Revenue from the cloud computing business from Kenya and South Africa is targeted to reach US$288mn in 2018, revealed a report by Frost & Sullivan
The market earned US$114.6mn in 2013 alone, added the report. Rapidly growing bandwidth capacities and extension of multiple undersea cables have led to the proliferation of data centres and establishment of cloud computing services in the two countries.
Lehlohonolo Mokenela, information and communication technology analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said, “While private cloud services have been the main focus of Tier-I competitors in the large enterprise sector, the move towards public cloud is slowly gathering pace in both countries. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are turning to cloud computing motivated by the availability of affordable and convenient public cloud offerings.”
The analysis stated that software as a service will become the most popular cloud computing platform. Despite the availability of and access to cloud computing, businesses have taken their time to embrace this technology in Kenya and South Africa.
Some of the key reasons holding back companies from adopting cloud include security concerns and the lack of trust in third parties to manage internal IT systems. The report added that this outlook is especially prevalent in conservative verticals, such as the financial services and healthcare sectors, where security and compliance are critical to business operations.
