ITWeb, in partnership with Huawei and BNI, conducted an online survey to assess where South African businesses are on their infrastructure modernisation journey.
The survey aimed to better understand how organisations are evolving their network environments in response to increasing digital demands.
A total of 120 responses were captured, with 68% of respondents being at management level, and working in a range of major industry sectors. Some 38% of respondents came from the IT sector, 17% from the public sector and 11% came from the financial services sector.
Here are some of the key findings:
- 88% of survey respondents said their businesses’ IT environments were resilient to external pressures such as hardware availability, storage capacity growth, skills shortages, and increasing operational complexity. 11% said they were vulnerable to disruptions or shortages.
- The majority - 89% - of respondents were confident that if their core IT environment (compute, storage, network, and security) was disrupted tomorrow, their organisation could continue operating without significant financial or reputational impact. 11% expressed low confidence and that gaps likely existed.
- Asked whether their current infrastructure (compute, storage, network, and security) was ready to handle rapid data growth and support AI-driven workloads without major redesign or cost escalation, 48% said they were partially ready with planned upgrades, 35% were fully ready and scalable and 14% were not ready and required significant investment.
- Most (78%) respondents said their campus network was reliable in supporting modern workplace services (e.g., Wi-Fi, video conferencing, voice, CCTV, access control systems). 11% reported inconsistent performance across locations and services, and 8% said these services weren’t fully integrated and were managed separately.
- Asked about the consistency of their network design and management across headquarters and branch locations, 40% were fully standardised and centrally managed, 37% were mostly standardised with some variations, 13% reported significant differences between sites and 6% reported no standardisation.
- When it comes to the mix of devices and how users connect within their organisation, half (50%) of the respondents said mostly mobile and wireless (laptops, smartphones, flexible work), 36% said a balanced mix of wired and wireless devices, 9% said mostly fixed/wired (desktops, on-prem users), and 3% said an increasing number of smart/IoT devices (e.g., cameras, sensors, access control).
- Polled on how confident they were in how users and devices are authenticated when accessing their network, almost half (47%) said highly secure and automated (strong identity-based access), while 35% said moderately secure with some manual processes, and 12% reported basic authentication (e.g., shared credentials or simple access).
- The top five priorities when it comes to cybersecurity are:
- Ensuring business continuity and uptime (60%)
- Reducing risk of cyberattacks (e.g., ransomware, breaches) (57%)
- Meeting compliance and regulatory requirements (17%)
- Improving visibility and control across the environment (17%)
- Enabling secure digital transformation (cloud, remote work) (14%)
- Asked how quickly their IT/network environment is able to support new business requirements (e.g., new applications, services, or sites), 33% said within hours (highly agile), 30% said within 1-2 days, 20% said several days to a week and 13% said it depended on complexity and wasn’t consistent.
- A quarter (25%) of respondents said their organisation is advanced on its journey toward a modern, integrated IT environment (e.g., cloud, automation, software-defined networking). Just over half (57%) said they were progressing and 16% said they were in the early stages.
- Looking to the future, respondents were asked how they expect their datacentre and network environment to evolve over the next 2–3 years to support their business strategy. 45% said they expected to see significant modernisation (e.g., automation, SDN, cloud integration); 35% foresaw incremental improvements to current environment; 14% said they’d maintain the current environment with minor changes.