Several tech industry experts will present at the ITWeb Cloud Summit 2026, including Mark Walker, director and co-founder of Transformation for Innovation (T4i), who will focus on the inevitable impact of agentic AI on the evolution of the cloud ecosystem.
Walker is among several industry leaders scheduled to present at the event, including Dr Maiendra Moodley, senior analyst at Wikistrat; Yonga Mapongwana, group IT risk manager at FirstRand Group; and IT strategy professional and researcher Zethu Lubisi.
Topics to be addressed include building the people, skills and operating models for the AI-powered cloud era; cloud risk governance in regulated financial services; and the cloud consequence gap – the disconnect between cloud adoption and a company's ability to manage the associated risks and outcomes effectively.
Speaking to ITWeb ahead of the event, Walker said hyperscale data centre investment and the rapid maturation of GenAI are driving up the value of the local cloud market – which is projected to more than double, surpassing R100 billion by 2029.
“In South Africa, the era of basic ‘lift-and-shift’ cloud migration is officially over. We are now entering a far more complex and high-stakes chapter: the convergence of enterprise cloud infrastructure with autonomous multi-agent workflows capable of executing multi-step business decisions without human intervention,” said Walker, adding that this transition presents a massive paradox for local enterprise leaders.
“While the infrastructure imperative demands high-density, GPU-centric cloud environments to run autonomous workloads, CFOs are simultaneously battling severe 'cloud bill shock' driven by USD-denominated pricing and rand volatility,” he added.
With agentic AI foremost in the minds of business leaders, Walker will explain why deploying AI without deep systems integration and strict human guardrails is a recipe for systemic failure.
However, there are ways to approach these issues that can yield significant benefit, added Walker, who will also outline a five-year strategic roadmap for South African enterprises.
In his keynote, he will unpack the macroeconomic realities of the local cloud market, contrast the "high road" of hyper-productivity with the "low road" of cloud repatriation, and provide a unified playbook for CIOs and CFOs to modernise infrastructure while aggressively managing costs.
Ntando Sibanda, senior conference producer at ITWeb Events, said the summit takes place at a time when SA finds itself at a critical juncture in cloud development and management.
“South Africa has reached a pivotal point in its digital transformation and in its ability to leverage emerging technologies, most notably cloud and AI," he said.
"We have organised a stellar line-up of keynote presenters who will provide expert insight into critical issues, from modernising legacy applications to benefit from cloud, to zero-trust security models as a standard requirement for modern cloud platforms. Our intention with the summit is to empower delegates with credible, relevant and up-to-date information regarding cloud migration and management.”
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