Companies across Africa are planning to increase their spending on cloud computing over the next year, a new study reveals.

According to the Cloud in Africa 2023 study, more than two-thirds of companies using cloud computing across major African markets plan to increase their spending on cloud services in 2023.

About 69% of respondents in the study, published by World Wide Worx, with support from Dell Technologies, F5, Intel, Red Hat and VMware, expect to see an increase in cloud spend, with only 7% expecting spend to decrease.

Comparatively, 61% of companies increased their spend on cloud services, while only 3% decreased spend in 2022.

“We thought that cloud spending might be toned down in the wake of the massive adoption that took place in 2020 and 2021. Instead, the opposite was the case,” highlights World Wide Worx CEO and principal analyst on the research project Arthur Goldstuck.

The study, based on interviews with 400 information technology decisionmakers in medium and large organisations across Africa, reveals the extent to which cloud computing has become part of the DNA of business.

“Any company dealing with a large customer base, or an ecosystem of suppliers and clients, must embrace the cloud if they expect to operate both efficiently and cost-effectively,” explains Dell Technologies South Africa MD Doug Woolley.

“It is a multicloud world and information technology leaders want best-of-breed capabilities to achieve differentiated outcomes. They love the ease and agility of the cloud experience and expect it everywhere,” he says.

Improved security, most often cited as a barrier by those who have not yet adopted the cloud, is reported as the single biggest benefit of the cloud by 56% of the survey respondents.

On being questioned over the greatest concerns of cloud users, a negligible proportion named security as a major concern.

“I believe we are overdue for a shift in understanding that cloud deployments can be secure if properly implemented. According to the statistics in this research, the cloud provides peace of mind as well,” explains VMware sub-Saharan solutions engineering and lead technologist director Ian Jansen van Rensburg.

In addition, the study shows that 44% and 41% of respondents respectively cite customer and business service efficiency as benefits, with 40% citing scalability, a key value proposition of the data centres that are proliferating across the continent, enabling businesses to scale up their capacity on demand as seasonal peaks disrupt conventional computing infrastructure.

“It is no coincidence that Intel recently announced a range of new scalable processors designed for data centres. It is precisely that benefit – scalability – that gives the cloud the power to enhance efficiency and customer service,” said Intel South Africa country manager Nitesh Doolabh.

Goldstuck further highlights that the most important finding for enterprises was that 90% of respondents reported business growth, with 43% seeing strong growth.

“Fewer than 10% said that business had stayed the same or declined. This makes it clear that cloud technology is not technology for its own sake, but has a clear value proposition for business,” he says.

“Business growth, in turn, is a consequence of two further areas of impact of migration to the cloud: innovation and improved customer service.”

Some 48% of the respondents reported a high impact on innovation, with a further 23% reporting some impact as more than two-thirds saw innovation increasing in the organisation.

Fewer than 1% said the cloud had a negative impact on innovation.

“Customer experience was the big winner: 64% reporting extremely positive impact and a further 32% somewhat positive impact. Less than half a per cent reported a negative impact on customer experience resulting from cloud migration.”

Quality of service and ongoing quality of service emerged as some of the main criteria for selecting a cloud provider and not necessarily the presence or the price of the provider.

More than half of the respondents cited quality of service and almost a quarter cited the service portfolio, “well ahead” of price and local presence or proximity to the data centre.

“While cloud adoption is now pervasive, cloud strategy continues to evolve across the continent, especially as data centres are now becoming more pervasive, connectivity coverage is improving, and more companies are beginning to make contingency plans for power outages and the like,” Goldstuck comments.

This means we can expect steady growth in multicloud strategy

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