While African businesses are eager to adopt cloud, the challenge remains: to move on cloud adoption immediately or wait until a clear digital and cloud strategy is in place.

This was discussed at the Africa Executive Summit hosted in Mauritius, organised to offer customers insight into various aspects of the cloud adoption process including capacity building, innovation, security and the ability to leverage Internet of Things (IoT) for driving business growth.

Janusz Naklicki, Vice President of the Russia, Africa and Central Europe, Oracle commented: "Cloud adoption in Africa is growing at a rapid pace as organisations now realise that cloud offers them speed, value and better ROI. Africa is a priority market for us and the Africa Executive Summit is in line with our commitment to further drive this interest and support our customers in Africa in their journey to the cloud".

Cherian Varghese said, "Cloud technology will undoubtedly drive the next phase of growth for businesses in Africa."

According to Varghese the biggest concern is around security and the safety of data in the cloud, how to ensure data sovereignty and what happens in the event of data loss, roles and responsibilities.

"HR will be first of the applications which most customers are planning to move on cloud. The customers in general are struggling on how to manage a hybrid environment, of keeping some of the application on Premise, some on cloud," Varghese explains.

At this point in time most customers are in a transition phase, says the Oracle exec, and are happy to move some tech and application on the cloud before moving over in the next six-to-twelve months.