Mthoko Mncwabe, ACSA. All photos: Karolina Komendera

The story of public cloud is one of incredible growth, particularly during the pandemic. AWS has just seen revenue jump 36% year-on-year, and Azure reports growth of 40%. Despite the bleak global economic outlook, the hyperscale public cloud providers are set to benefit again – just like they did at the beginning of the pandemic – as organisations and enterprises cast around for alternatives to expensive server refreshes. While many global companies report using multiple cloud providers, the picture locally seems to be a bit different, with many, particularly in the public sector, still investigating and doing proofs of concept. That said, almost everyone seems to be using Office 365. Brainstorm convened a gathering of technology professionals from the public sector to hear how they’re progressing with their cloud migrations, if at all, such as in the case of the Department of Correctional Services, which is only using Office 365 and Teams.

“We’re still in an exploratory mode to see where we’re moving as government,” says Jonas Mekgwe, the department’s CIO. “Moving to cloud is not our first choice, but it’s something that is in the market. We’re looking at whether we should go there, and how soon we should do it.”