Huawei ranks third in SA Cloud market

by MTHULISI SIBANDA
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – THE cloud market in South Africa is projected to grow from approximately R35 billion (US$1,9 billion) in 2023 to over R113 billion by 2028.

This is the projection of Africa Analysis in its “2024 South Africa Cloud Computing Market Growth Forecast Report.”

It ranks Huawei among the top three cloud service providers in South Africa.

Huawei, the Chinese-headquartered company, said the projected growth highlights the substantial growth potential and Huawei’s significant role in this expanding market.

Despite entering the cloud market in South Africa six years ago, Huawei has rapidly ascended the ranks.

Nearly one in five surveyed users are running significant workloads on Huawei’s platform, showcasing the company’s strong competitive strategy in the region.

“This report finding bodes well for the investments we have made in growing digital infrastructure in South Africa,” said Steven Chen, Managing Director of Huawei Cloud South Africa.

“We are starting to reap the rewards of our strategy because we entered the market at an opportune time and focused on working with local partners in SA when establishing our data centres,” he said.

The “2024 South Africa Cloud Computing Market Growth Forecast Report” examines the latest developments in the local sector as they relate to technology and cloud service providers, as well as end users of these products and services.

Africa Analysis highlights that three factors are driving growth in the South African market.

This includes investments of global cloud providers or hyperscalers. Governments and corporations are hungry to transform into cloud-first organisations and lastly, growth is also coming from increased investments in data centres that capacitate cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics.

Huawei Cloud offers its public cloud capabilities as an on-premise private cloud, entirely independent of public cloud infrastructure.

This approach empowers enterprises with complete control over their data and applications, ensuring compliance with stringent regulatory requirements and enhancing security.

Chen said their latest Cloud Stack 8.3 offering, launched recently in South Africa, was designed to address the burgeoning demand for private cloud solutions.

“It not only facilitates seamless integration with third-party providers but also leverages Huawei’s robust cloud architecture to deliver unparalleled performance and scalability.”

Meanwhile, in alignment to the above, a recent Gartner infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market report ranked Huawei Cloud as the third biggest provider in South Africa by revenue in 2022.

As the country’s maturing ICT sector and growing tech-savvy population adopt advanced technologies like 5G, AI and big data analytics, more investments are expected to improve data centres and cloud computing capacity.

Chen said Huawei was ready to drive growth in South Africa’s digital
economy.

“Not only have we made significant investments to become the leaders in 5G, our first-in-class ICT infrastructure will enable us to fully support the intelligent development of industries in this new era defined by AI.”

– CAJ News