There’s a multitude to choose from – the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies or blockchain. And let’s not forget cyber security, which undoubtedly has the potential to make a big splash, but probably not in a good way. Brainstorm is hedging its bets that cloud will be the technology to have the most significant impact in the year ahead. But not just any flavour of cloud – hyperscale public cloud is going to be a bringer of significant change in South Africa.

The main reason for our optimism is the fact that, at the time of writing, Microsoft is yet to open two local Azure datacentre regions (Cape Town and Johannesburg), although that’s scheduled to happen before the end of 2018. As such, 2019 will be the first year we see how having a local hyperscale cloud on the ground impacts the local market.