South African organisations have spent the better part of a decade migrating workloads to the cloud. The strategy decks are written. The hyperscaler contracts are signed. The budgets have been approved, sometimes more than once.

But what is actually happening inside the server rooms, the FinOps spreadsheets and the security teams?

That is the question the TechCentral Cloud Reckoning Survey, sponsored by Altron Digital Business and Microsoft, is built to answer. The survey is now open and runs until 30 June 2026. The full report will be published on TechCentral on 17 July 2026.

Take the Cloud Reckoning Survey now

Early responses are already in – and they are genuinely interesting.

CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and cloud architects from across the South African market have started weighing in. The picture forming is not the one most vendor decks describe.

Hybrid is the default. Roughly half of the organisations responding so far are running a deliberate split between cloud and on-premises infrastructure, with “primarily public cloud” at around three in 10. The all-in-cloud narrative is not what senior technology leaders are describing on the ground.

The strategy gap is real, but smaller than many would assume. Around two-thirds of respondents say their stated cloud strategy and the reality of their environment are in step. The remaining third are not – with around 16% saying they are one to two years behind their original plan, and others reporting stalled execution or no formal strategy at all.

Microsoft Azure dominates the platform conversation, in use or under evaluation at roughly three-quarters of organisations responding so far. AWS sits at around half. Local and regional providers, and Huawei Cloud appear in a long tail – but they do appear.

FinOps is splitting the market in two. Around a third of respondents have a mature FinOps practice with dedicated tooling and resources. Roughly the same proportion are still relying primarily on provider billing dashboards. The middle of the market – tracking spend but struggling to optimise or allocate it accurately – is where the most cost exposure tends to sit.

Then there’s AI

The number that surprised us most? Legacy integration is the biggest live cloud frustration in South African organisations right now. Almost half of respondents named it as a top friction point – ahead of skills shortages, governance, security gaps and runaway costs. The cloud conversation has moved on. The on-prem environments those clouds are connected to have not.

And then there is AI. Roughly eight in 10 respondents say their infrastructure is at least partially ready for AI and machine learning workloads, with almost a quarter already running AI in production. Around two-thirds name AI and machine learning infrastructure as a top investment priority heading into 2027. More than 60% believe AI will be the single development that most fundamentally reshapes how South African organisations use cloud infrastructure by 2028.

These are early numbers from a survey still running. The picture will sharpen as more responses come in – which is exactly why we need the rest of the country’s cloud practitioners to weigh in before 30 June.

The full study is built around six themes: cloud strategy and reality, workload migration, the hyperscaler choice, cost and FinOps, security and sovereignty, and AI readiness. Thirteen questions, designed to map the real picture rather than the one in the strategy deck.

This matters because the gap between AI ambition and AI infrastructure is widening fast, and the people who can answer these questions honestly are not the marketers. They are the cloud architects, the platform engineers, the security leads and the FinOps teams doing the work.

Responses are anonymous – individual answers will never be identified in the final report. Only anonymised, aggregate insights and sector-level views will be published.

TechCentral has enormous respect for the people who keep South African cloud environments running. The architects making the calls. The engineers patching at 2am. The FinOps leads reclaiming budget no-one knew was leaking. These are the voices the rest of the market most needs to hear.

Take the Cloud Reckoning Survey now

The survey takes four to six minutes. One respondent will be drawn at random to win an Apple iPad 11-inch Wi-Fi 256GB – and it’s open to South African residents who complete the survey in full. The full report lands on TechCentral on 17 July 2026.