SA cloud adoption lags Africa

SA has seen very different cloud adoption rates when compared to the rest of Africa.

This is according to Gary de Menezes, regional director for Oracle hardware, who says the rest of Africa is more advanced when in comes to cloud adoption.

According to him, this is largely because the continent is behind SA in terms of rolling out infrastructure. He explains that while the rest of Africa has not made significant investments in infrastructure, the investments local organisations have already made in building their own infrastructure has made them reluctant to invest in cloud computing.

De Menezes suggests that the reluctance by local IT departments to invest in new technologies has also been compounded by the global economic climate.

However, he adds that while a lack of bandwidth has also hampered cloud adoption, the rollout of the Seacom cable has changed this, and SA is now better positioned to make the leap to cloud computing.

banking and retail sectors.

He notes that with the advent of instant chat and VOIP services, like Skype, telecoms companies have had to re-engineer themselves to find new revenue streams. He says a lot of the new services offered by telecoms companies are based in the cloud.

For many years, says De Menezes, the biggest inhibitor to local cloud adoption has been the regulation around broadband. He adds that broadband is not available to large sections of the country.

According to him, WiFi needs to become more freely available and the ways in which WiFi is used needs to be deregulated before SA will see mainstream cloud computing adoption.

Speaking about cloud misconceptions, De Menezes stressed that cloud is not a silver bullet for business. He explains that there are many facets to cloud computing, and businesses cannot simply adopt cloud computing.

Instead, he argues that the success is in the planning, and businesses need to have a strategy before they can migrate to cloud computing. He adds it is crucial that businesses first analyse their current environments before developing a strategy to move to cloud computing.

Finally, De Menezes believes cloud computing should be seen as a business enabler that allows businesses to rapidly implement strategies as well as new products and services, while the 'as a service' model also allows for major cost savings.