Benefits of cloud-based training apps can no longer be ignored

DESPITE Africa’s e-learning market doubling from 2011 to 2016, reaching $513 million (R6.8 million), the continent’s three biggest economies, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, are not yet moving their training applications to the cloud en masse.

This was one of the key findings from Cloud Africa 2018, a research project conducted by World Wide Worx and F5 Networks across Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa this year, where decision-makers at 300 medium to large organisations were asked about their cloud computing usage, benefits and intentions.

While all markets were on par in terms of their use of business apps in the cloud, and while organisations in Kenya and Nigeria were more likely to host service apps in the cloud than those in South Africa, it was interesting to note that training and legal apps were the lowest on the priority list when it came to cloud-hosted applications.

The global e-learning market is expected to be worth $200bn by 2024, driven by emerging corporate trends and escalating popularity of online or internetbased learning programs.

Yet, only 14% of South African organisations said they hosted training apps in the cloud, dropping to just 2% of organisations in Kenya and Nigeria.

The cloud is the ideal platform to make education more accessible to more people, especially in Africa, where inequality and a lack of access to infrastructure, connectivity, and locally relevant content have resulted in a largely uneducated and under-skilled workforce.

At the foundational phase, online learning allows children in rural areas to access the same quality content delivered by highly qualified educators, as children in more developed urban areas. It democratises education, providing knowledge transfer and equal opportunities.

Extended to university level, e-learning not only opens up new revenue streams for universities, but also solves the problem of overcrowding and not being able to meet the demand. The result is that more students can register for courses, with more employable graduates and, hopefully, reduced unemployment rates.

Universities are often criticised for not evolving their outdated curriculums in line with industry trends and requirements, and producing graduates who are not adequately prepared for the world of work. Cloud-based training apps can be adapted on the fly, giving universities the edge by allowing them to provide the most relevant, up-todate course material.

In education, as in industry and business, change is the only constant. Education cannot end at school or university. It must be a lifelong commitment for any professional, especially in today’s rapidly changing business environment. Cloud computing is the only solution if enterprises want to keep up with change.

IT and business are always changing and while the requirement for apps to be fast, readily available and secure won’t ever change; what has changed is the speed of deployment. Users and customers want everything delivered immediately, a dynamic that’s driving the DevOps methodology and automation.

Businesses that want to keep up with the pace of their customers need to empower their teams with the skills and expertise to respond to change.