Oracle's Nigeria country manager Bayo Sanni said the country's recent economic recession was a blessing in disguise as it forced many organisations to review their IT spend and renew their focus on IT investment.
Sanni says most local organisations have learnt to resort to cloud computing technology to do more with less.
"For example, cloud helps organisations move much of their IT spending from capital expense (CapEx) to operational expense (OpEx). These changes allow them to stabilise spending, reduce their capital budget, and be more agile. Nigeria is definitely cloud ready."
This trend will likely continue and grow stronger, Sanni suggests. He says this is because the digital disruption is spreading across Africa and businesses and governments are being forced to embrace the fourth iindustrial revolution.
The shift is driven by technological innovation as its backbone. Meanwhile, these technologies - IoT, automation and robotics - are all reliant on cloud.
Put another way, cloud will help businesses innovate around these new technologies.
It will be a critical enabler of the next Industrial Revolution. It will be crucial for any industry's use especially telecom, banking and government entities in the Nigerian context.
Sanni prides in Oracle's strong end-to-end offering utilised across these three sectors. The solution's services for the community could drive business growth, job creation and infrastructure development, he says, adding:
"If businesses and government in Nigeria wish to partake on this global business stage, they have to remain relevant, competitive and innovative. Technology is driving this enablement. It has the potential to bring socio-economic change in the country and wider continent."
He believes that emerging technologies like IoT will be crucial going forward and cloud will help government agencies make better use of data and significantly cut costs.
Nigeria's government, for example, has a vision to be one of the largest economies of the world by 2020. The country needs a unified approach to achieve such a vision. Cloud will help drive digital adoption across the country as an innovative, accessible and modern tool.
Cloud's projected role in building a formidable digital economy in Nigeria are not without challenges.
According to Sanni these challenges include customer education, cyber security and data residency concerns.
He adds: "I believe that as technology becomes more pervasive, we will continue to see the need for quick adoption of new technologies amongst various industries. This adoption will drive disruption, innovation and fierce competition amongst many. Collaboration, new partnerships amongst global and local vendors will boom, in the hope that the services and offerings made available in Nigeria, and beyond, allow for Africa to become a window to the world. Providing services unique to the challenges we face as a continent."
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