SEVENC | THE FUTURE OF IT SUPPORT: TRENDS AND INNOVATIONS TO WATCH IN SOUTH AFRICA
SevenC, a leading managed service provider in South Africa, reviews the future trends in IT support in South Africa and innovations likely to impact businesses.
“The way IT services have evolved in recent years has been pretty incredible, mainly driven by advancing technology and the shifting needs of businesses,” says Graeme Millar, managing director of SevenC.
“We’ve seen big changes in areas like cloud computing, AI, and automation, and they’re really changing how companies work.”
While it’s tricky to predict exactly where things are headed, SevenC highlights the potential directions IT services might take in the future.
Automated Solutions
A recent Gartner report indicated that by 2027, ‘50% of companies with warehouse operations will leverage AI-enabled vision systems to replace traditional scanning-based cycle-counting processes’. This includes chatbots and automated help desks. The next phase of AI support will likely focus on predictive maintenance – where AI will be able to anticipate issues based on real-time data and resolve them before they cause disruptions.
Cloud-Based IT Support
A survey by RightScale (now a part of Flexera) found that 94% of enterprises worldwide use cloud services in some capacity, and South African businesses are following suit. Cloud-based IT support allows teams to monitor, troubleshoot, and manage systems remotely, providing scalability and flexibility that traditional models cannot match.
According to MarketsandMarkets, the South African cloud computing market is expected to reach USD 1.5 billion by 2025, highlighting the increasing demand for cloud-based services. Cloud-based IT support systems allow businesses to access services from anywhere, which is especially important given the rise of remote working. Cloud-based support also offers much-needed reliability to South African companies facing continuous power outages due to load shedding.
The Rise of Remote IT Support
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the widespread popularity of the remote work culture, and with that came the popularity of remote IT help. According to a report by McKinsey & Company, over 80% of South African businesses expect remote work to remain a permanent or semi-permanent feature of their operations.
Remote IT support offers a flexible, efficient way to handle technical issues without needing physical presence. Support technicians can resolve problems from any location, significantly cutting response times and reducing the need for on-site visits. This is especially beneficial for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which may need more resources to maintain large in-house IT teams.
Remote IT support also enables businesses to tap into a broader talent pool. Companies in South Africa can now seek the services of IT specialists from anywhere in the world.
Cybersecurity
According to Interpol, South Africa ranks third globally for the most cybercrime victims, with 43% of cyberattacks directed at small businesses (worldwide). A number of IT providers have already developed fully-fledged cybersecurity services that offer continuous network monitoring, detection of complex threats, and micromanagement of security patches.
In the future, managed IT support will likely get even smarter, with tools like AI-driven threat detection that can spot unusual activity and stop cyber threats before they do any damage.
Hybrid or Multi-Cloud Environments
According to a report released by IDC, nearly 80% of businesses will adopt a hybrid or multi-cloud environment by 2025. IT support teams will need to be skilled at handling both cloud systems and on-site hardware.
Energy-efficient Solutions
As the world focuses more on going green, local businesses are examining their carbon footprints more closely. IT support providers are stepping up to help with energy-efficient solutions and cloud-based systems that reduce the need for physical hardware.
Sustainable IT practices are catching on, like cutting energy use with better data centre management or reducing e-waste by recycling old hardware.
Conclusion
The future of IT support in South Africa is bright, driven by trends like AI, cloud technology, and automation. Managed IT services such as SevenC will continue to evolve to offer more proactive, efficient, and strategic solutions.
About SevenC Group of Companies
The SevenC Group of Companies is an award-winning specialist IT Managed Services strategy and consulting company founded in 1998. It started as a specialist provider of Open Source, home-grown Linux products as an alternative to Microsoft. It has grown into one of Africa’s leading IT Managed Support Services providers, focusing on the small-to-medium enterprise market with over 500 clients across six countries: South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Zambia. With over 150 staff across the Group, SevenC, and its subsidiary ASG, partner with clients with 50 – 200 users to improve their business operations through technology transformation. SevenC is a trusted advisor to clients across industry sectors, offering strategy consulting, IT training and a range of outsourced managed services and products. From cloud-based solutions driving demand for managed IT services to handle cloud infrastructure, security, and maintenance; to cybersecurity solutions to protect organisational IP and data; to staying ahead of the growing regulatory requirements around data protection and privacy, we work with clients to effectively manage their technology stack for seamless work and teaming from wherever they are. SevenC Group’s products include Infrastructure Planning, Disaster Recovery Planning, Fibre Broadband, Fibre Enterprise, Firewall, Incident Response Planning, IT & Cybersecurity, IT Governance, IT Project Management, IT Risk Management, Line of Business Application, Microsoft 365, Outsourced IT Support, Private Cloud, Sync7, Virtual CIO, Virtualisation, Linux and Workstation7. Visit www.sevenc.co.za