IDG: Africa is Ripe With Cloud Opportunities
IDG Connect was tasked by SAP Africa to conduct a survey that was named Africa Set for Cloud Market Expansion. The document outlines the specific cloud challenges that Africa faces. The survey indicates the obvious infrastructure barriers in Africa but the numbers could point to the fact that cloud service providers can take advantage of this emerging market by building solutions for African businesses. Cloud adaption presents obvious advantages for Africa’s rapidly growing mobile device market.
Another overall positive finding from the survey shows that a majority of businesses polled in South Africa, Algeria, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria plan on increasing their budgets in regards to IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
ITWebAfrica quotes Chris Willcocks, a Director at SAP Africa as saying, “Compared to other global regions such as Western Europe, Africa’s cloud adoption levels are only about half by comparison. This only serves to highlight the massive opportunity that exists on the continent for Cloud Service Providers that are searching for potential new customers.”
Willcocks also mentioned that Nigeria and South Africa have the highest levels of current cloud maturity. While this data is promising, these two nations also poll in the 25% range in regards to businesses that have not begun using any type of cloud services. Willcocks said, “There is however, a sizeable minority that has yet to formulate a cloud migration strategy on any meaningful scale.”
Worth noting is Kenya who polled at a 42% rate of those who responded by saying they have not started any type of cloud integration. Top cloud workloads such as CRM are barely being used in counties such as Kenya who poll at 6%. Only 1 in about 5 businesses in Morocco are using cloud CRM for their businesses. Willcocks further highlighted the report by saying “Although the survey results paint a mixed picture for cloud service adoption in Africa, it does serve to illustrate the extent of the commercial opportunity for Cloud Service Providers in this territory.”
