernisation will be centred on ERP upgrades, SOA implementations in the enterprise, and the addition of a business intelligence (BI) and analytics dimension to existing solutions.

This ties in with an emerging trend towards enterprise information integration, as companies focus on better access to critical information, he continued. Frantzen predicted a move toward pervasive BI, fuelled by the need to deploy better tools and apps for tracking, analysing, modelling and delivering information for decision-making.

Discussing the impact of the industry's latest buzz term, cloud computing, Frantzen expects Africa's CIOs to proceed with 'cautious optimism'. He sees the building of cloud-like infrastructure to support dynamic IT infrastructure, but believes the utilisation of online delivery platforms for software-as-a-service to be slow.

In closing, Frantzen noted that ICT in Africa would continue paving the way to a better future, with continued emphasis on transformation in several African countries. He added that capital constraints would require governments to depend on partnerships, shared services and outsourcing.

Some African countries will begin the move towards citizen and business-centric services such as e-filing of tax, registration of official forms, access to official information and tenders. This will extend to national identity and security systems implementation and roll-out, he added.

Frantzen concluded by highlighting African governments' commitment to the promotion and sponsorship of e-skills, and continued support of national technology infrastructure extension and deployment.

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