Earlier this year, ITWeb, in partnership with Huawei and BNI, conducted an online survey to assess where South African businesses are on their infrastructure modernisation journey and how they are adapting their network environments to growing digital demands.

The findings suggest that while most organisations are confident in the resilience of their infrastructure, challenges remain around skills, complexity, standardisation and the ability to support emerging workloads.

The majority of respondents (88%) said their IT environments were resilient to external pressures such as hardware availability, storage growth, skills shortages and increasing operational complexity. Just 11% said they were vulnerable to disruptions or shortages.

Paseka Mike Selepe, partner development manager at Huawei, says the focus is increasingly shifting from infrastructure resilience to the ability to manage increasingly complex environments.

“We’re seeing customers invest heavily in resilience, but the conversation is shifting. Technology is improving; the real challenge is building the skills and capability to manage that complexity.”

Similarly, 89% of respondents were confident that their organisations could continue operating without significant financial or reputational impact if their core IT environment – including compute, storage, networking and security – was disrupted. Just 11% expressed low confidence.

“Resilience has evolved,” says Selepe. “Most organisations are operating across on-premises, private and public cloud, making infrastructure more distributed and resilient. But that also makes it harder to manage, particularly around data residency, security, dependencies and skills. Resilience isn't about how much infrastructure you have; it's about how confidently the business can operate when part of that infrastructure is unavailable.”

When asked whether their current infrastructure could handle rapid data growth and AI-driven workloads without major redesign or cost escalation, 48% said they were partially ready, with upgrades planned. A further 35% said they were fully ready and scalable, while 14% said they were not ready and would require significant investment.

Chanelle Steyl, Huawei alliance manager at Blue Networks and Infrastructure, says the results point to a generally positive level of confidence, but warn against relying on perception alone.

“The 11% who expressed low confidence highlight that resilience remains an area requiring investment and continuous improvement. Overall, the results suggest a positive level of confidence, but this should be validated through ongoing testing and governance.”

Campus networks also appear to be providing a solid foundation for modern workplaces. Just over three-quarters of respondents (78%) said their networks reliably supported services such as WiFi, video conferencing, voice, CCTV and access control. However, 11% reported inconsistent performance across locations and services, while 8% said these services were not fully integrated and were managed separately.

“This shows the foundation is working,” says Selepe. “The next steps are intelligence, integration and visibility. When WiFi, voice, video, CCTV, access control and IOT can be managed through a single pane of glass, organisations gain a real-time view of their digital estate. That makes it easier to identify anomalies, understand their impact and increasingly automate resolution before they become business problems.”

Steyl agrees that the results indicate many organisations have invested in robust network infrastructure, but says integration will become increasingly important as digital transformation progresses.

Asked about the consistency of network design and management between headquarters and branch locations, 40% said they were fully standardised and centrally managed, while 37% were mostly standardised with some variations. A further 13% reported significant differences between sites and 6% had no standardisation.

“The biggest impact is that you stop managing one network and start managing a collection of different environments,” says Selepe. “That increases operational costs, makes troubleshooting harder, creates inconsistent security and user experiences, and makes automation more difficult.

“Standardisation isn’t about making every branch identical; it’s about creating a consistent operating model, with common architecture, policies and visibility, so the business can manage the entire estate centrally, resolve issues faster and scale with greater confidence.”

Steyl adds that inconsistent network architectures can also slow the deployment of new applications and services, increase support and maintenance costs, and extend incident resolution times. They can also make it harder to enforce consistent cyber security policies and centrally monitor the network.

Identity and access management emerged as another area where organisations are progressing, but still have room to mature. Almost half of respondents (47%) said user and device authentication was highly secure and automated, with strong identity-based access. A further 35% described their authentication as moderately secure, with some manual processes, while 12% reported basic authentication, such as shared credentials or simple access.

“Authentication is no longer just a security control; it’s becoming a business-enablement issue,” says Selepe. “As organisations connect more users, devices, applications and IOT, we need to continuously validate who or what is accessing the environment, from where, and what they should be allowed to access.

“Zero trust represents a broader shift towards continuously assessing access based on identity, context and risk. The opportunity is to automate those decisions while giving the business greater visibility and control.”

Steyl says automated, policy-based authentication and zero trust principles will become increasingly important as organisations expand their digital environments, helping to protect business-critical systems while maintaining a seamless user experience.

Looking ahead, 45% of respondents expect significant modernisation of their data centre and network environments over the next two to three years, including automation, software-defined networking and cloud integration. Another 35% anticipate incremental improvements to their existing environments, while 14% expect to maintain their current infrastructure with only minor changes.

“What stands out is that organisations recognise the infrastructure supporting the business has to evolve with the business strategy,” says Selepe. “The 45% looking at significant modernisation recognise that infrastructure needs to become more automated, programmable and adaptable, while those taking an incremental approach are balancing ambition against legacy environments, skills, budgets and operational risk.

“Modernisation is no longer simply about replacing technology. It’s about creating an environment that can respond to business requirements faster. The organisations that move fastest won’t necessarily have the biggest technology budgets; they’ll be the ones that can align their technology, people and operating model with their business ambitions.”

Steyl says the findings point to an emerging divide between organisations actively modernising their infrastructure and those continuing to rely on fragmented, manual environments.

“The 45% actively modernising will be better positioned to reduce operational overhead, improve time-to-market and strengthen security. Organisations that delay modernisation risk creating a capability gap, where manual and fragmented networks become a drag on business agility and increase exposure to cyber threats.”

You can view the full survey outcomes here.

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