The rapid growth of cloud computing and AI is creating major opportunities for South African service providers – but also widening the digital divide.
This was the key message from Christopher Geerdts, MD of BMI-T, during his keynote address at the ITWeb Cloud and Data Centre Summit, held on 7 August at The Forum in Bryanston.
Geerdts said while more users are adopting cloud services at scale, many others risk being left behind.
“The digital divide is paradoxically increasing in the world, not decreasing. People have more opportunities, but they are getting further left behind. My pitch to the audience is to think about how to unlock the opportunities that actually exist... to help their customers unlock the true potential of what they are holding in their hands.”
He said traditional IT services are stagnating or shifting to cloud platforms, positioning cloud computing as the main driver of ICT growth.
Opportunities for telcos
Geerdts urged telcos to use data centres as platforms for delivering business services, unlocking value in operations, core services and professional services.
These services include:
- Real estate and infrastructure: Such as core and edge data centres, connectivity, power and water.
- Services: Colocation, cross-connections, cloud onramps and network exchanges.
- Managed services: Including support, disaster recovery and consulting.
He also suggested a 'ServiceStack' or service-oriented architecture approach to help build scalable service offerings through APIs and web services.
Hyperscalers in SA have seen 37% annual growth, even before the AI surge. Geerdts credited open access approaches for much of this expansion.
Despite the growth, challenges remain. These include a shortage of skills, the rise of shadow AI (unauthorised use of AI tools), and risks such as LLM jacking – where attackers gain access to data by exploiting large language models.
SA cloud adoption accelerates
Along with AI, cloud security was a major discussion point at the event. According to Geerdts, cloud security service providers have mushroomed, a trend that is likely to continue, particularly because of an upswing in regulation and legislation.
One example is the national policy on data and cloud 2024, which seeks to guide the country and its approach to data management and cloud, with emphasis on a cloud-first approach.
Ayanda Peta, CISO of African Rainbow Minerals and president of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), said 60% to 70% of organisations in SA are in the accelerated growth phase of cloud adoption, incorporating accelerated remote work, multicloud strategies, advanced cloud services and the national data and cloud policy.
The CSA officially registered as a non-profit organisation in January 2025. Its mission is to empower professionals and organisations to advance secure cloud computing through awareness, education, capacity building and strategic collaborations.
Peta stressed the need for collaboration between government, public and private sectors to instil cloud security and help to enforce legislation in order to bolster cloud security.
He believes the National Security Strategy will have a significant impact on cloud and security consolidation and is hopeful the strategy will be formally in place in the second half of 2025 or early 2026.
A key takeaway from the event is that emerging technologies should serve to enable business and empower users, but to achieve these objectives requires collaboration, effective enforcement of policy and buy-in from all stakeholders, including government, the private and public sectors.
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