The rise of big public cloud platforms will cause job losses.
This is according to Gert Schoonbee, MD of T-Systems, speaking at the Frost & Sullivan Growth, Innovation and Leadership 2016 Africa conference in Cape Town on Thursday.
Schoonbee said although there are lots of benefits around public cloud, there is also the consequence of job losses.
Public cloud platforms provide order, simplicity, great scalability and peace of mind. However, public cloud platforms take away a lot of data centre and infrastructure jobs, Schoonbee stated.
"It can be the Trojan horse that can colonise the African continent."
According to Schoonbee, there will be a skills class that will disappear over time in terms of employment in the big public cloud environment.
He explained: "When you think of the return on capital of these big public cloud providers and then think of the economic growth rate for a continent like Africa, then there is a red flag. We need to manage this carefully so that as we go into the digital economy, we don't end up leaving a legacy where capital just gets consolidated back to the rich nations again."
Africans need to make cloud platforms work for them as well, and this will require a lot of collaboration, noted Schoonbee. "Like-minded people must work together in an economic way to keep data within the country.
"We know that one of the key enablers of digitisation is cloud and it will be no good trying to run away from it. We need to lean into it, but as Africans we need to make it work for us in the long run."
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