Although AI will undoubtedly have a major effect on many areas of the business, such as training, HR, sales and marketing, its application in customer experience will be particularly useful.

In Africa, cloud spending has also seen a marked increase, according to the Cloud Africa 2018 report, a research project conducted by World Wide Worx for F5 Networks.

While most licensing works on a per-user basis, some vendors have started offering different options in order to simplify the process, says Richard Firth, CEO of MIP Holdings.