Nutanix, a leader in private, hybrid and multi-cloud computing, has released the local data from its third global Enterprise Cloud Index survey, showing how South African companies compare with the rest of the globe regarding their hybrid cloud adoption in 2020.

South African organisations are still transitioning to a hybrid cloud infrastructure, and for most organisations, these transitions do not happen overnight. Legacy applications may justify keeping older infrastructure for a time or require re-platforming skills that organisations may not have access to. According to the report, 50% of South Africa organisations run either private cloud-only or a non-integrated mix of private, public, and traditional infrastructure models.

Download the infographic and full survey here

Key findings

Hybrid cloud is the ideal IT operating model for most respondents in South Africa and elsewhere, with most IT respondents locally (88%) and globally (87%) reporting that the hybrid cloud is the ideal infrastructure model for their organisation.

South Africa is ahead in decommissioning or evolving its legacy data centres. Only 14% of respondents locally reported running traditional non-cloud-enabled data centres exclusively, compared to the global average of 18%. Penetration in South Africa is expected to drop to just 3% within the next five years, while the use of hybrid cloud is expected to increase by 31% over the same period.

IT shops in South Africa favour private cloud and hyperconverged infrastructure, with local respondents reporting that they are running more applications in private clouds (38%) than public (29%) than their global counterparts, who report a slight preference for public clouds. This may explain why South Africa is also ahead in hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) deployments, with 57% indicating that they have either fully deployed or are in the process of deploying it. Another 33% plan to do so in the next 12 to 24 months. Comparatively, over two-thirds (69%) of global ECI respondents running hybrid cloud said they’re also operating or in the process of deploying hyperconverged infrastructure; by contrast, 40% of those running mixed-model infrastructures and 50% of those running traditional environments said they too will roll out HCI.

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A strong customer focus is driving infrastructure changes in South Africa, and 62% of respondents cited the ability to better support their customers as the reason to move to cloud-enabled infrastructure, compared to a 46% global average. Interestingly, while cost savings were less important globally, more respondents in South Africa selected it as a factor (51%) than any other country polled (the second highest being the UK at 45%).

The global pandemic has also raised IT’s profile, and accelerated cloud adoption as 82% of South African respondents said that Covid-19 has caused IT to be viewed more strategically in their organisations. As a result, 60% reported an increase in hybrid cloud investment compared to 46% globally. Local respondents specifically stated that their top priorities, because of Covid-19, are implementing 5G (61%), improving IT infrastructure (55%), improving business continuity (54%) and creating work-from-home capabilities (53%) — something the local Nutanix team confirms, as use cases for these technologies are on the rise.

“The data speaks for itself and is a firm testament to what we see unfolding in the local market — that is that private clouds that marry themselves to a hybrid or multi-cloud universe are the preferred future infrastructure for African businesses,” said Rowen Grierson, sales director for sub-Saharan Africa at Nutanix. “If we consider the data, the next five years in Africa will be an exciting time for IT and the cloud. While we still face challenges such as data sovereignty, compliance and a sparse public cloud footprint, we are turning this to our favour as we lead the charge in hybrid cloud adoption.

“There is a wealth of opportunity in the region, and whether or not a single IT model ends up being the only infrastructure, it’s clear that companies in Africa have a clear view of how the cloud journey will unfold in their business,” said Grierson.

About the research

For the third consecutive year, Vanson Bourne conducted research on behalf of Nutanix, surveying 3 400 IT decision makers around the world about where they’re running their business applications today, where they plan to run them in the future, what their cloud challenges are, and how their cloud initiatives stack up against other IT projects and priorities. The respondent base spanned multiple industries, business sizes and the following geographies: the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the Asia-Pacific and Japan region. (There were 100 respondents from South Africa.)

To learn more about the report and findings, please download the full third Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index.

About Nutanix
Nutanix is a global leader in cloud software and a pioneer in hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, making computing invisible anywhere. Organisations around the world use Nutanix software to leverage a single platform to manage any app at any location at any scale for their private, hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Learn more at www.nutanix.com or follow us on Twitter.