The final two years have confirmed a problem for CIOs. Dealing with pandemic-induced disruption, CIOs in Africa have needed to get artistic, enabling individuals to work remotely in addition to within the workplace, adopting AI and different know-how to deal with provide chain issues, and benefiting from the rising variety of third-party information centres and public cloud companies within the area to rapidly scale up new functions whereas optimising prices.
We talked to a few tech business analysts to get a way of what they see because the keys to success this yr within the wake of the pandemic. The principle theme is hybrid.
“Hybrid work, hybrid cloud and hybrid environments” are the imperatives for CIOs in Africa this yr, says Mark Walker, affiliate VP at IDC in sub-Saharan Africa. Nobody is aware of the way it will proceed as hybrid seems totally different for each business and each enterprise, however it can proceed, he says. “The dinosaurs on the market who suppose that we’re all simply going to return to the workplace and sing ‘kumbaya’ are mistaken. That’s not going to occur. Working from the workplace is not the traditional. The distant work enterprise mannequin, enabled by digital know-how, is confirmed now.”
Given the hybrid pattern, director and analyst at Africa Evaluation, Dobek Pather, notes that the company community is ready to evolve in 2022, pushed by the transfer in the direction of a extra distributed workforce and accompanying acceleration within the adoption of cloud companies. “We are going to see an rising pattern in the direction of the adoption of SD-WAN as a key digital non-public community (VPN) element, together with migration of a number of the conventional MPLS hyperlinks to SD-WAN. This can enable firm CTOs and CIOs to have higher community flexibility and visibility into the community,” Pather says.
Continued cloud adoption, with a concentrate on safety
The transfer to hybrid work relies on continued uptake of cloud know-how. In 2020 and 2021, Africa noticed cloud play a pivotal position within the enterprise world’s response to the pandemic, boosting cloud utilization throughout sub-Saharan Africa. That is set to proceed this yr.
Sturdy uptake of cloud-based companies by companies is anticipated, notes Pater. The big companies will concentrate on hybrid cloud — drawing on each non-public and public cloud companies. The variety of totally different clouds utilized by an organization (particularly the bigger and mid-market corporations) will maintain increasing, which can create extra advanced IT environments, he provides.
However this more and more advanced cloud setting, the rising adoption of SD (software program outlined) telecoms infrastructure and the distributed workforce will pose heightened company community safety dangers, he cautions.
“In 2022, a number of CIOs will concentrate on guaranteeing that the company community is safe. As such, we anticipate to see extra options being supplied by service suppliers to safe residence connectivity for enterprise (do business from home) functions,” Pater says.
Safety continues to be a giant problem and it’ll stay a problem within the yr to return’ agrees IDC’s Walker. “It’s the elephant within the room in the intervening time. It’s all very properly to innovate and rework and to work in new methods however in the event you don’t get the talents to drive all of this and get safety proper, we’ve bought issues.”
Connectivity will get diversified
Adoption of cloud know-how and the transfer to hybrid work environments additionally means modifications in in connectivity. After a really lacklustre 2020/2021 when it comes to enterprise connectivity, a rise within the adoption of broadband connectivity by companies is anticipated, as increasingly more firms throughout Africa return to the workplace, both full-time or part-time, says Pater. Fibre to the enterprise (FTTB) will pick-up however there are additionally newer applied sciences that can develop in adoption. These embody fixed-LTE and stuck 5G, he explains.
At present, Africa may be very underserved, notes Walker, however as famous early, there may be some huge cash going into native information centres and infrastructure rollout. “Realising the efficiencies of cloud and enabling actually related, digital residents is simply attainable as soon as the infrastructure is sorted. Particularly throughout Africa, the problem is to give you artistic methods to attach everybody from these in city centres to these dwelling in rural areas.”
Provide chains are within the highlight
For a lot of South African corporations, the the fourth wave of COVID and the emergence of the Omicron Covid variant late final yr has additional exacerbated current provide chain constraints. This compelled many companies to cancel or put their IT initiatives on maintain in 2021, says Arthur Goldstuck, founder and CEO of World Large Worx. In 2022, the promise of a restoration of provide chains will result in a growth in IT companies and logistics, he provides.
For instance, the pandemic ushered in a significant transformation in how South African customers purchase their groceries, boosting competitors among the many nation’s largest retailers as all of them launched their very own meals supply apps in an effort to succeed in new prospects.
The world might slowly be opening up once more however customers have develop into accustomed to this comfort and, as such, this pattern isn’t going anyplace, says Walker. Past what customers see on the frontend when utilizing these apps, Walker notes that these digital supply platforms require a number of work on the backend.
“Some very attention-grabbing partnerships have emerged to allow digital provide chains to work the way in which they do and increase effectivity throughout the availability chain. This requires strategic partnerships; incorporating everybody from retailers and banks to courier firms and fee gateway suppliers to provide prospects a seamless and fuss-free expertise.”
CIOs leverage rising tech
In accordance with Goldstuck, a number of rising applied sciences will probably be within the highlight in 2022 as firms leverage applied sciences to work extra effectively and rework how they do enterprise. He forecasts that synthetic intelligence (AI) will come into its personal as the flexibility to leverage automated evaluation and insights make resolution assist a aggressive differentiator. Goldstuck additionally believes that blockchain and cryptocurrency will develop into extra intently built-in into enterprise exercise.
“Within the final two years, CIOs have needed to speed up their digital transformation plans,” concludes Walker. “They’ve chucked some issues off the desk, they’ve added different issues to the desk. They’ve needed to take care of a lot change and so they’ve needed to adapt far faster than lots of them would have favored. Now is an effective time to take inventory, assess the returns on their investments after which make some huge selections about what they wish to maintain and what they wish to do away with going ahead.”
